In other words, California wasn’t comparing apples to apples. It wasn’t even comparing apples to oranges. It was comparing apples to ostriches. The conservative analyst Avik Roy consulted current rates on the eHealthInsurance website and discovered that the cheapest ObamaCare plan for a typical 25-year-old man is roughly 64% to 117% more expensive than the five cheapest policies sold today. For a 40 year old, it’s 73% to 146%. Stanford economist Dan Kessler adds his observations nearby.

We wouldn’t be shocked if California deliberately abused statistics in the hopes that no one would notice that in some cases premiums would more than double. In any case, the turn among the liberals who touted the fake results has been educational.

They now concede that individual costs will rise but claim that it is unfair to compare today’s market to ObamaCare because ObamaCare mandates much richer benefits. Another liberal rationalization is that the cost-increasing regulations are meant to help people with pre-existing conditions, so they’re worth it.