Today, the House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee held a hearing on the Obama administration’s decision to delay enforcement of the employer mandate, where I gave testimony on the implications of both the delay in the employer mandate as well as the administration’s recent decision to abandon income verification for applicants to state insurance exchanges.
The decisions to abandon the employer mandate for 2014 and to allow applicant attestations in some instances were announced only last week; it will take some additional time before the full implications are known and understood. Nonetheless, in my testimony, I will provide some initial observations about what they mean for employers and the federal budget, and for broader implementation of the 2010 health care law. I also offer my recommendations to the committee and to Congress regarding what I believe would be an appropriate legislative response to the administration’s recent announcements.
You can read the rest of my written remarks here, or watch video of the entire hearing here.