“If you strike out on your own and start a small business, you’ll be able to get coverage,” Obama said during his Sept. 2009 health care pitch before a joint session of Congress. “We’ll do this by creating a new insurance exchange — a marketplace where individuals and small businesses will be able to shop for health insurance at competitive prices.”

“WASHINGTON — Unable to meet tight deadlines in the new health care law, the Obama administration is delaying parts of a program intended to provide affordable health insurance to small businesses and their employees — a major selling point for the health care legislation.” …

The big question is whether this is a harbinger of more to come. In theory, there are supposed to be operational health insurance exchanges by Oct. 1, which will begin actually providing benefits on Jan. 1. Now that the federal government will have to run all or part of the exchanges in 33 states, it remains a big question whether health officials are going to be able to meet their deadlines. Something tells me we’ll be reading more stories like this in the coming months.