www.Heritage.org

Missed deadlines by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) continue to show us the absent-minded way in which Obamacare was put together.

Finishing the health care reform race “first” was more important to the liberals in Congress than finishing with “success.” Lawmakers hastily wrote and passed a book of reforms on our exhausted health care system without taking the time to fully comprehend the negative side effects the law would have—not to mention whether or not it was even possible to expand the reach of government to the extent the law expects. The law gives a massive amount of power and responsibility to HHS. Can they handle it? It doesn’t look like way.

Within the mumbo jumbo of reforms imposed on our health care system, HHS was given short-term implementation deadlines, which are past due. First, HHS missed the deadline mandated by the new law to create high-risk pools for those who could not obtain health insurance due to chronic illness. Next, it didn’t create the two task forces on improving access to health care in Alaska and breast cancer education on time. The list doesn’t end there.

Now, an Interagency Working Group on Health Care Quality hasn’t published a report that was due by December 31. Additionally, the health care law called for HHS to launch a live Health Care Quality Web site by January 1, which is still not accessible. Punxsutawney Phil didn’t see his shadow last week, and the American people have yet to see HHS meet Obamacare’s set time frame.

In response to this past month’s neglected deadlines, along with a plethora of others over the past year, HHS spokeswoman Jessica Santillo emphasized to Politico the already “met” and “beaten” deadlines required by Obamacare, ignoring the department’s downfalls.

This Administration has failed in the beginning steps of implementing its signature legislation, and this does not speak well to the ability of HHS to fully implement the law by January 2014.

Obamacare was passed under the expansive notion that government can run Americans’ health care better than we can ourselves. Bureaucrats in Washington believes they have the power to get things done, but with unmet deadlines passing each month and promises to the American public broken, it seems to be the opposite.

Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels stated in The Wall Street Journal that when states refused to participate in setting up high-risk pools, the minor project was left to HHS, and “it went poorly, with costs far above predictions and only a tiny fraction of the expected population signing up.” If they can’t even get the minute details right, how can we expect them to have the bigger parts up and running on time, like the complicated exchanges?

Rather than implementing a massive legislation that gives government more duties than it can handle, Congress should dump the law in the slowly melting Potomac. Repealing the bill altogether will be the first step in the right direction.

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