House Republicans Argue for Delay in Health Law Penalties - New York Times

WASHINGTON — House Republicans said Wednesday that chaos in the first nine days of open enrollment under President Obama’s health care law would justify a delay in major provisions of the law, including tax penalties for people who go without insurance in 2014.

The comments came at a hearing of a House committee, where a senior official of the Internal Revenue Service said that its work on the new insurance marketplaces was “going fine,’’ just as planned.

The official, Sarah Hall Ingram, director of the Affordable Care Act office at the I.R.S., said the agency had “processed several hundred thousand responses’’ to queries about the income of taxpayers seeking subsidies to lower the cost of insurance purchased through the new marketplaces, also known as exchanges.

“I.R.S. systems to support enrollment in the marketplaces were launched on schedule and are working as planned,’’ Ms. Hall Ingram said. The tax agency, she said, had no role in the computer systems of the federal exchange, created and operated by the Department of Health and Human Services.

In the last week, millions of people have tried to use the Web site for the federal exchange, healthcare.gov, but experienced long delays and were often unable to create the online accounts needed to compare health plans and premiums.

“Obamacare’s first week has been a mess,’’ said the committee chairman, Representative Darrell Issa, Republican of California. “This law is not ready for prime time.’’

Representative John J. Duncan Jr., Republican of Tennessee, said, “This is the most messed-up, convoluted, confusing law that’s ever been passed.’’

The Obama administration has had three and a half years to work on the law, Mr. Duncan said, so “it is ridiculous, and kind of sad,’’ that the government was so poorly prepared for the rollout of the program this week.

In July, the White House announced a one-year delay, until 2015, in the law’s requirement that larger employers offer health insurance to full-time employees. Republicans said it was unfair for the government to delay the employer mandate while enforcing the requirement for consumers to have coverage, especially because it was proving so difficult to buy insurance on many exchanges.

The senior Democrat on the committee, Representative Elijah E. Cummings of Maryland, said, “There will continue to be challenges implementing this law.’’ But, he added, “Once we work out the kinks in Obamacare, we will have something that will benefit society long after we are dead.’’

Ms. Hall Ingram was previously in charge of the I.R.S. office accused of giving special scrutiny to conservative groups that sought tax-exempt status, but she denied ever applying political criteria.