Health-Law Delays Starting to Pile Up

From The Wall Street Journal:

Republicans opposed to the health-care overhaul have had scant luck in overturning or delaying the law, but corporate America has succeeded in persuading the Obama administration to temporarily postpone a growing number of its provisions.

In February, the administration delayed part of a requirement that some employer health-insurance plans cap employees' out-of-pocket costs. In June, a rule that small businesses offer either a single plan or allow employees to choose among different plans was delayed, and a month later, the administration postponed until 2015 a mandate that larger employers offer health insurance.  

The delays come as the White House ramps up efforts to promote the health-insurance law among uninsured Americans in advance of the Oct. 1 opening of health-insurance marketplaces. 

At the same time, public support for the law has waned and Republican opposition has held steady. In the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, in July, 47% of respondents said the law was a bad idea, nearly the highest number recorded on that question since 2009, a year before the measure was passed. 

"Clearly, the administration is trying to find the middle ground between making sure the health marketplace is sound and accommodating some adjustments," said Sara Rosenbaum, a George Washington University professor and proponent of the law. 

 

In February, the administration said employer-sponsored health plans that use different companies to manage different benefits—such as paying for doctor visits and prescription drugs—will have until 2015 to comply with certain out-of-pocket limits. The cap on out-of-pocket expenses next year will be $6,350 per person or $12,700 per family.
 

Existing limits, if higher than the new ones, must drop next year to the new levels. But instead of an overall cap, employees could be on the hook for up to $6,350 for medical costs and $6,350 for prescription drugs.
 

If the out-of-pocket expenses for an employee's prescription drugs aren't currently capped, there will be no limit until 2015, though the cap for other medical expenses will be in place next year. The delay went largely unnoticed until a report this week in the New York Times.
 

Department of Health and Human Services spokeswoman Erin Shields Britt said, "The February guidance builds on these landmark consumer protections by requiring that health plans limit out-of-pocket spending for major medical coverage for the first time, in 2014, on time."
 

Plans purchased through new health insurance marketplaces beginning in October won't be affected by the delay.
 

A coalition of health organizations that advocate for consumers complained about the postponement, saying it could lead to significantly higher health costs for people who have chronic health problems or require expensive drugs, such as cancer patients.
 

"There's no good reason to delay this," said Marc Boutin, executive vice president of the National Health Council, which represents several nonprofit health organizations. "This is an inconvenience for some, but for other people this will mean life-altering differences in quality of life or death, if you have certain illnesses."
 

Obama administration officials had agreed to give those employer-sponsor plans extra time to comply because benefits administrators raised concerns their computer systems couldn't be integrated in time to track patients' total out-of-pocket costs.
 

"Even when they're doing the right thing like making accommodations like this they do get some flak," said Neil Trautwein, vice president at the National Retail Federation, which has opposed parts of the health-care law.