https://hotair.com/allahpundit/2014/08/07/oh-by-the-way-90-of-people-without-insurance-wont-have-to-pay-obamacares-mandate-penalty-after-all/feed/HotAir is the leading conservative blog for breaking news and commentary covering the Biden administration, politics, media, culture, and current elections.en-usThu, 23 Apr 2026 15:08:18 -0400<![CDATA[Another reminder that when the economic realities of this boondoggle collide with Democrats&#8217; political priorities, the economics ultimately must bow. The first hard lesson in that was the &#8220;if you like your plan, you can keep your plan&#8221; fiasco. It was never true that people could keep their old plans if they liked them under O-Care, as even Barney Frank admits. The whole point of the law was to cancel low-cost existing plans and steer healthy people to new plans with &#8220;comprehensive&#8221; benefits that many don&#8217;t really need. That&#8217;s how you justify squeezing them for the added revenue needed to cover medical treatments for people with preexisting conditions in the same new plan. But Obama had lied too many times on camera to escape political damage from the &#8220;if you like your plan&#8221; nonsense being exposed. So, to contain the political fallout, he created an economic &#8220;fix&#8221;: Insurers would be allowed, if they so chose, to bring back plans that had already been canceled. That&#8217;s nutty from a revenue perspective &#8212; the last thing you want is healthy people bailing out of the new risk pool and buying an old, cheaper plan instead &#8212; but it made jittery Democrats feel better and that&#8217;s what&#8217;s important.]]>Thu, 07 Aug 2014 20:01:26 -0400<![CDATA[Allahpundit]]>https://hotair.com/allahpundit/2014/08/07/oh-by-the-way-90-of-people-without-insurance-wont-have-to-pay-obamacares-mandate-penalty-after-all-n191811