Up until this point, there was a plausible argument to be made that most of the other ACA exceptions, exemptions and delays announced in the last year were made in the name of fairness. Employers were supposedly having trouble getting their paperwork and computers systems in line to comply with the employer mandate, so it was delayed a year — for all employers. Consumers trying to buy new plans through HealthCare.gov were struggling to navigate a dysfunctional website, so the deadline to sign up for coverage was extended from Dec. 15 to Dec. 23 — for everyone shopping through HealthCare.gov.

In contrast, the Obama administration’s changes in response to political fallout from individual market plans being canceled this fall — allowing states to extend existing plans for an extra year and this new hardship exemption — are something else. Thursday’s change puts those with canceled policies in a unique category that offers them a different kind of coverage and the ability to disregard the individual mandate, a major tenet of the law, which does not seem fair to those who did not have insurance prior to the law and who would very much like to buy a catastrophic plan but cannot. Republicans have already pounced on this latest change to argue that if Obamacare rules are simply too onerous for the small subset of Americans whose policies were canceled this fall, then they are too onerous for everyone else as well.