Friday, October 02, 2015

Senate and House Pass Change to Obamacare

From Caitlin Owens of The National Journal:
The Sen­ate quietly passed a bill that would over­turn the Af­ford­able Care Act’s ex­pan­sion of the small-group in­sur­ance mar­ket on Thursday—and it did so with sur­pris­ingly little fan­fare.
The le­gis­la­tion, passed by voice vote, gets rid of the ACA’s re­quire­ment that states in­crease the defin­i­tion of their small-group mar­ket from em­ploy­ers with 50 or few­er em­ploy­ees to 100 or few­er by Jan. 1, 2016. The change would have sub­jec­ted many small and mid­sized busi­nesses to dif­fer­ent rules. Among those was the re­quire­ment for cer­tain es­sen­tial health be­ne­fits to be covered, which is not re­quired in the large-group mar­ket.
The House passed the bill by a voice vote on Monday.
A little common sense from Congress. Let's hope President Obama has enough sense to agree. Bets on whether this will be ignored by the press and not commented on by the President?

H/T Byron York

6 comments:

MAX Redline said...

Ain't gonna happen. Barry will whip out his magic pen.

T. D. said...

I'm wondering since the D's in the Senate didn't stop it if that means the President is okay with the change. Also since it hasn't gotten any coverage it may be that everyone (including the White House) sees it as a plus.

MAX Redline said...

Unfortunately, I suspect that the reason for lack of coverage can be summed in five words: school shooting in southwest Oregon! National media, "reporting" live from the scene! The bodies hadn't yet assumed ambient temperature before Barry was at his podium, "angrily" speechifying and promising to politicize it.

As though there's anything that he won't politicize.

Well, that's not quite correct, I guess - he's not politicizing the fact that Putin's mopping up his mess in the Middle East, and he's not politicizing the fact that due to his ineptitude, Americans kind of accidentally killed way more doctors and nurses and others when they bombed a hospital.

Yes, the UCC murders were bad; yes, they were due to a mental case who managed to somehow get a small arsenal despite the background checks and other stuff. Nine people are dead down there, and more were injured. That's pretty horrible, but Barry's going to politicize it - despite the fact that his strike took out far more people. That is something he won't politicize.

He also won't politicize the continuing carnage in Chiraq, which he claims as his "home town". On a typical Friday-Sunday, two dozen or so people are shot despite their supposed strict gun laws, but you'll never hear a word from him about that.

T. D. said...

You make a good case, Max!

I'm wondering if the erroneous strike on the hospital in Afghanistan was the President trying to practice Putin's faulty strike policy on US supported forces in Syria. If Putin can strike US supported targets why not the US striking US supported targets?

MAX Redline said...

If ever there was a walking case for term limits, Barry's it.

T. D. said...

Fortunately the presidential term limits fight was done after FDR. It would be tough to do it today.