Obama Backs Health Mandate Opt-Out
The Hill reports:
President Obama came out in favor of a significant change to the healthcare reform law for the first time on Monday, backing a plan that could erase the implementation of the mandate to buy insurance.
The president is supporting a plan that would allow states to receive waivers to pursue alternatives to the healthcare reform law, a change that could let states opt out beginning in 2014 from the requirement to buy insurance — one of the law's most unpopular elements.
Speaking to nation’s governors on Monday morning, Obama said states should be able to request waivers for implementing alternatives to the reform law starting in 2014, rather than in 2017, which is the timeline set by the law.
"If you have a better way of doing it, help yourself,” Obama told the National Governors Association. “Go ahead, take that route.”
The announcement marks the first major change backed by Obama since the Democratic Congress approved healthcare reform 11 months ago.
The law’s waiver provision comes with a catch, however. A state’s waiver proposal must show that it is capable of providing coverage that is at least as comprehensive and affordable as that offered through new state-run health insurance exchanges, which also open in 2014. The state must also provide coverage to as many residents as the exchanges would have, and the proposal must not increase the federal deficit.
The waivers, for example, could allow states to include large employers to purchase insurance purchase insurance on exchanges or set new benefit requirements. But most notably, it provides an avenue for states to wipe away the unpopular individual mandate.
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