The Obama administration has announced it has given up on one of the more controversial aspects of ObamaCare, known as the CLASS Act (Community Living Assistance Services and Supports Act). The CLASS Act was portrayed as a cost-saving scheme in ObamaCare, but as House Speaker John Boehner's spokesman Michael Steele explained, "We have always known that this program was a naked scam — cooking the books trying to cover up the unsustainable cost of Washington Democrats' government takeover of health care."
After much criticism from congressional Republicans and centrist Democrats who called the CLASS Act a financial gimmick, do you think the rest of ObamaCare will continue crumbling? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
The CLASS Act was designed to help people disabled by sickness or accident who had voluntarily enrolled and paid premiums into the program, but it was problematic because patients couldn't be refused because of their medical conditions, so if healthy people did not enroll in the program in large enough numbers, there would be no way to pay for the sick people needing care.
As Rep. Paul Ryan explained in a statement, the Obama administration finally "surrendered to reality" by giving up CLASS. According to the Hill:
CLASS is by far the biggest piece of healthcare reform to meet its end, and also the first to collapse entirely on its own. Republicans successfully repealed one much smaller provision, and the individual mandate could be struck down by the Supreme Court. But HHS officials acknowledged that CLASS fell apart simply because it was too flawed to salvage.
Republicans said the CLASS program won’t be the last piece of healthcare reform to fall apart.
“This announcement is a canary in a coal mine,” Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said in a statement. “Today’s abandonment of the program is just the latest evidence demonstrating ObamaCare's devastating effects and ill-conceived policies. What will be next?”
What do you think will be the next part of ObamaCare to fall apart?
