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Cirque du Obamacare

July 26, 2013 05:38

The process for determining subsidy eligibility could require 21 different steps, involving at least five separate entities — SSA, DHS, DHHS, IRS, and state exchanges—and utilizing a process called the Income and Family Size Verification Project.

By Chris Jacobs at Heritage Foundation

With open enrollment in Obamacare’s exchanges set to start in fewer than three months, the law’s supporters are attempting to change the subject from Obamacare’s many delays and glitches. Instead, they’re mounting a campaign to sell the unpopular measure to the public.

President Obama [] gave a speech on Obamacare, trying to justify the fact that premiums continue to rise, violating his 2008 campaign promise to lower them by $2,500 per family per year. The Kaiser Family Foundation even released a video that attempts to simplify and explain the 2,700-page measure.

But there’s another helpful chart that shows how Obamacare will work, and it’s taken from an official report released by government auditors. Click on the image below to see how the Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration explained the Obamacare enrollment process, in testimony before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday:

The process for determining subsidy eligibility could require 21 different steps, involving at least five separate entities—the Social Security Administration, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Internal Revenue Service, and state exchanges—and utilizing a process called the Income and Family Size Verification Project.

Given this bureaucratic nightmare, it’s little wonder that another report from government auditors released last month said that “critical” deadlines to create the Obamacare exchanges had been missed. Nor should any be surprised that yesterday, Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration testified it “is concerned that the potential for refund fraud and related schemes could increase” due to Obamacare.

Yet the Obama Administration believes spending more money will solve the problem. Just for the IRS implementation of Obamacare, the Administration requested $439.6 million for nearly 2,000 bureaucrats.

Obama yesterday attempted to portray Obamacare as defending Americans from insurance companies. But who will defend the American people from Obamacare? The law’s confusing maze of programs, regulations, and processes brings to mind Ronald Reagan’s famous maxim that “the nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’”

If a picture is normally worth a thousand words, the Obamacare chart above should be worth trillions. Because Congress—seeing that Obamacare is not just too big to fail, but too big to succeed—should refuse to spend a single dime implementing this behemoth of a health care law.