Maryland's ObamaCare website sent customers to Seattle pottery store

The Maryland website for ObamaCare mistakenly listed an 800 number that sent some Maryland residents attempting to pick a health insurance provider to Seattle Pottery Supply, instead of the state's call center.
The number appears under the words "State Advantage" and "call a representative," according to The Baltimore Sun.
The correct number for help shows up multiple times on the marylandhealthconnection.gov site before the incorrect number appears.
Critics of the state-run site said Saturday this is just the latest in a long series of problems for the Maryland health exchange.
"You can't make this stuff up, and I guess if it wasn't so serious, it could be funny," said state Senate Minority Leader David R. Brinkley, a Frederick County Republican.
A state spokeswoman said Saturday that she had no update on efforts to fix the problem. Maryland officials were unaware of the problem until contacted Friday by the newspaper.
Maryland is one of 14 states that chose to build its own website to sell health insurance as part of the federal Affordable Care Act.
State officials have set a goal of signing up 150,000 people for private insurance by the end of March; 22,512 had signed up on the website as of Jan. 11.
The site’s problems have become the major issue in this year’s gubernatorial race in which front-runner and Democratic Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown was Gov. Martin O’Malley’s point man on developing the health exchange.

White House reportedly delays ObamaCare equal coverage provision

The Obama administration is reportedly delaying enforcement of another aspect of ObamaCare, one that prohibits employers from providing better health benefits to top executives than those being offered to regular employees.
According to The New York Times, tax officials said they would not enforce the provision in 2014 as they had not yet issued the appropriate regulations.
The Affordable Care Act, commonly known as ObamaCare, says employer-sponsored health plans must not discriminate “in favor of highly compensated individuals” with respect to either eligibility or benefits, and provides a tax break for employer-sponsored insurance, while demanding employers not provide better coverage to higher-paid employees.
Yet Bruce I. Friedland, a spokesman for the I.R.S., told the New York Times that employers would not have to comply until the agency issued regulations or other guidance.
Under ObamaCare, an employer that has a fully insured health plan that discriminates in favor of high-paid executives could face a steep penalty: a tax of $100 a day for each individual affected negatively.
Among the issues holding up the implementation of regulations, according to the Times, are how to measure the value of employee health benefits, how to define "highly compensated" and what exactly constitutes discrimination against less-paid employees. 
As a result, the Times reports, officials have decided to review the existing nondiscrimination rules for self-insured companies, even as they try to write new rules for employers that buy commercial health insurance.
“Under the Affordable Care Act, for the first time all group health plans will be prohibited from offering coverage only to their highest paid employees. The Departments of HHS, Labor and the Treasury are working on rules that will implement this requirement of the ACA, taking into account public comments that were previously requested,” Erin Donar, a spokesperson for the Treasury told Fox News in a statement Saturday evening.
“As we continue this work, employers still have the same incentives they always have had to offer coverage to their employees as part of a competitive compensation package, and will have additional incentives under the Affordable Care Act starting this year and next.”
The enforcement delay is the latest in a list of deadline extensions and exemptions to the controversial law by the Obama administration to minimize disruption from the new health care law, which is sure to play in key role in this year’s midterm elections.

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