The Lawlessness of the ‘Fix’ : Insurance companies would be insane to offer plans that failed to comply with the ACA.

The National Review reports:

This “waiver” is irrelevant. Even if it were constitutionally proper for a president to flout Congress in the executive branch’s enforcement practices, all that means is that the Obama administration will give insurers a pass until 2014. The Obama “waiver” does not change what Congress’s law actually says, and therefore it has no bearing on the legal obligations attendant to the relationship between the insurer and the insured.

As a practical matter, it is nearly inconceivable that insurance companies would be able to reissue the canceled health-care plans. The process, as Avik Roy expertly explains, is too extensive and complex to complete in the few weeks between now and Obamacare’s coverage deadline — something that an administration that can’t, after three years, get a functioning website running should know. But even if it could be done, the insurance companies would be insane to offer plans that failed to comply with the letter of the Obamacare statute. Similarly, the state insurance commissioners would be insane to permit them, and Americans would be insane to buy them. The policies would be legally unenforceable.

As the telecoms learned, Bush’s assurance that they’d be held harmless meant nothing once Obama and his base started urging warrantless wiretapping victims to sue. The companies spent untold millions in legal fees and costs. The health-insurance companies, too, would be deluged with lawsuits by insureds who claimed that the policies were illegal and wrongly denied coverage for this or that treatment. The insurance companies themselves would get into the act, filing suits to be compensated for payouts they’d made based on the illegal policies. The Obama “waiver” would avail them of nothing in a court, where a judge would be obliged to follow the law, not Dear Leader’s enforcement preferences.

An article well worth your time.