Feinstein and Landrieu: Let's force those awful insurers to restore those substandard plans

The first thing you need to remember is that Democrats always come up with a narrative in which they didn't screw up. The second thing you need to remember is that anything they do will hue to the narrative. The third thing is this: They will always do whatever they can think of to save their own asses, but whatever it is cannot contradict the first two things.

So you know the narrative concerning the Obama if-you-like-your-insurance lie. Hey, it was those bad apple insurance companies. It wasn't us! With that in mind, your proposed "solution" (once you can no longer deny one is needed) has to beat up the insurance companies. That's how we get to the bill now co-sponsored by Dianne Feinstein and Mary Landrieu: It would force health insurers to restore the policies they are now cancelling because they have to in order to comply with ObamaCare. Fox News:

---

"The Affordable Care Act is a good law, but it is not perfect," Feinstein said in a statement. "I believe the Landrieu bill is a commonsense fix that will protect individuals in the private insurance market from being forced to change their insurance plan." Feinstein said she has received 30,842 calls, emails and letters from constituents about the cancellations and premium increases. A man from Rancho mirage told Feinstein that he is being forced to spend over $400 more per month for a similar policy.

The bill is a completely unserious non-starter, of course. You can't force insurers to just suddenly restore all these individual plans without recognizing how ObamaCare has wreaked havoc with the health insurance market in general. Fred Upton's bill, by contrast, would allow (not force) the insurers to restore the old plans, but even that is not really a complete fix because insurers have to respond to new government-imposed market forces. They now have to cover people who are older and sicker than the profile of their old risk pools, and they have to charge these folks the same premiums as everybody else, so you can't possibly keep your former structure exactly as it was and make that work. All of this has been imposed by ObamaCare, and don't ever let anyone tell you otherwise. By offering a bill that "forces" insurers to go back to what they were doing before, Feinstein and Landrieu merely attempt to make the fraudulent case that insurers are "taking advantage" of ObamaCare to gouge people. Nothing could be further from the truth. ObamaCare forces insurers to do things that are completely irrational in the context of how insurance works, and the insurers are scrambling to make every adjustment they can in order to stay in business. This bill is about nothing but pushing the Democrats' "bad apple insurance company" narrative. It solves nothing and is designed to solve nothing. The only solution to this clusterfark is the repeal of ObamaCare.