Another Obamacare Component Gets Delayed

The White House has extended the deadline to sign up for Obamacare by one day. Originally, those who wanted to be insured by January 1 of next year had sign up for health plans by Monday, but the Obama administration, citing the complications of visiting family members in different time zones over the holidays, announced on Monday that the deadline would be extended by 24 hours. It’s a decision that will help both supporters and opponents of Obamacare: People who haven’t yet signed up for health insurance now have until Tuesday to do so, while those who want to derail the Affordable Care Act have more ammunition with which to argue that the law is a poorly-planned piece of policy.

“We recognize that many have chosen to make their final decisions on today's deadline and we are committed to making sure they can do so,” Julie Bataille, director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services, said in a statement Monday. “Anticipating high demand and the fact that consumers may be enrolling from multiple time zones, we have taken steps to make sure that those who select a plan through tomorrow will get coverage for Jan 1.”

This isn’t the first time a component of Obamacare has been delayed. The employer mandate, which requires most businesses to provide insurance to their employees, was pushed back by a year over the summer. In November, the administration delayed the launch of SHOP, the online insurance marketplace for small businesses, by a year as well. Last week, the administration announced that people whose policies were canceled due to the law won’t be subject to the individual mandate until 2015.