Patterico's Pontifications

2/11/2014

Barack “I Can Do Whatever I Want” Obama Rewrites ObamaCare Again

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:02 am



Our Great Leader has gone and rewritten the law again:

For the second time in a year, the Obama administration is giving certain employers extra time before they must offer health insurance to almost all their full-time workers.

Under new rules announced Monday by Treasury Department officials, employers with 50 to 99 workers will be given until 2016 — two years longer than originally envisioned under the Affordable Care Act — before they risk a federal penalty for not complying.

Companies with 100 workers or more are getting a different kind of one-year grace period. Instead of being required in 2015 to offer coverage to 95 percent of full-time workers, these bigger employers can avoid a fine by offering insurance to 70 percent of them next year.

How the administration would define employer requirements has been one of the biggest remaining questions about the way the 2010 health-care law will work in practice — and has sparked considerable lobbying. By providing the dual phase-ins for employers of different sizes, administration officials have sought to lighten the burden on the small share of affected employers that have not offered insurance in the past.

Some carping Republicans are saying that it is wrong for Our Great Leader to rewrite laws on his own. They say it is dangerous to give the branch of government with the guns the power to write and rewrite the laws.

But these complainers are tax cheats, comrades. Preparations are already being made to demonstrate that this is so, with righteous audits to reveal the lies of the carpers. Can you really believe a tax cheat?

Obviously, Our Great Leader’s action is benign, comrades. Our Great Leader is simply “giving” some employers “extra time” before they are penalized. The Washington Post even admits Our Great Leader has this power, and that the only question was how he would exercise it. And he has chosen to exercise it in a way that will “lighten the burden” for these few poor souls.

The tax cheats don’t want to lighten burdens, comrades. They don’t want to give people extra time before penalties. Our Great Leader is the only one with the wisdom to delay these consequences of this law that — recall well, comrades! — does not bear his name.

Here is video of Our Great Leader saying he can do whatever he wants:

We’re breaking protocol here. That’s all right, that’s the thing about being President. I can do whatever I want.

Of course, he was joking, comrades.

Kind of.

And if he wasn’t? You aren’t going to register a complaint about it. Are you?

AOL CEO: ACA = $$$

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 6:41 am



The head of AOL has decided to reinstate retirement benefits and apologize after a firestorm over the following comments:

As a C.E.O. and as a management team, we had to decide, do we pass the $7.1 million of Obamacare costs to our employees? Or do we try to eat as much of that as possible and cut other benefits?…

Two things that happened in 2012. We had two AOL-ers that had distressed babies that were born that we paid a million dollars each to make sure those babies were OK in general. And those are the things that add up into our benefits cost. So when we had the final decision about what benefits to cut because of the increased healthcare costs, we made the decision, and I made the decision, to basically change the 401(k) plan.

It is a tribute to the focus, dedication, and perspective of our excellent media in this country that they managed to focus on the real issue here (did a CEO make some stupid remarks?) and not get sidetracked by a silly and frivolous side issue (wait: did a CEO just say ObamaCare will cost his company over 7 million dollars?).

P.S. AOL is still a thing? I want to know where the CEO of CompuServe stands on these issues!


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