Healthcare

Another Delay Raises Serious Questions About Obamacare’s ‘Pre-Existing Conditions’ Plan

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Mission accomplished-OBAMACARE-delay

Yet another occasion where I get to use this photoshop of Obama in front of the “Delay Accomplished” banner! Team Obama is now delaying the deadline for Americans with pre-existing conditions.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said Tuesday that it was moving the deadline to March 15 from January 31, the originally scheduled end of the enrollment period. 

“As part of our continuing effort to help smooth consumers’ transition into Marketplace coverage, we are allowing those covered by (the Pre-Existing Conditions Insurance Plan) additional time to shop for new coverage while they receive the ongoing care and treatment they need,” HHS spokeswoman Joanne Peters said in a statement.

This is the second time that they’ve pushed this deadline back – the first was from the end of December to the end of January. The PCIP program is being phased out, but if we’re supposed to believe that the Obamacare roll-out is improving, why are the deadline delays getting longer?

The $5 billion PCIP program was intended as bridge health coverage to sick patients waiting for the full implementation of ObamaCare. The administration says that 135,000 have used the program at some point, but did not say how many were currently in PCIP. If it’s being extended unexpectedly (again) and it cost $5 billion, how much will another delay cost?

And that’s not all – the PCIP program had much a fewer number of enrollments than expected, but still went broke from the $5 billion price tag way back in April of last year:

ObamaCare funded the PCIP with $5 billion to cover patients with pre-existing conditions from 2010 to 2014. Less than a third of the people HHS projected would enroll in the plan actually signed up for the coverage. Yet despite the low enrollment, the plan is broke. In fact, it started running out of money at the beginning of this year, which means it busted its budget a full year ahead of projections.

Even before Obamacare implementation, the PCIP program was already cutting benefits because of miscalculations, and with low enrollment. If we had a decent media, they might be asking some of these questions instead of licking Obama’s hand like obedient lapdogs.