Utter Chaos: White House Exempts Millions From Obamacare's Insurance Mandate, 'Unaffordable' Exchanges

◼ link - Avik Roy/Forbes

(L)ast night, the White House made its most consequential announcement yet. The administration will grant a “hardship exemption” from the law’s individual mandate, requiring the purchase of health insurance, to anyone who has had their prior coverage canceled and who “believes” that Obamacare’s offerings “are unaffordable.” These exemptions will substantially alter the architecture of the law’s insurance marketplaces. Insurers are at their wits’ end, trying to make sense of what to do next.

?◼ WILL ANYONE HAVE TO PAY - Weekly Standard

The White House will not say whether anyone will have to pay the Obamacare penalty in 2014:



◼ 14th change to law without Congressional approval - John Fund/National Review

Yesterday the Obama administration suddenly moved to allow hundreds of thousands of people who’ve lost their insurance due to Obamacare to sign up for bare-bone “catastrophic” plans. It’s at least the 14th unilateral change to Obamacare that’s been made without consulting Congress.

“It shows that the Obamacare insurance products aren’t selling so, at the last minute, the administration is holding a fire sale on a failed launch,” says Grace-Marie Turner of the Galen Institute, a health-care advocacy group. “Just think how you must feel if you were one of the people who spent the last two months fighting their way through HealthCare.gov to buy a policy that will be thousands of dollars more expensive than this catastrophic insurance!”

PLAY AT YOUR OWN RISK: New security concerns for Healthcare.gov... DC to push Obamacare on youth waiting to buy Air Jordans...

◼ White House warns Americans of GOP efforts to repeal Obamacare - Washington Times