Despite my earnest intentions, my family and I are still not covered on the Washington, D.C. Obamacare exchange. I am beginning to despair that I will ever obtain insurance from the exchange.

Obamacare
To briefly recap my ordeal (you can read my previous piece here) I went to the D.C. Health Link web page in early November to sign up my family. It was not as straightforward as I anticipated: The first few times I tried to enter the names and vitals for my wife and children the web site either locked up or otherwise failed to store that information anywhere. Typing 4 names, birthdays, and social security numbers became a daily exercise for me. At least I have my family's social security numbers memorized now.

Finally, after Thanksgiving, my name, ID, and family information were on file and I could proceed. I had to answer further questions about my family and then submit several pieces of evidence to show that I was, in fact, a D.C. resident, that my children did exist, and that my wife (a foreign national) was a legal resident.

I submitted that information, although the first 3 or 4 times the web page crashed and wouldn't let me upload anything. Finally, however, I got my documents into the system and I was told they'd be verified soon and after that I'd be allowed to buy insurance.

Three weeks go by and I hear nothing, and when I log in to the exchange website it merely informs me that my information will soon be verified. I began calling the Health Link, who merely told me that they're a little behind on the verifying but that they'd do it before January 1.

The Obama administration is considering an extension of the president's decision to let people keep their individual insurance policies even if they are not compliant with the health care overhaul, industry and government officials said Thursday.

Avalere Health CEO Dan Mendelson said Thursday that the administration may let policyholders keep that coverage for as long as an additional three years, stressing that no decision has been made. Policymakers are waiting to see what rate hikes health insurers plan for the insurance exchanges that are key to the overhaul's coverage expansions.

The Obama administration announced Monday it would give medium-sized employers an extra year, until 2016, before they must offer health insurance to their full-time workers.

Firms with at least 100 employees will have to start offering this coverage in 2015.

NEW YORK (MYFOXNY) - Some people who are members of the health club Planet Fitness are finding their membership costs have gone up because of the Affordable Health Care Act.

A sign posted at a Falls Church, Va. location says "Holders of Black Card memberships will be required to pay a tax on these memberships Starting January 1, 2014 as required by the implementation of provisions of the Affordable Health Care Act. This is not a change in your membership fee but rather a tax required by the government."

The reason these accounts are forced to charge the new tax is because they include the option for members to tan at the clubs. Obamacare has a tax on tanning salons. It doesn't matter if the member uses or does not use the tanning facilities.

The tax, called an excise tax, is 10 percent. A Black Card membership is about $20 a month so the gym user would have to fork over an extra $24 a year in taxes.

The reason that people might get the so-called Black Card membership without wanting to tan is that it gives the member reciprocal use of all Planet Fitness locations without having to pay extra.

I knew better and called a broker who's tasked with being a facilitator for people like me. She informed me that no one will verify my information unless we call. She starts calling and emailing on my behalf and she discovers they still do not have my family's information on file.

But generally speaking you get past the next election by changing your policies, by announcing new initiatives, but not by wantonly changing the law lawlessly. This is stuff you do in a banana republic. It’s as if the law is simply a blackboard on which Obama writes any number he wants, any delay he wants, and any provision.

It’s now reached a point where it is so endemic that nobody even notices or complains. I think if the complaints had started with the first arbitrary changes — and these are are not adjustments or transitions. These are political decisions to minimize the impact leading up to an election. And it’s changing the law in a way that you are not allowed to do.

President Barack Obama’s Treasury Department issued a new regulation today that for the second time directly violates the plain and unambiguous text of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act by allowing some businesses to avoid the law’s Dec. 31, 2013 deadline to provide health insurance coverage to their employees.

Initially, on July 2, 2013, the administration unilaterally delayed the deadline for the employer mandate until 2015. Now, the administration is unilaterally delaying it for some businesses until 2016.

'ObamaCare" is useful shorthand for the Affordable Care Act not least because the law increasingly means whatever President Obama says it does on any given day. His latest lawless rewrite arrived on Monday as the White House decided to delay the law's employer mandate for another year and in some cases maybe forever.

ObamaCare requires businesses with 50 or more workers to offer health insurance to their workers or pay a penalty, but last summer the Treasury offered a year-long delay until 2015 despite having no statutory authorization. Like the individual mandate, the employer decree is central to ObamaCare's claim of universal coverage, but employers said the new labor costs—and the onerous reporting and tax-enforcement rules—would damage job creation and the economy.

Will 2.5 million people lose their jobs in 10 years, thanks to the ACA? "We would not describe our estimates in that way," Elmendorf wrote Monday.

It's a matter of choice, he said. "Because the longer-term reduction in work is expected to come almost entirely from a decline in the amount of labor that workers choose to supply in response to the changes in their incentives, we do not think it is accurate to say that the reduction stems from people 'losing' their jobs," Elmendorf wrote. Whether or not people choosing to work less is beneficial to society or the economy more broadly "is a matter of judgment," he said.

The CBO director reiterated the uncertainty inherent in all of the budget office's estimates. The latest estimate of the impact of the Affordable Care Act on the workforce is just as likely to be too large as it is to be too small, he said.

Food stamps. Free meals. Cable TV. Unemployment and disability benefits. And now prescription drugs.

It’s a good time to be in prison, where inmates are mistakenly receiving tens of millions of dollars in benefits at taxpayer expense.

The latest folly comes compliments of Medicare, which gave such poor oversight to its prescription coverage that it allowed $11.7 million in drug benefits to go to inmates from 2006 to 2010, according a report released Monday by the Health and Human Services inspector general.

“Individuals who are incarcerated in correctional facilities … are generally not eligible for federal health care benefits,” the agency’s internal watchdog said in a report that blamed officials at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for poor management.

Investigators found that medical companies that gave drugs to inmates were improperly allowed to claim Medicare reimbursements because CMS lacked the safeguards necessary to screen out prisoners, and did not supply the medical companies the information needed to check for themselves.

The revelation was made a year after the same inspector general found that Medicare inappropriately paid $33.6 million to health care providers to cover costs associated with medical treatment for inmates.

Even if one took the high end of these estimates, the most one could claim is that about 4 million people have gained insurance because the Affordable Care Act, but that’s being extraordinarily generous. In the meantime, given the fuzzy nature of the numbers and the wide publicity devoted to the recent surveys, Durbin has little excuse for going on national television and claiming that every one of these people had been previously [un]insured. This has now become a Four Pinocchio violation.

Firms will be required to certify to the IRS – under penalty of perjury – that ObamaCare was not a motivating factor in their staffing decisions. To avoid ObamaCare costs you must swear that you are not trying to avoid ObamaCare costs. You can duck the law, but only if you promise not to say so.