http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304243904579197892755143418?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop
You know the politics of ObamaCare is bad when even President Obama is forced to concede that the rollout is a bloody mess. If only the new “administrative fix” he announced on Thursday did more to help the consumers who are losing their coverage than it does to help Democrats protect their political future.
In a major political reversal, the President announced at a surprise press conference that he is suspending the regulations that he now admits are the reason that millions of health insurance plans have been terminated. Only days ago he was saying these were “substandard plans” sold by “bad-apple insurers.” Some of us have been warning for years about the coming insurance market destruction, but Mr. Obama went ahead anyway even though millions of middle-class folks preferred their coverage to ObamaCare.
Now these mass cancellations are proving to be unpopular, and Democrats are panicking, so Mr. Obama is offering a temporary stay of execution. He is instructing his health regulators to suspend eight complicated rules that all insurance plans had to meet and had caused the market implosion.
There is less reprieve here than Mr. Obama claims. It’s hard to un-cancel insurance. The rules Mr. Obama is repudiating were written in 2010, and insurers have been adapting to them for years. They will now have to scramble to revive the policies they can while throwing all of their actuarial assumptions out the window.
The faux reprieve also lasts for only one year and applies only to anyone who was covered in 2013. The insurers are essentially being asked to agree to accept losses on behalf of a rump group of policy holders in a legacy business that would then turn into a pumpkin in 2015.