A delay of the mandate that most individual Americans purchase health insurance or face a fine will not happen, White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer said Sunday.
“That will not happen,” Mr. Pfeiffer said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
The mandate is a lynchpin of President Obama’s health care overhaul. Mr. Pfeiffer defended other changes the administration has made involving the law, like delaying the mandate for certain businesses, for example, saying that’s the way large programs like Medicare and a prescription drug benefit program passed during President George W. Bush’s administration have been implemented.
“If that includes giving people some additional transition time, like we’ve done for businesses, then that’s the right thing to do. And it’s very consistent with how laws are implemented,” he said.
The Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed a bill Friday that would fix how doctors are reimbursed for Medicare and pay for it by delaying the individual mandate by five years, a measure that Senate Democrats have declared dead on a arrival and one the White House has threatened to veto.
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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