Great enterprise piece about how rogue ‘insurance’ providers are telling customers they’ve found a way to get around Obamacare regulations and still sell “junk” insurance policies. Important read on what’s happening down on the ground.
TPM Reader T(heda) S(kocpol) on the President’s ‘fix’ and the big picture on the bumpy roll out …
I doubt that the Obama people think this newly announced move is really a fix. It deflects blame and buys time, simply because even with various Dems defecting on this or that vote or bill, as they surely know many will, Congress won’t be able to act on this issue any more than it can act on any other.
It’s been really surprising that with all the terrible press and definitely suboptimal reality of the Obamacare rollout, support and opposition to the law remained basically totally unchanged. Well, that changed this week.
Heath insurers and state insurance regulators — whose cooperation is necessary to implement the President’s attempted fix for Obamacare — both expressing serious concerns about the fix’s impact on insurance markets.
What happens when you combine wild hog-hunting You Tube videos, a Parks and Wildlife Commission meeting at the Rodeway Inn Cow Palace in Lamar, Colo. and a Department of Defense contractor? You get a Colorado ban “prohibiting the use of drones (unmanned aerial vehicles) as an aid in scouting, hunting and taking of wildlife.”
Crack is one thing. But pussy takes it to a whole new level. You could say this about so many life situations.
But on the Rob Ford front, admitting he used crack and regularly gets hammered so bad he doesn’t even know whether he smokes crack didn’t lead Rob Ford to admit he might need some professional help. But denying he told a staffer “I wanted to eat her pussy” at an impromptu press conference this morning and saying he’s “got more than enough to eat at home” has finally forced Ford to say he needs medical help.
On police reports that had Rob Ford cavorting with prostitutes, snorting coke, taking oxy, swilling vodka and telling one former staffer that “I banged your pussy,” Mayor Ford responded this morning: “Olivia Gondek said that I wanted to eat her pussy, I never said that in my life to her. I would never do that. I’m happily married. I’ve got more than enough to eat at home.”
The administration is beginning to brief reporters on the contours of this so-called administrative fix to Obamacare. But the early reports are muddled, confusing and contradictory. It speaks in part to how complicated the law is and the number of interconnected moving parts. Politics doesn’t do complexity well.
The big issue is what the administration will do to “rectify” canceled plans. You have to put it in quotes because, again, this was not some unintended consequence of Obamacare. It’s how it was supposed to work. But whether you require insurers to maintain existing policies through 2014 or simply allow them to do so is a big distinction. Whether consumers have a say in the matter or it’s left to insurers is another key policy choice. There’s also the question of what legal authority gives the White House the power to dictate these fixes without congressional approval.
We’ll know more in the next few minutes. You can watch Obama’s announcement at 11:30 a.m. ET here.