Saturday: ObamaCare Spiraling Out Of Control; Constitutional Questions; Millions Lose Policies; Now -- Thousands Of Doctors Culled From Insurance Plans

The Wall Street Journal

In all my years of reading The Wall Street Journal I don't recall so many stories on one issue in the front section. I don't even recall this much coverage of some of the major military movements, such as the various wars in the Mideast.

With regard to the constitutional question: I think the GOP realizes that the president's popularity would rise if he took on the GOP in an impeachment challenge; let him use his own rope.

On a personal note, back on October 21, 2013, I was one of the first to blog/report/say that ObamaCare was in a death spiral. When I wrote that, I had a bit of concern that was a bit of hyperbole. In early November, I saw someone else say that ObamaCare had entered a death spiral. Now even Peggy Noonan says ObamaCare is in a death spiral. See linked article below. Even today, there are relatively few google hits for "ObamaCare 'death spiral'" at 283,000 (0.21 seconds). It will be interesting to track this metric. I will, if I remember.

This is the tsunami that will hit in late 2014, not yet being reported. I've blogged about it several times: businesses will cost-shift employees over to ObamaCare giving their employees a monthly stipend to, as Mr Obama said, "shop around. Look for a good health plan." Today in Starbucks, high end health plan -- an employee says he just received a letter that his monthly health care premium will increase 40%. He currently pays $300/month; his boss pays $600/month. I assume his boss also got a note that his premium will also rise 40%. Next year the boss, if he follows IBM, Time Warner, others, will give his employees $500 to find their own ObamaCare health plan. Five hundred dollars seems like a lot of money but it's far less than what will be needed. The fact that there is so little written about this, and very rarely discussed by the public, suggests folks are in for a rude shock. The question is whether the tsunami will hit before or after the November, 2014, elections.

Democrats defect on health rules is the lead story. Peggy Noonan has a great op-ed, also. The only question is whether the issue has reached a tipping point. [I was disappointed in the comments to her op-ed; from the few I read, the comments seemed juvenile; partisan when they did not need to be. ObamaCare is n longer about politics. The analogy is this: even atheists get religion in the fox hole. Even diehard partisans see the debacle called ObamaCare, and it starts with the $12,000 annual deductibles.]

White House soul-searches as errors mount. 

The White House has begun a quiet self-assessment in the wake of the troubled health-law launch, recognizing that administration officials missed warning signs and put too much trust in their management practices in implementing a program that is the centerpiece of President Barack Obama's domestic legacy. 

White House officials want to learn how the rollout flopped [LOL], despite what they believed had been sufficient planning, preparation and attention to the issue [LOL]. 

Although not a full-bore "forensic" inquiry into what went wrong, the administration aims to organize itself so that "going forward, we don't have these problems," a senior White House official said in an interview [LOL].

Finally: constitutional questions being asked -- a president changing "the law of the land" with a speech.

President Barack Obama's health-care fix may salvage a political promise to let Americans keep cheaper health plans if they like them. Whether he has the legal authority to do so, however, could be a tougher question.

While the Affordable Care Act grandfathers some existing policies as written, it also sets new requirements for policies issued on or after Jan. 1, 2014. That spurred carriers to inform millions of consumers with plans that fell short of the new rules that their policies couldn't be renewed after they expire.

The White House argues that the chief executive has some discretion in implementing laws. Administration lawyers point to a 1985 Supreme Court decision, Heckler v. Chaney, which dismissed a lawsuit seeking to compel the Food and Drug Administration to exercise its enforcement powers.

The circumstances, however, were substantially different. The suit was filed by condemned inmates who argued that the FDA was required by federal law to review the drugs state officials had chosen for their execution by lethal injection.

Small firms caught in health-policy limbo. 

Davidson Goldin was disappointed when he learned in September that his small business's health-care plan was being discontinued. Now it's possible he'll be able to keep it after all. President Barack Obama on Thursday said he would allow insurers to extend by one year those policies they had canceled for failing to meet the health-care law's requirements. Such policies include small-group plans, which apply to employers with fewer than 50 or 100 employees, depending on the state.

Retreat on health-care leaves doubt over Obama's relevance in the Democratic Party.

That was fewer defections than there would have been if Mr. Obama hadn't acted Thursday, but it was still a sign Mr. Obama is losing pull within his own party. After standing together against Republican demands for changes to the law during the government shutdown, some Democrats have been losing confidence in the administration's ability to manage problems with the law.

The defections go beyond House Democrats. Centrist Democratic senators up for re-election in GOP-leaning states, among them Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Mark Pryor of Arkansas, have signed on to legislation to help people keep canceled plans. Even Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.), who doesn't face voters next year, said she backed the legislation.

Echoes of 2010: 39 Dems defect.

Now we know why President Obama was in such a hurry to announce his Affordable Care Act nonfix insurance fix on Thursday.

On Friday, 39 Democrats voted with 222 House Republicans to pass Michigan Congressman Fred Upton's bill to revive the individual insurance market. Imagine how many more Democrats would have defected without Mr. Obama's offer of political cover.

The 39 defectors decided not to take any chances, perhaps figuring the latest White House fig leaf might get blown away if the cancellations keep coming. They abandoned the White House despite the promise of a Presidential veto and pressure from Democratic House leaders to stay united and not give the GOP a political victory.

United Health culling doctors from Medicare plans. All of this is becoming part of the Obama Legacy.

The nation's largest provider of privately managed Medicare Advantage plans, has dropped thousands of doctors from its networks in recent weeks—spurring protest from lawmakers and physician groups and leaving many elderly patients unsure about whether they need to switch plans to keep seeing their doctors.

Doctors in at least 10 states have received termination letters, some citing "significant changes and pressures in the health-care environment."

The notices also tell doctors they can appeal within 30 days. That means many physicians and patients won't know for sure who is in or out of UnitedHealth's Medicare Advantage networks before the open-enrollment period to switch Medicare plans ends on Dec. 7.

UnitedHealth said its provider networks are always changing and that it expects its Medicare Advantage network "to be 85% to 90% of its current size by the end of 2014," although it declined to say how many doctors are being cut in individual states or what criteria it is using.

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Finally: hitting the brake on ethanol.

The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday proposed for the first time to ease an annual requirement for ethanol in gasoline, saying that levels mandated in a 2007 law are difficult, if not impossible, to meet.

The move represents one of the biggest setbacks to date for ethanol, long seen as a promising way for the U.S. to reduce dependence on imported oil. Most U.S. ethanol comes from corn, and the move came despite a heavy lobbying push from corn-producing states.

Under a 2007 law, refiners were supposed to blend more than 14 billion gallons of ethanol into the nation's gasoline supply in 2014, representing more than 10% of the gasoline motorists pump annually.

Although the ethanol story has nothing to do with ObamaCare, some folks might see some connecting dots.

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It's no accident that English-speaking countries are the ones most devoted to law and individual rights. Fascinating.

Asked, early in his presidency, whether he believed in American exceptionalism, Barack Obama gave a telling reply. "I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism."

The first part of that answer is fascinating (we'll come back to the Greeks in a bit). Most Brits do indeed believe in British exceptionalism.

But here's the thing: They define it in almost exactly the same way that Americans do. British exceptionalism, like its American cousin, has traditionally been held to reside in a series of values and institutions: personal liberty, free contract, jury trials, uncensored newspapers, regular elections, habeas corpus, open competition, secure property, religious pluralism.

The conceit of our era is to assume that these ideals are somehow the natural condition of an advanced society—that all nations will get around to them once they become rich enough and educated enough. In fact, these ideals were developed overwhelmingly in the language in which you are reading these words.

You don't have to go back very far to find a time when freedom under the law was more or less confined to the Anglosphere: the community of English-speaking democracies.