Unfortunately, as law professor (and Obamacare supporter) Nicholas Bagley has noted, Obama’s unilateral creation of these “grandmothered” health plans violated his constitutional duties as chief executive: “The Administration thus used the public pronouncements of its non-enforcement policies to encourage the regulated community to disregard provisions of [the law]. Prospectively licensing large groups of people to violate a congressional statute for policy reasons is inimical to the Take Care clause.”

To put it more bluntly, the president cannot decline to enforce the law because he finds himself in a political jam, whether due to a broken promise, a non-functioning website, or mere disagreement with the law in question. That principle applies as equally to President Trump as it does to President Obama. Trump’s extension of “grandmothered” plans violates the Constitution as much as President Obama’s did—and expanding those plans to include other forms of insurance would represent a further violation.