The Oba­ma Admin­is­tra­tion, which recent­ly announced that it would pro­vide Sen­a­tors and Con­gress­men with gen­er­ous gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies for their health insur­ance despite the fact that the Oba­macare law denies those sub­si­dies, is expect­ed to announce lat­er this week that it is extend­ing this spe­cial deal for Con­gress to all Americans.

Under the new pol­i­cy, indi­vid­u­als who buy health insur­ance through the new gov­ern­ment exchanges will be giv­en a choice: pay the full pre­mi­um or accept a 72 per­cent gov­ern­ment sub­sidy, the same deal as the Admin­is­tra­tion has announced it will give to Sen­a­tors and Congressmen.

The gov­ern­ment sub­si­dies will be avail­able to peo­ple regard­less of income, as they are for Con­gres­sion­al employees.

“Tech­ni­cal­ly, the law says that sub­si­dies should only be avail­able to indi­vid­u­als earn­ing less than $46,000,” a White House aide involved in the deci­sion said.  “But we decid­ed to ignore the law and pro­vide Con­gress­men, who earn around four times that much, with sub­si­dies too.  Then we thought,  ‘Why not also give the Con­gres­sion­al-style sub­si­dies to every­body who buys cov­er­age in the exchanges, regard­less of how much they make?’ ”

The forth­com­ing announce­ment is a rare bit of good news for embat­tled Yan­kee third base­man Alex Rodriguez, who is fight­ing a 211 game sus­pen­sion for vio­lat­ing the league’s pol­i­cy against the use of per­for­mance-enhanc­ing drugs and for imped­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion into an anti-aging clin­ic in Flori­da that alleged­ly dis­pensed the drugs to a num­ber of major league play­ers.  A medi­a­tor is expect­ed to rule on Rodriguez’s appeal dur­ing the fall.

Should the sus­pen­sion be upheld, Rodriguez won’t be paid until 2015.  He also will lose the health insur­ance the Yan­kees pro­vid­ed him, forc­ing him to buy his own cov­er­age through the new health insur­ance exchanges.  Rodriguez has relied on insur­ance in the past for numer­ous treat­ments, includ­ing two hip surg­eries, although his pol­i­cy report­ed­ly did not cov­er the steroids he alleged­ly used.

“Have you seen what the exchanges are charg­ing for those poli­cies?” Rodriguez asked a reporter.  “How can any­body afford to pay full price?”  Rodriguez has so far earned an esti­mat­ed $353 mil­lion over the course of his career and still will be owed an addi­tion­al $61 mil­lion by the Yan­kees, even if his appeal fails and he is sus­pend­ed until 2015.

“I am pleased that Pres­i­dent Oba­ma has decid­ed that I am enti­tled to the same gov­ern­ment sub­sidy that my Con­gress­man gets,” the trou­bled slug­ger said through his spokesperson.

The White House aide brushed aside con­cerns about the optics of pro­vid­ing mil­lion­aires like Rodriguez with sub­si­dies.  “We crossed that bridge when we decid­ed to let mil­lion­aire Sen­a­tors like (Jay) Rock­e­feller (D‑WV), (Mark) Warn­er (D‑VA), and (Dianne) Fein­stein (D‑CA) help them­selves to sub­si­dies.  Heck, (Rep. Nan­cy) Pelosi (D‑CA) is eli­gi­ble for the sub­si­dies and she’s worth $35 mil­lion.  It would­n’t be fair to say no to A‑Rod.”

In a relat­ed move, the Admin­is­tra­tion is expect­ed to announce that it is ter­mi­nat­ing its “hon­or sys­tem” pro­gram in which the gov­ern­ment exchanges would deter­mine whether an appli­cant was eli­gi­ble for sub­si­dies based on self-report­ed income.  The pro­gram met inter­nal resis­tance from the IRS, which is in charge of dis­trib­ut­ing health insur­ance sub­si­dies and levy­ing a new tax on the unin­sured.  The tax-col­lec­tion agency believes that self-report­ing income to deter­mine sub­si­dies sets a bad prece­dent.  If tax­pay­ers were also allowed to “self-report” their incomes for fed­er­al tax pur­pos­es, the IRS point­ed out, the gov­ern­ment would stand to lose hun­dreds of bil­lions of dol­lars every year when peo­ple under­stat­ed their wages.  That would amount to a back-door tax cut.  The Pres­i­dent adamant­ly oppos­es tax cuts.

“If you wouldn’t allow self-report­ing of income for tax pur­pos­es,” an IRS offi­cial report­ed­ly told his Admin­is­tra­tion col­leagues, “why would you allow it for pur­pos­es of receiv­ing gov­ern­ment subsidies?”

Describ­ing the IRS objec­tion as an “Aha!” moment, par­tic­i­pants at the meet­ing arrived at an out-of-the-box solu­tion: expand the spe­cial deal it gave Con­gres­sion­al employ­ees to all Americans.

The White House staffer recount­ed the evo­lu­tion in the Administration’s think­ing.  “Tech­ni­cal­ly, the Oba­macare law requires us to ver­i­fy an applicant’s income to deter­mine if he or she is eli­gi­ble for sub­si­dies.  Our IT peo­ple told us flat­ly, ‘That ain’t gonna hap­pen.’  So we decid­ed to ignore that legal require­ment in favor of the ‘hon­or sys­tem.’  But that had its prob­lems too.  Why would we force peo­ple to lie about how much mon­ey they make just to get health insur­ance subsidies?

“So then some­body said, ‘Hey wait!  Didn’t we just ignore that oth­er legal require­ment so that Con­gress­men can get their sub­si­dies?  Why don’t we just ille­gal­ly expand the spe­cial deal that we ille­gal­ly gave Congress?’”

Asked whether that would result in increased spend­ing, the spokesper­son explained, “Repub­li­cans are wrong when they say that the gov­ern­ment has a spend­ing prob­lem.  The Pres­i­dent has it right: gov­ern­ment doesn’t have a spend­ing prob­lem, it has a health care prob­lem.  The solu­tion is more health care spend­ing.  Lots more.”

Pressed by a reporter on the effect of the new pol­i­cy on the nation­al debt, the aide bris­tled.  “I am so over the ‘nation­al debt’ thing.  Sor­ry, Tea Par­ty.  We won.  The debt’s going up.  High­er than CBO’s pis­sant spread­sheets can count.  Get over it.”

“Besides,” she con­tin­ued, “if Tea Par­ty types don’t like it, they can pay full price for their health insur­ance.  It’s their choice.  Nobody’s forc­ing them to take gov­ern­ment subsidies.”

The aide also dis­missed legal con­cerns about the bold new pol­i­cy.  “Repub­li­cans will say that the law pro­hibits ordi­nary Amer­i­cans from receiv­ing these sub­si­dies,” she said.  “So what?  It pro­hibits Sen­a­tors and Con­gress­men from receiv­ing them too, but we’re doing it any­way.  Deal with it.”

The new pol­i­cy may not be the last Oba­macare-relat­ed announce­ment from an Admin­is­tra­tion that has repeat­ed­ly sur­prised sup­port­ers and crit­ics alike by jet­ti­son­ing or ignor­ing some of the law’s most sig­nif­i­cant provisions.

“What makes imple­ment­ing Oba­macare so damn hard,” the White House aide con­fid­ed, “is the Oba­macare law.  I mean, have you even tried to read that thing?  And the regs – total shit­show!   I mean every week we have to announce that we’re sus­pend­ing enforce­ment of this pro­vi­sion, ignor­ing that one, waiv­ing anoth­er, delay­ing this, not enforc­ing that, inter­pret­ing some­thing else in a way that is so clear­ly unlaw­ful that our attor­neys lock them­selves in a room and start cut­ting them­selves.  It nev­er ends.

“Plus, after try­ing every­thing – and I do mean every­thing – for three years, most peo­ple still don’t like the law.  At some point, you have to ask your­self if it’s even worth defend­ing.  We’ve waived, ignored and wished away pret­ty much the whole thing.  What’s left?

“Final­ly, some­one said, ‘Wait a minute!  Why should we be stuck sup­port­ing a law that nobody likes and even we can’t defend?  Why can’t we be for gov­ern­ment-run health care but against Obamacare?’

“It sound­ed kind of crazy at first, but think about it.  All the Pres­i­dent ever want­ed was an incred­i­bly expen­sive and com­plete­ly unaf­ford­able new health care enti­tle­ment that would bank­rupt future gen­er­a­tions of Amer­i­cans,” the aide said.  “Con­gress sent him this mess of a law.  Now peo­ple are blam­ing Oba­ma for Oba­macare.  It’s just so unfair.”

But doesn’t the Pres­i­dent sup­port Oba­macare?  “Not as much as he used to,” the aide said can­did­ly.  “Don’t get me wrong.  The Pres­i­dent strong­ly sup­ports spend­ing tril­lions of dol­lars more on health care.  But he’s hav­ing sec­ond thoughts about that stu­pid law that Con­gress passed.  No won­der their approval rat­ings are in the toilet.”

But doesn’t he need that law to imple­ment these mas­sive changes in the health care sys­tem?  “We’re try­ing to con­vince our lawyers that he does not.  Look, we’re pret­ty far along in imple­ment­ing this mas­sive new enti­tle­ment through vol­umes of reg­u­la­tions and guid­ances that are at best loose­ly based on the under­ly­ing law.  In many cas­es, our reg­u­la­tions com­plete­ly con­tra­dict the law.  We’re not real­ly imple­ment­ing the law as writ­ten; we’re work­ing around it.  We’ve been mak­ing it up as we go along for three years now.  Look at all the spe­cial deals we’ve made for Con­gress, cor­po­ra­tions and labor unions.

“When you come down to it, we’re remak­ing the entire health care sys­tem by exec­u­tive fiat.  The law just gets in the way.  You could say that we’re imple­ment­ing Oba­macare in spite of the law.  We’ll enforce our reg­u­la­tions even if Con­gress repeals the law.  So, do we real­ly need it?”

Empha­siz­ing that no final deci­sions have yet been made, the aide pon­dered the polit­i­cal earth­quake that the poten­tial announce­ment would set off.

“What will Repub­li­cans do if Pres­i­dent Oba­ma asks Con­gress to repeal Obamacare?”