So now the states have a little more breathing room.
At least that's what all the news reports – including our own – seem to indicate. But it's"fixes" like these that have plagued this legislation since its hurried passage in the dead of night early last year.
While the minimum standards for the state-based exchanges remain in place, the states have rightfully regained some measure of control over the process as a whole, and most specifically, defining the roles agents and broke will play in the news exchanges.
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Now don't get me wrong, I'm not raining gloom and doom on the exchanges per se (the jury's still out on that). But I am still annoyed that "little" decisions such as these couldn't have been worked out, oh, I don't know, when drafting the Patient Protections and Affordable Care Act to begin with? So much of this legislation, which Congress actually voted on and passed, was just penciled in with more blanks than one of those old Mad Libs books.
Forget what you do or don't agree with in this sweeping piece of social engineering, was there even enough material in there to begin with for any to fight over in the first place?
And, now, we have Democrats offering up employer-paid benefits tax breaks as another sacrificial lamb in the tax debate while the Republicans continue negotiating like a baseball agent, turning down everything on the table.
Can we go back to the halcyon days of the Clinton years, when the economy was booming, we had enough revenue to pay the bills and health reform got laughed off the Hill?
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