Democrat Manchin Breaks Ranks to Back Mandate Delay

[dkf]

U.S. Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia broke ranks with fellow Democrats and said he’d support a stopgap spending plan that delays the individual mandate in President Barack Obama’s health-care law.

“There’s no way I could not vote for it,” Manchin said at a Bloomberg Government breakfast today. “It’s very reasonable and sensible.”

The individual mandate is the linchpin of the law that requires most Americans to purchase health care through government-run insurance exchanges. Republicans, led by a group of newcomers in the House, are pushing to dismantle the health-care law and are using a ticking clock on a possible Oct. 1 government shutdown as leverage.

The Democratic-led Senate will vote in coming days on the stopgap spending plan and before sending it back to the House will remove language that defunds Obamacare. Obama and House Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Democrat, have said they won’t support using the budget to change the health law.

Manchin, 66, said he’d be willing to delay the individual mandate as part of the budget negotiations because the Obama administration in July gave businesses an extra year to provide their workers with health insurance.

“Don’t put the mandate on the American public right now,” Manchin said. “Give them at least a year. If you know you couldn’t bring the corporate sector, you gave them a year, don’t you think it’d be fair?”

http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-26/democrat-manchin-breaks-ranks-to-back-mandate-delay.html

[Laelth]

1. Interesting. k&r n/t

-Laelth

[Puzzledtraveller]

2. k&r

[Demo_Chris]

3. Good. The mandate should be eliminated completely. nt

[Pretzel_Warrior]

4. apparently you have to be slightly sick in the head to win as a Dem in W.V.

because delaying implementation of one of the key success factors of Obamacare is stupid.

[ProSense]

6. It's stupid

If you don't want health care coverage, pay the $95 dollars or do whatever, no one is going to come after you.

If you do want health care coverage, the health care law significantly improved the system.

Krugman, 2011:

Naked Blackmail

It turns out that in the final stages of the debt negotiations, Republicans suddenly added a new demand — a trigger that would end up eliminating the individual mandate in health care reform.

This is telling, in a couple of ways.

First, the health care mandate has nothing to do with debt and deficits. So this is naked blackmail: the GOP is trying to use the threat of financial catastrophe to impose its policy vision, even in areas that have nothing to do with the issue at hand, a vision that it lacks the votes to enact through normal legislation.

Second, this is a demand Obama can’t accept, unless he plans on changing his party registration. Health reform doesn’t work without a mandate (remember the primary? Maybe better not to). And if health reform is undermined, Obama will have achieved nothing. So by adding this demand, Republicans were in effect saying no deal — unless, I guess, they believed that Obama is a total pushover.

Awesome.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/23/naked-blackmail/

[Pretzel_Warrior]

8. That's what I feel like telling a bunch of people here on DU crying about the cost

if it truly isn't important enough for you to have health insurance--just pay the minimal fee this upcoming tax year and be done with it.

[dkf]

11. On the flip side since it's so minimal why not delay it one year?

[Pretzel_Warrior]

14. because there are a lot of normal, right in the head kind of people who are law abiding

and who will go ahead and sign up for insurance which does two things. 1)it expands the pool of risk to include healthy people who will not pay into it since the vast majority of uninsured are able bodied and healthy individuals. 2)it will be supremely beneficial for those who probability tells us WILL INDEED suffer a catastrophic injury or illness requiring insurance--not to mention it will provide them coverage and thus incentive to get wellness checks and preventive care which will lower their risk of chronic and costly disease.

[dkf]

20. They can do that anyway. Nothing stopping them.

[CatWoman]

7. esp since WV is one of the poorest states in the union

and tons of people there don't have health insurance.....

[Pretzel_Warrior]

9. exactly. It's like the poor states rejecting expanded Medicaid.

one imagines poor states are that way because their leaders are dumb. This seems to be added evidence of that.

[dkf]

13. Actually they are expanding theirs.

[Pretzel_Warrior]

15. I'm referring to other poor states such as #45 Tennessee and #33 Georgia

[winter is coming]

5. So fewer people will join, making it less likely that the ACA will be seen as broadly successful

by the 2014 elections? Uh-uh.

[dkf]

10. Why wouldn't it be better to open with ACA supporters joining and delay pissed off people?

Then when people are happy they can sell the objectors on the benefits.

The flip side is you have angry people forced to pay a penalty and you've pissed them off for the elections.

[Zorra]

12. Yep, that looks like the plan. nt

[truebrit71]

17. ^^^^^^^^^ this ^^^^^^^^^

[truebrit71]

16. When using 'Manchin' and 'Democrat' in the same sentence you should always use "Democrat" in quotes.

...because he is nowhere close to being an actual Democrat, he's just the WV version of one...

[SugarShack]

18. Imagine car insurance if you did not have to purchase it. what do you think it would cost?

Rates are high, because those who purchase health insurance have hidden costs to make up for those who don't pay. THAT is a big reason it's expensive. Along with the profits and no cost controls on hospitals or big pharma.

If there is no mandate, there cannot be a penalty to not purchase. I will cancel mine if this happens. I'll just show up at the hospital like have of americans. Im done.

[dkf]

19. I don't understand...you do have insurance without the mandate or you'd have nothing to cancel yes?