Former US Senator John Sununu on the health care reform waivers issued by HHS:
At one point during recent debt negotiations, President Obama laid down a list of “untouchable” budget items. Topping that list was anything having to do with implementing or enforcing the Health Care Reform Act. Ironically, the hard line came only after the Department of Health and Human Services regulators had issued waivers exempting 1,400 companies from the harsh effects of ObamaCare.
Everyone knows that regulators write the rules. But the real power comes with the power to tell states, industries, or, as in this case, individual companies that they don’t have to comply.
At about the same time, HHS began shutting down the waiver program - an action it announced on a Friday afternoon, the customary way to bury bad news in Washington. Companies now face a September deadline to apply for protection. After that, they’re out of luck. According to the administration, without the special treatment, health care premiums for 3 million workers would have gone up by 10 percent or more. A note to social engineers of all parties:
If you have to protect 3 million people from a brand-new law, it probably wasn’t very well written in the first place.
If you have to protect 3 million people from a brand-new law, it probably wasn’t very well written in the first place.
That this was an unintended consequence is clear from the fact that the law never contemplated a need for waivers in the first place. In a stroke of bureaucratic magic, HHS simply granted itself the power, and started dispensing the passes. Only when independent groups started pressing for transparency did things begin to shut down.
