Obama Presser at 11:35 AM to Announce Nakedly Political Delay of Some Provisions of Obamacare

Several questions:

* If this policy of Maximum Cancellations is bad policy now, and represents, as the New York Times so delicately called an "incorrect promise," why is it any more palatable after the mid-term elections?

* Are insurers even interested in offering these policies given the other strictures of Obamacare? Bear in mind, they cannot charge the healthy any less than the desperately sick. So they, like Obama, need healthier people in these high-risk pools. (Obamacare essentially puts the entire country into a high-risk pool.)

So the insurance companies can offer these policies again... and the effect, I'm pretty sure, will be to drastically increase their own downside risk when they insure the uninsurable, and have fewer healthier people to tax to pay for the uninsurable.

So Obama may be certainly is attempting to engineer a situation in which he offers an odious, destructive deal to insurance companies, so that when they balk, he can say, "See? This is why we need Obamacare, and none of this is my fault."

* People ask, "What about policies that are no longer offered because the insurer left the market due to Obamacare?" This could be fixed by permitting another company to offer substantially the same policy as the policyowner once owned. But as Obama doesn't really want to "fix" this problem at all, he won't do that. He'll pretend it didn't occur to him.

He still wants the Maximum number of Cancellations possible. His goal hasn't changed, just his temporary tactics.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong? Nancy Pelosi, Super-Genius and Policy Wonk, will be offering her own "fix" to compete with the Upton bill.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday that, despite President Obama's impending announcement of a fix to Obamacare's canceled insurance plans, House Democrats will also pursue a legislative fix themselves.

Pelosi said to think of it as a "belt and suspenders."

"I want to do both," Pelosi said[.]

This is obviously intended to provide Democrats with cover, so they vote against Upton and still claim "We voted for Pelosi's fix. You know, the fix from Pelosi, the one who was against any fix at all. But seriously, it's a real fix. Why, "Fix" is even part of the bill's title: the Fixing the Affordable Care Act and Making Everything Come Up Daisies bill.

Thanks to @johnedkdahl.

posted by Ace at 11:29 AM

| Access Comments