No Shirt, No Shoes, No Subsidy

The headline is totally wrong. Here’s Ben Domenech on last week’s other ObamaCare announcement — the one you might have missed:

The much bigger news, and far more devastating to any remaining claims that Obamacare is being properly implemented, was buried on Friday: the news that the most significant entitlement increase since the Great Society will be operating on the honor system.

Sarah Kliff and Sandhya Somashekhar report: “The Obama administration announced Friday that it would significantly scale back the health law’s requirements that new insurance marketplaces verify consumers’ income and health insurance status. Instead, the federal government will rely more heavily on consumers’ self-reported information until 2015, when it plans to have stronger verification systems in place… After encountering “legislative and operational barriers,” the federal government will not require the District and the 16 states that are running their own marketplaces to verify a consumer’s statement that they do not receive health insurance from their employer… The federal government will, however, conduct an audit for the states where it is managing the new insurance Web portal. The rule also scaled back states’ responsibilities to double-check the income levels that consumers report, which determine any tax subsidy they receive.”

If you think the exchanges are ripe for fraud, well — that’s a feature, not a bug. It’s just another way to get law-abiding Americans to fork over money to cheats and to Obama supporters.

But I repeat myself.