Inundated with complaints and mounting backlash, the Obama administration is delaying perhaps its largest and most controversial rule in implementing the Affordable Care Act, the "employer mandate."
It is being suspended for a year until January 2015.
What the mandate will do is require companies with more than 50 full-time employees to offer health insurance or pay a $2,000 penalty. Most U.S. businesses with more than 50 employees already offer insurance, but the smaller companies, especially startups that have been unable to insure employees, complained bitterly about the 21-page application required.
In a Tuesday announcement from the Treasury Department, the administration said its decision is "designed to meet two goals," including reducing the amount of paperwork and working with small-company employers who are threatening layoffs or reduced hours in order to report a workforce of fewer than 50 people.
Workers will still be allowed to buy their own health insurance on a state exchange; the only thing that changes is that their employers won't be penalized next year if they do.
According to the Washington Post, in an editorial under the headline"Obamacares employer mandate shouldnt be delayed, it should be repealed," writerEzra Klein has this to say: "Delaying Obamacares employer mandate is the right thing to do. Frankly, eliminating it -- or at least utterly overhauling it -- is probably the right thing to do. But the administration executing a regulatory end-run around Congress is not the right way to do it."
The Treasury Department said the administration will publish proposed rules implementing the provisions sometime this summer, "after a dialogue with stakeholders -- including those responsible employers that already provide their full-time work force with coverage far exceeding the minimum employer shared responsibility requirements."
"Once these rules have been issued, the administration will work with employers, insurers, and other reporting entities to strongly encourage them to voluntarily implement this information reporting in 2014, in preparation for the full application of the provisions in 2015," the statement said. "Real-world testing of reporting systems in 2014 will contribute to a smoother transition to full implementation in 2015."
Obama apologists abound. Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida tweeted that the president's statement only means he's "in it for the long haul." His senior adviser, Valerie Jarrett, blogged that the move shows the White House is "listening" to make sure they "get this right."
On the Republican side, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said it's a sign of the administration "slowly admitting what Americans already know" -- that Obamacare "costs too much and isn't working the way the administration promised."
McConnell said in a statement, "What I hear consistently in my travels around Kentucky regarding the regulatory burden on employers, the fact remains that Obamacare needs to be repealed and replaced with common-sense reforms that actually lower costs for Americans."
