Much has been reported about Barack Obama’s arbitrary changes to the Obamacare law, to deadlines, requirements and such, all without the benefit of any actual – legal – changes in the law as adopted by Congress.
There even are lawsuits pending over his changes.
The Supreme Court has engaged essentially in the same maneuver, changing the “penalties” in Obamacare to “taxes” and then ruling that the exchanges “established by the state” really mean established by the state or the federal government because it doesn’t really matter as they do the same job.
Now, there are reports that states, too, have been caught up in making arbitrary changes to various laws relating to Obamacare.
A report has come from Complete Colorado, a news aggregator that periodically issues its own reports.
It says Colorado officials simply revised a state law, without benefit of approval from lawmakers, when a problem was created March 4, 2014, as Obama announced one of his changes to Obamacare – a two-year extension for canceled health plans.
Multitudes of policies were in the bull’s-eye to be eliminated because they didn’t meet all of the new demands of Obamacare, but Obama and his Democrats were worried about the impact on the soon-coming election if potentially millions of people had just been tossed to the street by their insurance companies.
The problem was that while Obamacare created an extension for the continued sale of those non-conforming policies federally, his order didn’t impact a state law that already demanded that policies sold in Colorado comply.
State officials more or less admitted the situation, with emails going back and forth noting that the extension was not possible in Colorado, despite Obama’s changes, because of the limits and restrictions of the state law.
But, in the end, those limits and restrictions, were, in fact, changed. Without the legislature’s involvement.
The emails Complete Colorado obtained “add support to the notion that the Colorado Division of Insurance knowingly broke state law when the agency decided to allow some health plans to be sold.”
When Obama changed the law to allow the two-year extension, the procedure was for states, like Colorado, with their own exchanges to “decide for themselves whether they’d pick up this option offered by the president.”
The report said, “For Colorado, however, the decision was a bit more tricky because of a law passed in 2013 designed to bring the state into maximum compliance with the ACA … One of the key provisions of the alignment bill was to ensure that all plans sold in 2014 and beyond were fully compliant with the benefits mandated by the ACA.”
The report said an email from Vincent Plymell, the insurance division communications director, addressed the problem the same day Obama made his announcement.
“What is our position? It would seem similar to the November 2013 proposal, in that we can’t allow [the sale of these health plans] due to the Alignment Bill. Is that correct? – Vince”
Complete Colorado continued, “A top policy analyst for the DOI, Matt Mortier, responded: ‘I believe you’re right. We’re hard-coded in Section 70 (Effective date – applicability) that the alignment bill requirements apply to health-coverage plans (non-grandfathered plans) issued or renewed on or after January 01, 2014.’”
The report said the agency even drafted a press release that it was “working” on the extension, and that it “will require a change in state law…”
It said the agency would work “with the legislature and the governor’s office on the necessary legislation.”
But those plans were scrapped, and the agency simply issued a bulletin making the change.
Officials cited a clause “that gives the insurance commissioner the power to set rules regarding the ACA implementation,” Complete Colorado said.
“The … question then becomes whether the commissioner’s rule making power allows him/her to exceed [a] ‘hard coded’ statute that details an outright ban on certain types of health plans. Such ‘rule making’ clauses are usually intended to allow for adjustments that are within all other limits of the law – but don’t allow for legal limits to be exceeded, as appears to be the case here.”
The report also said while the state allow allows changes that are needed to align state law with “requirements imposed by federal law,” the Obama change was not a requirement, it was an option.
Complete Colorado sued for access to the emails, the report said.
In a debate between Gov. John Hickenlooper, a Democrat, and GOP challenge Rep. Bob Beauprez, the issue had been raised at the time.
“Your insurance commissioner said that would violate the law in Colorado. I think she was right. Because it’s a law that you signed that said every plan sold in Colorado had to be ACA-compliant. And then magically, a short while later, somebody reversed opinion within your administration and said, ‘We’ll ignore the law’ – that you signed – and go ahead and allow those plans to be renewed. Why’d you break the law, John, the law that you signed?” Beauprez asked.
The new emails confirm what had been reported at the time, Complete Colorado said.
“No document shows when, why or how the main players inside DOI changed their minds. But calendar records show that in between believing a legislative fix was needed and the decision to simply allow the plans to be sold … Commissioner Salazar met with top members of the Hickenlooper administration at the governor’s offices,” the report said.
WND has reported on the disputes over Obama’s arbitrary changes to Obamacare over the years.
There’s even been a lawsuit filed by Judicial Watch on behalf of Kawa Orthdontics. It alleges the company was damaged because Obama refused to follow the law as written and impose an employer mandate as Congress ordered.
Judicial Watch said its client lost “the value of the time and money it spent in 2013 preparing for the mandate to take effect in 2014.”
That was because Obama changed the deadline written in the law.
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided not to address the central question of the case – “whether the executive branch could ‘ignore the clear, congressionally imposed deadline’ of the ACA, also known as Obamacare – because it concluded that Kawa Ortho did not demonstrate injury sufficient to establish legal standing.”
Judicial Watch said it was appealing to the Supreme Court.
Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, said, “Those who think Obama’s lawlessness and his refusal to follow his own Obamacare law has no consequences are oblivious to costs of this lawlessness for American businesses, such as our client Kawa Orthodontics.
“This case is yet another instance in which a responsible and rational business has been injured by a politically motivated, unilateral power grab by the executive branch. In attempting to comply with the law, our client instead suffered significant economic harm, so that President Obama and influential special interests could avoid accountability for the law that was passed despite the clear objections of the American people.”
A petition frames the question for the Supreme Court: Can the president ignore a congressional deadline?
It states: “Unlike all of the other ACA challenges submitted to the court over the past few years, Kawa Ortho does not challenge the text of the law. Nor does it challenge the enforcement of the ‘employer mandate’ provisions. … Instead, Kawa Ortho challenges defendants’ unlawful decision to disregard statutory requirements and unilaterally delay enforcement of the law for at least two years.”
The Supreme Court’s involved in such antics were described by Justice Antonin Scalia as “jiggery-pokery.”
The Obamacare law was under challenge, but changed by the majority’s redefinition of the words of the English language.
“Under all the usual rules of interpretation, in short, the government should lose this case. But normal rules of interpretation seem always to yield to the overriding principle of the present court: The Affordable Care Act must be saved,” the dissent said.
Scalia wrote: “The court interprets 36B to award tax credits on both federal and state exchanges. It accepts that the ‘most natural sense’ of the phrase ‘exchange established by the state’ is an exchange established by a state … (Understatement, thy name is an opinion on the Affordable Care Act!) yet the opinion continues, with no semblance of shame, that ‘it is also possible that the phrase refers to all exchanges – both state and federal.’ (Impossible possibility, thy name is an opinion on the Affordable Care Act!).
“The court claims that ‘the context and structure of the act compel it to depart from what would otherwise be the most natural reading of the pertinent statutory phrase.’”
from PropagandaGuard https://propagandaguard.wordpress.com/2015/07/28/state-caught-ignoring-its-own-obamacare-law/
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