After the Obama administration issued delays to PPACA's various mandates, the House GOP wants to have its say now.
The House will vote next week on a pair of bills that would delay the individual mandate, while also more or less endorsing the employer mandate delay.
One, H.R. 2667, the "Fairness for American Families Act" bill, introduced by Rep. Tim Griffin, R-Ark., would create a law that would require the Obama administration to postpone implementation of PPACA's employer coverage mandate.
Recommended For You
The other, H.R. 2668, the "Authority for Mandate Delay Act," introduced by Rep. Todd Young, R-Ind., would let the Obama administration postpone implementation of the individual mandate.
The U.S. Treasury Department already announced the Internal Revenue Service will wait at least an extra year, until 2015, to start enforcing the PPACA group coverage information reporting and employer "shared responsibility" mandate provisions.
Republicans are introducing their own employer mandate delay bill because they object to the way the White House is delaying implementation, Griffin said Thursday at a press conference announcing the bill.
"The White House may believe it can unilaterally delay implementation of Obamacare's employer mandate, but only Congress can change the law," Griffin said.
Boehner, who wants to repeal PPACA, objected to the administration's approach to the mandate delay.
"I believe it's unfair to protect big businesses from ObamaCare, but not individuals and families," Boehner said.
PPACA calls for health insurers to start selling individual and small-group coverage on a guaranteed-issue, mostly community-rated basis Jan. 1, 2014, with no annual or lifetime benefits caps.
America's Health Insurance Plans has argued that using mandates to keep the health insurance risk pool as big as possible is the only way to prevent the new underwriting rules from creating a vicious cycle of premium increases.
© 2025 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.
Allison Bell
Allison Bell, a senior reporter at ThinkAdvisor and BenefitsPRO, previously was an associate editor at National Underwriter Life & Health. She has a bachelor's degree in economics from Washington University in St. Louis and a master's degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She can be reached through X at @Think_Allison.
