Casualty of the Affordable Care Act: a Critic

By Mark E. Ruquet

The foul-up surrounding the rollout of the Affordable Care Act has claimed one of its first victims, but he had nothing to do with the design of the technology at the heart of the administration’s nightmare.

Late last week, Washington D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray dismissed Insurance Commissioner William P. White after the commissioner criticized the president’s plan to allow holders of sub-par health insurance policies to renew the plans for a year.

The New York Times says that Gray released a statement criticizing President Barack Obama’s plan before clearing it with the mayor. Gray contends that it was normal procedure for his office to issue statements without clearance.

Gray’s office did not comment.

The Washington Post reports that there were heated exchanges between White and Gray’s office after the release of the commissioners statement.  White went to great lengths to save his job, but the mayor “lost faith” in the commissioner’s judgment.

PPACA may have cost one commissioner his job, but at least the administration has come to its senses and made a high profile attempt to seek help and advice from the people who have to make sure the plan is ultimately implemented properly: the state insurance commissioners.

On Wednesday, members of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners met with the president and other White House officials to discuss the Administration’s efforts to stem criticism that the president lied when he people they could keep the insurance policy they liked after PPACA took effect.

In a statement, NAIC President and Louisiana Commissioner Jim Donelon said that after working hard to make sure policies were compliant with PPACA, the proposed changes “are creating a level of uncertainty that we must work together to alleviate.”  He added that the commissioners would work to “implement changes that make sense” while protecting consumers.

The statement was non-committal about what the commissioners would ultimately decide, which should not be a surprise since not all states have embraced PPACA and created exchanges for individuals in need of adequate healthcare coverage, leaving it to the federal exchange to do the work. In fact, the president’s remedy for extending the pre-PPACA plans is meeting resistance in some states.

Yesterday, California’s healthcare exchange—Covered California—rejected extension of non-compliant plans saying doing so would lend to confusion among consumers and might keep healthy customers out of the risk pool. Close to 80,000 people have enrolled in California’s exchange, the Los Angeles Times said, and about 1 million people have non-compliant policies in the state.

In the end, the insurance commissioners may end-up inadvertently bailing out the president on this one. The West Virginia MetroNews said West Virginia has joined a dozen other states in rejecting the president’s call to extend the non-compliant policies. In essence, the president can say he came up with a solution, but the commissioners rejected it because it was unworkable.

A year from now, after they have ironed out the kinks in the software, and 40 million Americans who never had coverage see the benefits of the program, this will be forgotten—and replaced by some other immediate crisis. It’s just a question whether it will be the Republicans or Democrats who will do a better job of mucking things up.