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Las Vegas Review-Journal Editorial: Another Obamacare delay

Delays in Obamacare’s most destructive requirements are so common — and so obviously motivated by political considerations — they aren’t even newsworthy anymore. It surprised no one last week when the unilateralist Obama administration announced insurance companies could, for two more years, continue selling policies that don’t provide all of the “essential benefits” required by the Affordable Care Act.

Those mandates caused the cancellation of millions of health plans last year because the policies, geared toward unexpected costs, didn’t cover preventive care, prescriptions, mental health services or pediatric or maternity care. The cancellations — and accompanying notices that consumers’ premiums would double or even triple if they wanted to continue coverage — triggered national outrage because President Barack Obama and Democratic leaders had promised that Americans who liked their existing plans could keep them.

The president’s approval rating tanked in response, so the administration ordered a one-year stay of execution for those policies. But the reprieve came too late for about half the states (Nevada among them) to lawfully allow the renewal of noncompliant policies. And in the states that allowed the renewal of noncompliant policies, cancellations were pushed back to the fall of 2014 — just before midterm elections, when several already-vulnerable Democratic U.S. senators are up for re-election.

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