Individual Mandate Repealed! . . . for Those with Canceled Plans

Today on NRO

KEVIN D. WILLIAMSON: There's a reason men disapprove of Barack Obama. Ladies' Man.

CHARLES C. W. COOKE: Whatever happened to tolerating dissenting views? A&E's Problem — And Ours.

JONAH GOLDBERG: Outrage over a "reality" star's comment smacks of artificiality. 'Real' Rednecks.

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Insurance companies are rapidly becoming mere extensions of the federal government. Story of the Year.

MONA CHAREN: Contra the insistence of feminists, most women don't want what the worst men do. Daughters and Sex.

RICH LOWRY: The insufferable man-child joins the Internet cartoon Julia in the Obama PR canon. Pajama Boy, Home for the Holidays.

SLIDESHOW: Santa Sightings.

Morning Jolt
. . . with Jim Geraghty

December 20, 2013

Individual Mandate Repealed! . . . for Those with Canceled Plans

On the one hand, this is good news. Common sense, even.

The Obama administration gave another break to people losing their health insurance coverage late Thursday, offering a special hardship exemption to patients who want the extremely cheap, bare-bones plans known as catastrophic coverage.

It's the latest in a series of last-minute concessions being made by federal officials harried by complaining consumers as the days tick down to Jan. 1, 2014 and the last deadline for getting health insurance for the new year.

Senior administration officials who declined to be named estimate that about 500,000 people may be affected.

Or, you know, maybe 5 million.

Ezra Klein declares, "This is the first crack in the individual mandate. But is it the last?"

Avik Roy, describing the result of this move as "utter chaos":

This most recent announcement from the Obama administration is the first time it has publicly admitted that Obamacare is making health insurance less affordable, not more so, for millions of Americans.

…The catastrophic plans aren't that much cheaper than the regular Obamacare plans. In California, for example, the median cost of a pre-Obamacare plan on eHealthInsurance.com, for a 25-year-old male non-smoker, was $92. The Obamacare bronze plans cost an average of $205 a month. The Obamacare catastrophic plans? $184. In some parts of the country, the catastrophic plans are actually more expensive than the bronze plans.

For this reason, I don't expect that many Americans to sign up for the catastrophic plans. If you think that the Obamacare bronze plans are unaffordable, you're likely to feel the same way about the catastrophic plans. Instead, you're going to take advantage of the "hardship exemption" and go without insurance altogether.

"Panic mode" is how insurance executives are describing the administration's moves—but the insurers themselves are going to have to wonder about the financial viability of their exchange-based plans.

I prefer "panic mode" to the naïve, optimistic assurances that this will all work out in the near future once the mere "glitches" are fixed.

Ramesh asks if those folks are exempted from the fine for not buying insurance . . . why shouldn't, say, the currently uninsured be exempted?

David Remus asks, "Given that the individual mandate was upheld as a tax, are there other examples of a president waiving taxes for certain groups?"

Doc Zero:

Bruce Webster writes in, "I would not be surprised -- in the wake of this announcement -- to see Healthcare.gov shut down 'temporarily' at some point during the holiday season and then a more general suspension of the individual mandate."

And now, the Obamacare roundup . . .

Los Angeles Times editorial board member Jon Healey: "The Times' editorial board has steadfastly supported the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, warts and all, because it makes a credible effort to make a more sustainable healthcare system. But it's disingenuous to pretend that the changes mandated by the law cost nothing or that the benefits it delivers magically arrive for free."

Oklahoma: "One Mayes County woman says she's spent nearly 60 hours trying to sign up for Obamacare. She claims she sits in front of computer time and time again, only for the system to crash near the end of the sign-up process."

Nebraska: "The family had run smack into the realities of the new market place. 'The tax credit won't mean much when you have such a high deductible,' Marilyn said. 'When people find out about the nuts and bolts, they are going to be pissed.' She summed up her experience in one word, 'disappointing.'"

Looks Like Cable News Will Spend the Next Week Discussing Duck Dynasty

Judging from the statement from the Robertson family, it looks like the era of Duck Dynasty airing on the A&E network is approaching an end:

We want to thank all of you for your prayers and support. The family has spent much time in prayer since learning of A&E's decision. We want you to know that first and foremost we are a family rooted in our faith in God and our belief that the Bible is His word. While some of Phil's unfiltered comments to the reporter were coarse, his beliefs are grounded in the teachings of the Bible. Phil is a Godly man who follows what the Bible says are the greatest commandments: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart" and "Love your neighbor as yourself." Phil would never incite or encourage hate. We are disappointed that Phil has been placed on hiatus for expressing his faith, which is his constitutionally protected right. We have had a successful working relationship with A&E but, as a family, we cannot imagine the show going forward without our patriarch at the helm. We are in discussions with A&E to see what that means for the future of Duck Dynasty. Again, thank you for your continued support of our family.

A&E has every legal right to suspend a contract employee for statements it deems controversial. Of course, they may miss the 11 million viewers the show brought in, as well. It's not quite clear why A&E couldn't have issued a statement making clear they disagreed with Phil Robertson's paraphrasing of the Bible's teachings on homosexuality, while keeping him on the show.

Ace, succinct and summoning the perfect clarity the moment requires:

Something alleged to be a social transgression should have social consequences (if any consequences at all).

The game should not be rigged that such that a social consequence has economic consequences, that is, ad hoc privately enforced fines and penalties.

The punishment should fit the "crime" (if there is some crime at all). If Phil Robertson said something "mean," then mean things should be said back to him. If he made people uncomfortable, then people can use their Adult Words to make him feel uncomfortable in return.

We have evolved a repellent system in which thought and belief are punished by tangible economic penalties. And this is not something that happens occasionally; this now happens every week or month.

Take your pick: Grandpa Duck (banned from his own show), Martin Bashir (show canceled), Alec Baldwin (show canceled), John Podesta (apologized and everyone will forget about it).

I could live in a world where anything goes; we're all First Amendment absolutists, and the only proper recourse to awful speech is more speech. I could also happily live in an American culture that was politer, calmer, more respectful and less incendiary. But right now we've got a world where the Right is expected to play by the Oxford Debating Society rules while the Left uses Thunderdome rules.

The D.C. Media Bubble Is Liberal -- Not Just Insider-y, but Liberal

Some of D.C.'s political journalists were abuzz about this essay from Sam Youngman, formerly White House correspondent at the Hill, now a reporter at the Lexington Herald-Leader. It's full of familiar scenes -- a young, ambitious reporter gets a good job in Washington, grows increasingly focused on covering inane controversies, and is seduced by glamorous parties, flowing booze, and hacks attempting to spin his coverage of events. He becomes "trapped in the bubble of my own artificially inflated ego." Then comes revelation and salvation: "Somewhere along a path of unexpected personal success, I had forgotten the most important component of the gig: I had no idea who I was writing for."

Dave Weigel is getting tired of this once-I-was-lost-but-now-I-have-redeemed-myself-by-moving-away-from-Washington genre:

Here's a secret: D.C.'s what you make of it. If you want to be a callous climber, you can do so, just as you can do so in Dallas or Los Angeles or Atlanta or wherever else Real Housewives are grown. Youngman's essay is written to be bulletproof, so everything that reads mean ("Washington hot, which is a step above rehab hot and two levels below jury duty hot") is chased by something that makes the reader empathetic ("When I returned from my 28 days in rehab"). He sounds like he's still making up his mind about how much to blame D.C. for its effect on people and how much to blame himself. Well, there do seem to be a few million people in the D.C. area who do not work in media but build middle-class or working-class lives similar to the ones you see in other cities.

Youngman's essay echoes a lot of Mark Leibovich's book This Town released earlier this year, and like Leibovich, he dances around the fairly central point: The D.C. Media Conventional Wisdom Bubble is almost entirely liberal, which is one of the things that makes it so disconnected with the country outside the Beltway. Sure, the pomp of our nation's highest offices, the money, and the "fame" that comes from brief appearances on cable news can shape and warp a reporter's viewpoint, but the biggest and most consequential one is constantly being surrounded by peers who range from the center-left to the far left.

Notice this paragraph:

At least once a week, I hear conventional wisdom from D.C. or New York upended by words directly from the mouths of a Kentucky voter. Democratic Senate candidate Alison Lundergan Grimes's campaign is described as strong nationally, but it looks like a hot mess up close. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), often mocked by cable news, is cheered and encouraged to run for president at small restaurants in impoverished mountain towns throughout Eastern Kentucky.

Well, gee. Both bits of conventional wisdom are good for Democrats and bad for Republicans, and Youngman's firsthand experience suggests the actual political environment is better for the Right than the Left. Some of us won't find that all that shocking.

Yes, sometimes the divide is insider vs. outsider, or elites vs. grassroots. But a lot of the insider vs. outsider split amounts to battles between left-of-center elites and conservative grassroots. Recall Hugh Hewitt's observation of the portrait of Washington found in This Town:

All right, now let's talk about red Washington and blue Washington. As I said, you know blue Washington deep, because I think Andrew Breitbart would say, they're joined at the hip, the media, Manhattan-Beltway media elite, and Democratic elites. Not so much red Washington, and many, many obscure blues are feted in This Town, but very few big reds. For example, Krauthammer doesn't show up. Brit Hume, Fred Barnes, there's a nod towards Kristol and towards Bennett and towards Rove… Arthur Brooks, Rich Lowry, Steven Smith and Mark Tapscott over at the Examiner, Phil Anschutz, who owns most of the media properties there now for the conservative side. Or Ed Atsinger, all the talkers. You know, Mark Levin lives in the Beltway. You don't see them in the background of your stories, because they don't do it, I think…. There are so few bit parts played by Republicans or conservatives. And I think it's because that merger that I speak about, that many conservatives deeply resent between big media and big Democrats.

ADDENDUM: Via Naked D.C., the guy behind the Obamacare pajamas ad has been found. I'm less interested in making fun of the actual guy than the image that the Obama folks were attempting to promote in the ad, but for what it's worth, he actually does live with his parents.

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