As expected there has been a minor extension to the deadline for the 2014 open enrollment period on the Exchange. People who have accounts set-up on Healthcare.gov by March 31st but have not selected a plan will get a few extra weeks if they ask for it. Plans selected in those extra weeks will be effective for coverage on May 1st.
The Washington Post has details:
Federal officials confirmed Tuesday evening that all consumers who have begun to apply for coverage on HealthCare.gov, but who do not finish by Monday, will have until about mid-April to ask for an extension…
Under the new rules, people will be able to qualify for an extension by checking a blue box on HealthCare.gov to indicate that they tried to enroll before the deadline.
Administration officials said the accommodation is an attempt to prepare for a possible surge of people trying to sign up in the final days before the deadline. Such a flood could leave some people unable to get through the system.
We’ve seen a few minor extensions in the past. The most notable one was the change from a Dec. 15th deadline for Jan. 1 coverage to a Dec. 23rd deadline that then got pushed back to Dec. 24. This is a simpler and more straightforward extension as coverage won’t be starting in a week or be retroactive coverage. It will be coverage starting in two or three weeks after the extension deadline, so the insurance companies should be able to accomodate the late leakers fairly easily.
Elizabelle
I was happy to see the deadline extended very slightly for those already in the process (or who affirm they were).
Lot of misinformation out there, and for some, the plans are not as affordable as hoped. So the foot-dragging to sign up for another monthly expense, if the payoff seems less immediate.
The level of planned obstruction to Obamacare still surprises me.
NotMax
Say what?
Omnes Omnibus
@NotMax: People who have to get up at night to pee.
chrome agnomen
@Omnes Omnibus:
or fail to…
NotMax
@chrome agnomen
It all (comedic beat) Depends…
raven
Benghazi!!!!!!!!
NotMax
@raven
There ya go. Change Redskins to Benghazis.
:)
PIttsburgher
Nice use of a Pearl Jam lyric.
JPL
@raven: Show me on a map where Benghazi hurt you.
JPL
Obama lied and all I got was health care.
maximiliano furtive, formerly known as dr. bloor
@JPL:
If it will make you feel any better, Justice Scalia will make sure Obama doesn’t force birth control on you as part of the plan.
Elizabelle
@maximiliano furtive, formerly known as dr. bloor:
Scalia will try, as will his conservative stooges, but I would bet Hobby Lobby decision will go against the plaintiff.
Bokonon
When, when, will this tyranny cease?
GregB
First they came for the extended deadlines!
RSR
The wailing and gnashing of teeth from the anti-ACA crown was intense and immediate.
https://twitter.com/michaelbd
WereBear
I sure hope so. If it doesn’t, we’ll be descending yet another level into a Left Behind/science fiction scenario of theocracy. I’d rather read Heinlein than live it.
japa21
The people complaining about this are the same people who protest polls being kept open due to the long lines of people still waiting to vote.
Ben Cisco
@japa21: Of course – the wrong people are being helped in both instances.
Bokonon
@WereBear: It is all about creating many, many right-wing veto points and nullification points in our society, at the local and state government level and in the private sector, where the federal government can’t reach.
This isn’t a sign of confidence by the right wing – instead, it is a sign that they think they are losing, and are borrowing in for long-term resistance (during which they will screw over and hurt their opponents as badly as they can, as often as they can, and make things generally ungovernable).
mclaren
Once again the superwealthy health insurance oligarch Richard Mayhew is lying to you.
This makes no sense at all — unless the purpose is to ration care.
Naturally, that’s the bottom line in Shithole America’s “plan” for reducing health care costs. Instead of reducing the actual price of individual medical procedures, reduce the usage of America’s insanely overpriced medical procedures.
But of course essentially every sick person in America goes to the hospital not because they enjoy it, but because they have to go to the hospital or they’ll die.
So the bottom line here is, as usual, a bottom line that the health insurance oligarch Richard Mayhew doesn’t want to talk about. The real purpose of this law (like essentially all of the non-reform “reforms” of America’s broken health care system) is to kill sick people.
This is how America plans to save money on health care. Instead of reducing the price of the medical procedures, prevent people who need health care from getting it by making it too expensive for the individual who needs the health care.
The key feature of this kind of non-reform “reform” is to create the illusion of reform while actually preventing Americans from getting the health care they need. This is simple — just make the co-payments far too expensive for ordinary people to afford, make the state medicaid requirements too stringent for anyone who isn’t homeless to get on medicaid, tax the high-quality health insurance plans until no one can afford a high-quality health insurance plan, and the only insurance plan any average working stiff can get is one of those scam insurance plans where a sick person goes to see the doctor and gets billed but never actually gets to see the doctor and never gets any treatment.
Source: “Health Care Reform Does Not Mean Better Actual Health Care, Sorry ,” The Baffler, 27 February 2014.
This is the ultimate goal of thieving oligarchs like Richard Mayhew: to convert all health insurance plans into a scam plan where a sick person goes to see the doctor and gets billed but never actually gets to see the doctor and never gets any treatment.