Obamacare Implementation Falls Short
Even as the Administration goes around claiming “We Can’t Wait” to take action, an article today shows how Obamacare implementation is falling behind schedule. A Kaiser Health News article regarding implementation of the federal exchange includes several quotes explaining how Obamacare is unlikely to be “ready for prime time” by January 2014:
- One consultant opined: “It will be an enormous uphill battle to get this thing launched on time….They have a Herculean task, even if everyone was cooperating.”
- The head of the National Association of State Medicaid Directors said the tasks ahead seem all but impossible: “Our members have been having conversations with the vendors since the law was passed, and they are coming to the gradual conclusions that no, they don’t have the capacity to do this everywhere in the time frame.”
- An Illinois business executive also expressed skepticism: “There’s an enormous amount to be decided and put together and built before these key milestones can happen….The fact that so little has happened [at the state and federal level] is good cause for alarm.”
It’s entirely unsurprising that implementation of the massive law is falling behind schedule. (There’s also the minor detail that Obamacare provided no funding for a federally-run Exchange – which might explain why the project is behind schedule.) Many Republicans believed all along that federal bureaucrats imposing radical change in health care from Washington amounted to an exercise in futility under the best of circumstances. It’s one more reason why the 2700-page law does not represent true health care reform.