(ThyBlackMan.com) Just in time for a heated general election the Obama Administration backed away from a key component of the Affordable Care Act. The Community Living Assistance Services (CLASS) Act has been pulled from the 2010 health care law because it would not be able to offer the kind of savings to people in the program or reduce the deficit as initially projected. The program would have provided a lifetime benefit of $50 a day in the event of illness or disability for non-medical needs. The program was supposed to be entirely self-sustaining paid for by the premiums participants paid. But that’s where the problem comes in. Washington Post reports the administration as saying:
“If they designed a benefits package generous enough to meet the law’s requirements, they would have had to set premiums so high that few healthy people would enroll. And without a large share of healthy people in the pool, the CLASS plan would have become even more expensive, forcing the government to raise premiums even higher, to the point of the program’s collapse.” (source)
Of course with this news Republicans are celebrating. And they should. The speeches they gave during the bill’s debate about the savings promised by the 
Affordable Care Act being nothing more than a gimmick to inflate the numbers is now true. Without CLASS the Affordable Care Act will be $86 billion short on deficit reduction leaving the final savings from the law at $124 billion. Now that’s nothing to sneeze at but it’s still not the $210 billion the law could have saved had CLASS been left in the law.
Now the GOP is talking about this portion of the law being the first of many measures to fall giving them the political victory they’ve been seething for since the law’s passage in 2010.
Basically this is not a good look.
This law has been the seminal piece of legislation for this administration. The President took an entire year and a half away from discussing the economy to discuss what would become the Affordable Care Act. The debate over the law went through committee after committee i.e. the Max Baucus gang of six. It went through the Congressional summer recess where town halls got rowdy and violent. It went through Sarah Palin’s death panels from Facebook. It went through Democrats missing the message on Medicare for All. It went through a joint address before Congress, Christmas Eve votes, midnight votes, a 12 hour televised Presidential forum, and finally a passing gimmick that allowed the bill to be deemed as pass after the election of Scott Brown busted up the Democrats Senate super-majority. The Affordable Care Act went through a year and a half of foolery before it could be passed, and now a year and a half after its passage more foolery seems to be in the forecast.
This law was flawed from the beginning. Where there was to be a public option there is none. Where there was to be end of life counseling there is none. The law that was supposed to be never was and now the law that we received is being threatened by its own deficiencies and a possible Republican President vowing to repeal it.
The century long fight for quality and affordable health insurance is still on and if Republicans have anything to do with it will be on for another century because they have proven that sustaining life is not in their interest.
The cancellation of CLASS is a loss not only for the Obama administration but for Obama supporters. The ones who stood behind him as he shoved this bill down the throats of the American people even though it is not entirely what everyone wanted. The cancellation of CLASS is a loss for public option advocates again. It is a loss for everyone that stood to gain from its benefits, but most of all it is a loss for President Obama who gambled so much on every part of the Affordable Care Act’s passage that one little crack could signal yet another notch for him to be beaten over the head with in a possible slow crushing defeat next November.
Do you think the cancellation of CLASS will hurt President Obama’s re-election chances or will it be insignificant?
Staff Writer; Nikesha Leeper
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