White House misses early deadlines in ObamaCare implementation

“Despite the fact that they don’t know what they are even in charge of, the IRS can send out postcards touting the tax credits, they can hire a health-care cheerleader and they can send out CMS brochures – talking about things that don’t even apply to seniors?” a key GOP aide said.

Tevi Troy, the former deputy HHS secretary for President George W. Bush, says the administration is facing a daunting task in implementing the law. Troy is now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.

“It’s huge, there’s a lot to do,” Troy said, “HHS is really on the line here.”

Troy said the early missed deadlines are not on significant issues, but that they may point to a troubling trend. Far more important are 12 significant regulations that are to be proposed by Sept. 23, Troy said.

One thing complicating the picture is that critics of the missed deadlines are wary that highlighting the issue may provoke HHS to rush, Troy said, potentially leading to errors and unforeseen consequences.

Further, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which reviews all regulations before they are finalized, may not have enough time to do a proper review in that case, Troy said. Historically, OMB has tended to push regulations in a conservative direction.

Another factor making the job harder for HHS is that the health-care law’s deadlines are coming faster than Congress intended. After Scott Brown was elected to the Senate, congressional Democrats passed a Senate-passed bill in the House without any revisions – months after the Senate had passed the bill. If they hadn’t been forced to take that route, the bill’s deadlines would have likely been updated to reflect the passage of time, Troy said.

One example of this is a deadline for an advisory committee to issue a progress report on deciding what counts as “medically underserved populations and health professional shortage areas” that receive extra federal money.

The progress report was due April 1, nine days after the president signed the health-care bill into law. But HHS is also required to give the public 30 days to comment on the membership of the advisory committee. The comment period ends June 10, until which the advisory committee cannot exist.

In other words, it was legally impossible for HHS to meet the deadline.

The full list of missed deadlines includes:

• April 1: Under section 5602, a progress report to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius regarding developing a methodology for designating medically underserved populations and health professional shortage areas.
• April 22: Under section 1552, HHS must publish a list of new authorities it was granted by the health-care law. (Note: HHS says this deadline has been met).
• May 7: Under section 5104, HHS is to establish a task force on improving health care in Alaska.
• May 23: Under section 399NN, HHS is to establish a task force on breast cancer, part of legislation originally titled the EARLY Act.