Busted! After promising 'no delay' in final Obamacare sign-up deadline, Obama administration unveils new 'honor system' extension through mid-April
- The Health and Human Services Department is allowing Americans who use healthcare.gov to blow off the March 31 enrollment deadline
- Just check a box and say you tried to sign up for Obamacare before March 31, and the system will give you a few more weeks
- The Obama administration has pulled out all the stops to boost its numbers before the six-month open enrollment period ends
- The White House has repeatedly lowered expectations by shifting its target numbers – and by delaying talking about how many have paid for coverage
During a March 12 congressional hearing, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told Texas Republican Rep. Kevin Brady that there would be no such extensions.
'Are you going to delay the open enrollment beyond March 31?' Brady asked.
'No, sir,' she replied.
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'No, sir': Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told the House Ways and Means Committee on March 12 that Obamacare's March 31 deadline would not be extended, but the administration has done just that
March 31 was supposed to be a drop-dead, red-line date, creating a frenzy of activity among health insurance enrollment counselors in anticipation of financial penalties for those who don't comply
On the same day, Julie Bataille, a spokeswoman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services – the agency charged with implementing the Obamacare law – told reporters that 'we have no plans to extend the open enrollment period' that began disastrously on October 1.
'In fact, we don't actually have the statutory authority to extend the open enrollment period in 2014,' she said.
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services spokeswoman Julie Bataille told reporters two weeks ago that HHS doesn't have the legal authority to budge the open-enrollment zero hour into April
During the March 12 hearing before the U.S. House Ways and Means Committee, chairman Dave Camp asked Sebelius if she agreed with that assessment.
'I haven’t seen their statements,' she replied, despite having been on the conference call, 'but there is no delay beyond March 31.'
The Obama administration leaked the latest tactical shift after 8:00 p.m. Tuesday night while President Barack Obama was sleeping in Brussels, Belgium, and first lady Michelle Obama was beginning the day in Chengdu, China during part of a three-city tour.
The White House has struggled to enroll the 7 million Americans Sebelius has put forward as a goal.
'I think success looks like at least 7 million people having signed up by the end of March 2014,' Sebelius said during an NBC News interview in September 2013.
Later, the administration ratcheted that number down to 6 million, and lower still.
If the nebulous targets were a series of goalpost-moving exercises, Tuesday's move will be seen as a sudden extension of Obamacare's game clock.
The Washington Post reported that the extension past March 31 'will rely on an honor system,' requiring users only to check a blue box on the federal government's health insurance enrollment website to indicate that they made good-faith efforts to meet the original deadline.
'The government will not try to determine whether the person is telling the truth,' said the Post.
A source inside the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services who is familiar with Tuesday's decision told MailOnline that the agency has not determined what the new cutoff date will be.
But the insider said that CMS was not likely to fix April 15 as the revised zero-hour since it would coincide with the Internal Revenue Service's deadline for individual income tax filings.
Some states that are running their own online insurance marketplaces are expected to make similar arrangements, but others will not.
Americans who aren't insured by the final, absolute deadline – a date that remains uncertain despite four years of planning and regulating – will face penalties in the form of new taxes on their income, unless that, too, is not strictly enforced.
Once the Obama administration's open enrollment period is finally in the rear-view mirror, it will likely have to answer the thorny question of how many enrollees have actually begun their coverage by paying first-month's premiums.
The White House has repeatedly declined to release that information, claiming the administration hasn't collected those statistics.
But Rep. Camp and Ways and Means health subcommittee chairman Rep. Kevin Brady lobbed a broadside at Sebelius on Tuesday, saying they have 'new evidence' proving the contrary is true.
“New evidence obtained by the Committee strongly suggests that the Administration knows who has enrolled and paid their first month’s premium,' the two Republican lawmakers wrote to the HHS secretary.
'In fact, there is specific information about who has paid their premium that Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is collecting and using to make payments to insurers.'
'We have recently obtained information that suggests your most recent testimony before the Ways and Means Committee was at best evasive and perhaps misleading,' they charged, explaining that '[i]nsurers are submitting information to CMS about who has effectuated their enrollment, i.e., who has paid their premium.'
'Please provide this information in its most updated form immediately.'
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