President Obama is fond of talking about being on the wrong side of History, a telling phrase he uses when criticizing anyone who disagrees with him which can be interpreted as a grown up way of saying, “You’ll see, I’ll show you!”
It’s a largely meaningless phrase used to justify some unpopular action until some future date that will “prove” or “disprove” the “rightness” of a particular course of action. But it’s really just part of the President’s timing game, here defined as the choice to act or not act at any particular moment in order to obtain some objective.
With the extension of the time when insurance plans must comply with Obamacare until the 2017 health insurance plan year, suddenly, even liberals are noticing the President’s love of the timing game. Suddenly, on top of the many lies and misrepresentations that were and are the marketing of the PPACA, all the benign words such as phase-in, smooth transition have become much clearer to the American people as what they are: Part of the timing game, throwing the punch but delaying the impact until someone else can take the heat for it.
The President is virtually addicted to the timing game which may be why he overplayed his hand with his latest delay of the replacement of health insurance plans with Obamacare compliant plans until the plan year 2017, The Keep Your Old Plan fix intended to get Democrats over the hump of mid-term elections and intended to let the next shoes drop on the American people when the President is out earning $400,000 per speaking engagement or whatever else he chooses to do upon leaving office.
Obamacare is a testament to the President’s love of timing games. After all, Obamacare was passed in 2010, but by putting off its most disruptive features until 2014, after his re-election, the majority of people were disinterested in the provisions of Obamacare, willing to understand the law based on the President’s less than honest and certainly less than informative publicity about the PPACA rather than what the Act really said, helping put the President into a second term.
But timing is a game the President likes and Obamacare has other timed changes that will kick in.
The INDEPENDENT PAYMENT ADVISORY BOARD created by sections 3403 and 10320 of the PPACA gives a 15-member agency the power to step in and change Medicare payments and rules if the projected cost for Medicare exceeds a targeted growth rate.
Once the trigger is reached, the trigger being how much is projected to be spent on Medicare, the panel gets to freely do just about anything it wants to control costs AND the Health Secretary MUST follow what the panel says unless Congress steps in.
The primary tool that the panel will use will be the cutting of funding for specific procedures and specialty needs, obviously high in the Medicare population.
Presidents get to appoint the members of the panel who are confirmed by the Senate. The Federal funding for this panel of people appointed by the President whose authority to modify Medicare is largely unlimited IF projected costs of Medicare are too high is costing taxpayers at least the $15 million disclosed for the year 2012.
Timing is significant, with the Independent Payment Advisory Panel’s authority expanding over time, for instance in the fact that messing around with payments to hospitals and hospices being off limits only until 2020.
Minimum Essential Coverage: INDIVIDUAL MANDATE The tax imposed on people who are not exempt and do not purchase health insurance, better known as the individual mandate is also a game of timing as provided by the PPACA which affects 26 US Code Section 5000A. The amount is $95 for 2014, $325 for 2015 and rises again in 2016.
Medicare’s TIMING GAME provisions are only just beginning and the Independent Payment Advisory Board is only one aspect of those changes. In a November 3, 2010 report produced by the Congressional Research Service prepared by Patricia A. Davis, Jim Hahn, Paulette C. Morgan, Julie Stone and Sibyl Tilson.
The summary explains that a reduction of federal Medicare spending from FY2010 to FY 2019 should reach $390 billion through:
“Major savings are expected from constraining Medicare’s annual payment increases for certain providers, tying maximum Medicare Advantage payments year or below spending in fee-for-service Medicare, reducing payments to hospitals that serve a large number of low-income patients, creating an Independent Payment Advisory Board to make changes in Medicare payment rates, and modifying the high-income threshold adjustment for Part B premiums. A new Hospital Insurance tax for high-wage earners will also raise approximately $87 billion over 10 years, and a new Medicare tax on net investment income, added by the Reconciliation Act, is expected to raise an additional $123 billion over 10 years.” (Search the report by title and authors and date).
The President is good at timing, but his increased arrogance since his re-election has alerted even the most liberal to his ego’s expansion that is making him less careful, less polished and less effective at deceiving the American people using the timing tactic. This is a good thing as long as we do something with the new information to prevent those kindly “transitions, and phase-ins” from becoming our new reality.
The President has a tell. When the President criticizes anyone who disagrees with him as being on the wrong side of history, watch out.
