No, Obamacare Will Not Be Delayed or Defunded

The newest GOP hostage taking strategy in the continuing resolution and debt ceiling fights is to try and add language delaying Obamacare and/or the individual mandate. What is truly startling about this is just how unbelievably unlikely it is these strategies will ever succeed in delaying either. Before these bills can succeed, they must be approved by the Democrat-controlled Senate and signed by the President. However, this will almost certainly never happen. Ezra Klein and Sarah Kliff from The Washington Post's Wonkblog explain why (I will skip the whole "he will never do this to the signature achievement of his presidency" because it is just too obvious):

Why Senate Democrats will not delay the implementation of Obamacare or the individual mandate:

Klein: "Democrats point out that Obamacare's implementation schedule wasn't an accident. It was purposefully designed to begin in an off-year. That way there would be a year to work out the worst kinks, and by the time of the actual election, Democrats could point to millions of people getting insurance, running ad after ad highlighting constituents who now have coverage. If implementation didn't begin until October 2014, all voters would know about Obamacare would be the early glitches, as insurance coverage wouldn't begin until January 1, 2015."

Why Obama will not delay the implementation of Obamacare or the individual mandate:

Kliff: "A delay to the individual mandate – or the entire law – would also have a giant ripple effect throughout health-care industries, who have spent the past three years preparing for a 2014 launch. They've spent millions on marketing and outreach, writing business plans that hinge on a significant expansion of the health insurance market next year."

"This is especially true for health insurance companies, which decided months ago the prices they would charge consumers on the marketplaces. Those prices assumed that the law would have an individual mandate. Insurers would have likely set different prices if they didn't think the requirement to carry coverage would be in effect."

How the individual mandate is different from other parts of the law that have been delayed:

Kliff: "all the delays so far do have one thing in common: They erased political headaches for the law while barely denting the number of people that the health overhaul will cover in 2014. The delays Republicans are asking for now would cause major political and substantive headaches for the law while sharply reducing the number of people it covers."

"The Congressional Budget Office estimates that, without an individual mandate, 11 million fewer people would gain coverage next year."

"That would happen for two reasons. First, fewer people would buy health insurance coverage without a federal law requiring them to do so. Second, the people who signed up would likely be sicker people, who really thought they would use the coverage. That would cause premiums to spike, making the market a tougher sell for healthy people."

How the individual mandate is different from the employer mandate:

Kliff: "The individual and employer mandates often get lumped together as similar policies. They do, after all, both have the word mandate in their name – and both require certain entities to buy health insurance coverage. In practice though, they're significantly different. The individual mandate is a lynchpin policy, one that makes the rest of the Affordable Care Act work by bringing millions more people in the health-care system who don't currently buy coverage."

"The employer mandate, by contrast, is more of an extra nudge, aimed at encouraging companies to keep doing something they already do right now."

"The Congressional Budget Office estimates that with its [the employer mandate's] delay, a half-million fewer people gain coverage in 2014. This has a lot to do with the fact that most big employers already offer insurance right now, with no requirement to do so."

Make no mistake. A delay of Obamacare and/or the individual mandate is a political and practical impossibility. Delaying the individual mandate in particular would cause insurance rates to spike and insurance companies to flee the exchanges. It wouldn't just be a disaster for insurance companies, but also for the millions of currently uninsured people expected to gain coverage in 2013 (If Democrats are looking for a simple way to explain why they won't delay the individual mandate, try starting there).