What a week. It’s almost like the Obama administration doesn’t even care anymore about keeping up the slightest appearance of abiding by the rule of law, let alone having any semblance of an idea about what the heck it is they’re doing. Their endless parade of fixes is really putting insurance companies to work, practically begging them to cover the marks of their own egregious ineptitude by providing their new insurees more time to pay for coverage (and putting the onus on the insurance companies, of course, conveniently makes it all the easier to shift the blame their way when people do find themselves without insurance — or their doctors, or their drugs — come January 1st). It certainly didn’t take long for the whole program to deteriorate into a touch-and-go scenario of downright petulant proportions, as George Will noted on Friday evening, via RCP:

We have a great sense this week again of the making it up as they go along, as kind of government by teenagers. And we’ve instituted a new phrase this week, which is “retroactive coverage,” and it goes like this, I gather. You lose your coverage under Obamacare because you had a substandard plan from a lemon, whatever they call them — insurance company. And you may have enrolled but you may not have sent your premium in. So, on January 1st, hungover from a night of celebrating the end of 2013, you’ve come down the stairs and you break your leg. Now what do you do? Are you covered or are you not? There is a great fear that there’s going to be a wave all across the country of people who have fallen into this hole where they’ve either not paid or not paid all and the companies are asked to pretend that they’ve been paid the premiums. This is retroactive coverage.