Obama Administration Promises Obamacare’s Open Enrollment Deadline Won’t Be Extended—Right Before Extending Obamacare’s Open Enrollment

On March 12, in a hearing
before Congress, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen
Sebelius was asked whether the Obama administration would extend
Obamacare’s open enrollment period beyond its scheduled close date
of March 31. “No sir,” Sebelius responded.

Later that day, a spokesperson for the Center for Medicare and
Medicaid Services, expanded on that point. “We have no plans to
extend the open enrollment period,” she said. “In fact we don’t
actually have the statutory authority to extend the open enrollment
period in 2014.”

The message was unmistakable: The administration would not, and
could not, extend Obamacare’s enrollment period.

There’s just one catch. Last night, the administration
confirmed to The Washington Post that the open
enrollment period would be extended for anyone who wants it
extended.

The gimmick here is that, technically, open enrollment will
still end on March 31, as planned. But the administration now says
they will allow for a special extended enrollment period for those
people who tried to sign up before March 31 and, for some reason,
could not complete the process. People will be able to request this
extension until some not-yet-determined date in the middle of
April.

And how will the administration determine if someone is eligible
for this period? Here’s how The Washington Post explains
the verification process:

Under the new rules, people will be able to qualify for an
extension by checking a blue box on HealthCare.gov to indicate that
they tried to enroll before the deadline. This method will rely on
an honor system; the government will not try to determine whether
the person is telling the truth.

The verification process is that there is no verification
process. Absolutely anyone who checks the box will be able to get
an extension. It’s a de facto extension of open enrollment
for anyone who asks for it.

The upshot is that the administration is now doing exactly what
they said would not do, and did not have the legal authority to do,
simply by describing it in a slightly different way. To put it
another way, the administration is using the fiction of a limited
special enrollment period as cover for a lie and an illegal
action.

This isn’t even the first time the administration has done this.
On the same day that HHS Secretary Sebelius promised that
enrollment would not be extended, she also promised that the
individual mandate to purchase insurance would not be delayed.
Again, it’s not—technically. But the administration
expanded and clarified the rules for the law’s “hardship
exemption” in such a way as to essentially give anyone a pass.
There are
14 ways to avoid the mandate, the last of which is a vague
catch-all category for unspecified hardships, no documentation
required.

The pattern reveals the administration’s shallow commitment to
keeping its word: When they promise they won’t do something, you
can bet they won’t—but that they very well might do the exact same
thing by a different name instead.