The Health Shopper

In light of attacks on the constitutionality of health care reform Obama has softened his stance on the law. He recently acknowledged the challenges involved in meeting the 2014 deadline and offered to back a proposal allowing states some leeway in implementing the major components of the law.

The president emphasized a section of the law that would allow states to construct their own variations of the reform law in 2017, as long as they retained the vision of the Affordable Care Act. He also said he would back a measure to push that deadline a bit closer, to 2014.

Currently under the health care reform law states are entrusted the task of creating health insurance marketplaces, or exchanges, and reviewing abortion insurance. States have found that reform has qualified more people for Medicaid coverage. Furthermore they also cannot remove individuals from Medicaid, which occupies about a third of states’ budgets currently, until the exchanges are in place which some feel will take an enormous toll on some states’ budgets. In response to these concerns, Obama requested that a bipartisan commission be created in order to examine the situation and find ways to make the implementation more fiscally viable.