Year: 2013

It appears state insurance regulators are also telling Obama to go to hell with his lawless announcement that the parts of Obamacare causing him political troubles are temporarily suspended.

Commissioner Mike Kreidler said Thursday he won’t allow insurance companies to extend their old policies that didn’t meet the requirements of federal health care reform. An estimated 290,000 Washington residents have received notices that their old insurance policies will be canceled. “Trying to do what the president has proposed would be very disruptive to the insurance market in the state of Washington so no, we will not be allowing insurance companies to extend these policies,” he said. “You’d have to go back and re-rate all of the policies, and the premises for what they originally proposed rates would all change.”

That is Washington. Arkansas has also issued a similar ruling.

I repeat: The Republicans should introduce today a bill to repeal Obamacare in full.

Update: “Insurers are furious about the White House’s new Obamacare plan.”

Surprise, surprise! Insurance companies are already saying that they cannot go along with Obama’s decision to suspend the cancellation of insurance policies.

As stated by an insurance representative:

This a new insanity.

I do not know how the insurance carriers and federal government are going to be dealing with this. First, many states require a 60-day notice of a change in plan or a cancellation. It’s November 15! How can they comply with this new element of federal law, and with their state laws?

As I said, if I was an insurance company I would continue to simply follow Obamacare as written. This action carries the least legal risk.

Which means Obama’s proposal today is mere show and will accomplish nothing. The Democrats remain politically exposed. If the Republicans had any brains, they would move now to propose a full repeal of Obamacare.

The law is such an inconvenient thing: With a wave of his hand, Obama today has declared that insurance companies need not cancel policies forbidden under Obamacare.

In remarks at the White House today, Obama said, “I completely get how upsetting this can be” lose insurance plans that I promised Americans would be able to keep. “To those Americans, I hear you loud and clear.”

But there’s a catch with president’s proposed solution. The president is not proposing that the law be changed to allow all health insurance plans grandfathered into Obamacare’s eligibility requirements.

No, instead the White House is saying that it will use “enforcement discretion” to allow illegal health insurance plans to be able to still be sold. That is, the Obama administration will not enforce the penalty on individuals for not having eligible health insurance plans and they’ll allow the insurance companies to still sell so-called bad plans — plans they technically can’t sell under Obamacare.

If I was an insurance company I would not take Obama at his word. If they don’t cancel these forbidden policies, they might find the administration coming after them later for not obeying the law.

Also, this action by Obama solves none of the political problems facing the Democratic Party for its creation of Obamacare. Even if it happens, it is merely a one year delay in the cancellation of these policies, which would place their final cancellation to just before next year’s election.