This past Thursday, President Obama addressed reporters and boasted of the enrollment figures in Obamacare which he says have now exceeded 8 million. He was asked if amendments could be passed to improve the health care law, which no legislator nor the president had read at the time of passage. President Obama expressed a belief that no changes can be made to Obamacare until the GOP completes their stages of grief over the law’s passage. He wryly commented that the GOP is still in the anger and denial stage.
However, the president has not needed the GOP to pass many modifications to Obamacare precisely because he had unilaterally made changes to it himself. He has issued a delay in the employer mandate despite the fact that the law required the mandate now be in effect. That delay was largely done to aid vulnerable Senate Democrats in the 2014 mid-term elections who were concerned that the mandate would cost people either their employer-sponsored health insurance coverage, their jobs or both.
He has also delayed the small business mandate to provide health insurance coverage due to the adverse consequences it poses to the economy. Those two key mandates will not take effect until after the mid-term elections.
Yet, the president is on point that the GOP is dead set against any change that might make Obamacare successful. The GOP would counter that the health care plan fundamentally cannot succeed and that it will take revoking the law to enact something that will work. It should be noted that Obamacare premiums are set to spike in parts of the country later this year by up to 100%.