Change is so much easier with majority rule.. http://t.co/0a5rmOIheQ pic.twitter.com/phKdn7Csaa
— John Sykes (@tcottruth) November 23, 2013
Without this delay, a vast number of businesses and their employees would have received cancellation notices from their insurance companies before the 2014 elections. This inconvenient timing would have caused voters and taxpayers to oust the Democrats in 2014 by a landslide too big to be covered by their usual “margin of fraud.”
Oops! Even with this delay, some covered employees will be getting notices of cancellation or premium increases just before the midterm elections.
While just about all all employers will be affected by Obamacare-mandated policy cancellations, small business owners and their covered employees and families will be least able to absorb the additional costs. And they vote!
Thousands Of Small Businesses Will Also Start Losing Their Current Health Policies Under Obamacare. Here’s Why
President Obama’s simple line “If you like your current health plan you can keep it” is haunting him amidst reports that 3.5 million Americans who purchase health plans on their own, in the “individual” market, have lost that coverage as a result of Obamacare.
Very soon, small businesses will be faced with a similar fate.
They will also see their health plans canceled as a result of Obamacare.
Small businesses, with fewer than 50 employees, are not forced to provide coverage under Obamacare.
But when they do, policies sold in the small group market are subject to the same regulations now forcing the termination of millions of health plans sold directly to consumers.
But late last year, businesses that employed fewer than 50 employees began exploiting a loophole they found in the Obamacare text. If the businesses renewed their policies early, before the end of 2013, then those plans would not be subject to Obamacare’s costly mandates for a full year, in many cases until December 31, 2014.
But that clock is already ticking. Starting in October 2014, many employees of small businesses will start getting the same notices that are now being mailed to individuals, informing that their existing health plans are also being cancelled.
These small businesses will be faced with a bleak choice.
Find another policy that’s compliant with Obamacare, but also more costly. Or put their employees into the Obamacare exchange.
For many of the largest insurers, including Aetna, United Healthcare, Wellpoint, and Cigna; the small group market is among their most lucrative insurance products. For this reason, these big insurers are likely to try and hold onto some of this business.
But they will not be able to fully shield businesses from the new costs.
While a smaller percentage of business plans may get cancelled (relative to the fraction of individual market plans that are now being terminated) the small group market is nonetheless much bigger than the individual market. Even if Obamacare materially affects a smaller slice of the business plans, it will still encumber far more people than the 3.5 million individuals now losing coverage.
Insurers that are dumping their individual market policies are doing so now to meet a January 1, 2014 deadline to either comply with Obamacare or terminate their plans. They need to give consumers 90 days notice under HIPPA rules.
In contrast, by renewing their policies “off cycle,” the small businesses were able to lock in another year before they have to comply with Obamacare. Many of these small business plans won’t be subject to the law’s mandates until January 1, 2015.
This means that employees of small businesses wont get their cancellation notices until November of 2014. That’s because these plans are subject to ERISA rules. These regulations require businesses and health plans to notify consumers 60 days before they plan to change or terminate policies. News of cancellations will go directly to employees, just like the termination notices now arriving in the mail.
According to a story from Palm Beach Post:
Towers Watson, a national human resources consultancy, estimates that 60 percent of all large-group employers’ health plans will hit the “Cadillac” plan threshold without changes.
How does Obama plan to save the 2014 election for the Democrats?
But there are strong arguments that Obama has already violated the US Constitution by delaying the enforcement of the employer mandate to January 2015. In a nutshell, no president gets to pick and choose which laws, or parts of laws, will be enforced.
Who puts the brakes on Obama?
Until now, Senate Republicans have been able to slow down this tyranny of the majority by using the filibuster to block the worst of Obama’s judicial nominees.
USA Today: Senate fights over appeals court key to Obama agenda
Democrats change Senate rules to get Obama’s judges confirmed to nation’s second most powerful court
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate declared a political “nuclear” war Thursday over a federal court and three nominees to it that few Americans have heard of.
Yet the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit — and President Obama’s effort to get at least Supreme Court super-litigator Patricia Millett confirmed to it — may be more important to his record and legacy than anything but Obamacare.
That’s because the little-known appeals court has vast jurisdiction over the federal government’s powerful bureaucracy — its myriad departments and agencies, and the thousands of regulations and executive actions that get churned out without much fanfare.
It’s that court that in January struck down Obama’s “recess appointments” to an even more obscure government body — the National Labor Relations Board — triggering an upcoming Supreme Court showdown over presidential powers.
It’s that court that could advance or reject much of Obama’s legislative and regulatory agenda for the duration of his term, from financial regulation to climate change.
And it’s that court that could provide the springboard for future Supreme Court justices — perhaps Sri Srinivasan, the only judge that Senate Republicans have confirmed among Obama’s five nominees.
After all, the D.C. Circuit once was home to Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Justice Elena Kagan would have served there had Republicans not blocked her nomination.
The rules change approved by Senate Democrats Thursday will make it easier to confirm nominees to federal district and appeals courts; however, it won’t change Republicans’ ability to filibuster Supreme Court nominations with 41 of 100 votes.
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