Tennessee and three other states have been granted waivers by the Obama administration to let health insurance companies keep offering more limited benefits plans than ObamaCare calls for this year.
What an irony!
If you'll recall, the justification for imposing massively expensive Obama-Care was that it would increase access to medical care. But as The New York Times reported, waivers have been made available to states, employers or insurers if they can show that "compliance with the federal requirement would cause 'a significant increase in premiums or a decrease in access to benefits.'"
So by the administration's own admission, the "federal requirement" is now increasing premiums and reducing access. But those are precisely the types of things that ObamaCare was supposed to head off!
That naturally leads Republicans who opposed unconstitutional ObamaCare to wonder why the waivers are desperately needed if, in fact, ObamaCare is all it was cracked up to be.
You may remember an astonishing remark by then-Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., in the days prior to the enactment of ObamaCare. She said, "[W]e have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of controversy."
Well, in a bill that runs many hundreds of pages long, and that will require thousands upon thousands of pages of regulations to implement, we have now discovered at least two of the things that are "in it": premium cost increases and reduced access to care, necessitating a patchwork of uncertain waivers and exemptions.
We can hardly wait to learn what other surprises are coming as Obama-Care is litigated and/or imposed over the next few years.