President Barack Obama has admitted that another critical aspect of his Obamacare is a dismal failure. This time he’s
delaying a requirement that verifies the income levels of those seeking taxpayer subsidies until after the 2014 midterm elections.
Instead, the new insurance marketplaces operated by states and the District of Columbia will take the consumer’s word that they qualify for the subsidies[.]
And
Timothy Jost, a law professor at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, VA, and a consumer advocate, said it’s not unprecedented for the government to use the honor system, and compared it to reporting cash tips to the Internal Revenue Service.
It’s also like the 21%-25% of Earned Income Tax Credits that go to people who aren’t eligible (according to Treasury’s Inspector General) because their eligibility is self-verified, too.
Or rather than an admission of failure, is this just another administration excuse for lax pay outs of monies that aren’t deserved, even under the law? As the Wall Street Journal puts it,
[A]nyone can receive subsidies tied to income without judging the income they declare against the income data the Internal Revenue Service collects.
Of course, a third alternative also includes none of this as abject failure. These cynical (say I) delays simply are for building the dependency of Americans on government largesse, trapping us into voting for the Progressive party.