Is ObamaCare Repealing Itself?

In typical Washington fashion, the Obama Administration delivered embarrassing news when most people weren’t paying attention to the news.  This time, it was two substantial ObamaCare-related failures delivered around July 4 festivities.

The biggest of the two failures, the delay of the employer mandate to provide health care until 2015 (as opposed to the legislated January 1, 2014 start-date), was surreptitiously announced in a White House blog post rather than an announcement from HHS, the IRS or any other of the multiple federal agencies now regulating the American medical industry.

Later in the week, it was admitted that the federal government lacks the ability to verify if people are telling the truth about needing ObamaCare-related tax subsidies — making the law that was supposed to be partially paid for by curtailing widespread waste, fraud and abuse potentially open to waste, fraud and abuse.

While conservatives have already passed multiple bills in the House of Representatives to repeal and replace what ObamaCare has become, Project 21 member Christopher Arps suggests that the inherent flaws being discovered in the massive new law could end up bringing about its own demise:

Implementation problems plaguing ObamaCare — the popular name for President Obama’s unpopular “Affordable Health Care Act” — is an example of what happens when you pass wide, sweeping, historic legislation without bipartisan support or even the majority of the American support of the people.

Last week, in an obvious political ploy to avoid disappointing unemployment numbers in the run-up to next year’s elections, the Obama Administration postponed the employer mandate requiring employers to provide health insurance to their employees until 2015. This decision comes after many companies were already granted temporary waivers from the employer mandate last year.

Later in the week, while many people were still celebrating the Independence Day holiday, the Obama Administration further announced that ObamaCare tax subsidies would lack the rigorous oversight that was intended because there simply isn’t enough infrastructure to manage this protection against fraud.

Because President Obama and his congressional allies strong-armed ObamaCare through Congress with questionable tactics, such as using budget reconciliation instead of the normal legislative process, they and they alone get to own the failures of this legislation.

Unfortunately, conservative ideas such as health savings accounts, allowing your health insurance to become portable and fostering price competition by allowing consumers to purchase health insurance outside of one’s state were never seriously considered.

Can a populist president who has given two big concessions to business — but none to law-abiding Americans who are still required to purchase health insurance — continue to keep a base of some public support for ObamaCare?

Every action necessary, both public and private, needs to be considered to repeal any law that takes over one-sixth of our economy.

But I ask, in light of these revelations, and the more that will surely come, is ObamaCare slowly but surely repealing itself because too many lawmakers voted for it without first finding our what was in it?



The National Center for Public Policy Research is a communications and research foundation supportive of a strong national defense and dedicated to providing free market solutions to today’s public policy problems. We believe that the principles of a free market, individual liberty and personal responsibility provide the greatest hope for meeting the challenges facing America in the 21st century.