DC Health Commissioner fired after questioning Obamacare fix

Hotair ^ | 11/17/2013 | Jazz Shaw

[SeekAndFind]

Coming to you from the Department of Tolerance, Compromise and Open Discussion, we find an interesting story of Human Resources action in DC. After the President announced his “fix” to the “If You Like Your Plan” problem, William White, the DC insurance commissioner, echoed concerns that many people expressed, asking if this sort of change might not undermine the entire premise of the system and lead to even more people paying higher premiums or losing their plans. This was clearly an important question, so the Mayor of the District of Columbia called him into the office to discuss the policy and determine the best way forward.

Naw… I’m just kidding. They fired him on the spot.

A day after he questioned President Obama’s decision to unwind a major tenet of the health-care law and said the nation’s capital might not go along, D.C. insurance commissioner William P. White was fired.

White was called into a meeting Friday afternoon with one of Mayor Vincent C. Gray’s (D) top deputies and told that the mayor “wants to go in a different direction,” White told The Washington Post on Saturday.

White said the mayoral deputy never said that he was being asked to leave because of his Thursday statement on health care. But he said the timing was hard to ignore. Roughly 24 hours later, White said, he was “basically being told, ‘Thanks, but no thanks.’ ”

White was one of the first insurance commissioners in the nation last week to push back against Obama’s attempt to smooth over part of the botched rollout of the Affordable Care Act: millions of unexpected cancellations of insurance plans.

I saw this story at Ace of Spades, where the obvious question is asked.

Can you imagine being a state Insurance Commissioner right now? How much pressure is being put on them to enact a fix that they know can’t work and may very well be illegal?

We don’t have to imagine very much here. There are already state commissioners who are balking at this, and not all of them are from red states. They range from Washington state to Arkansas, and those who do this sort of thing for a living have been left with their jaws hanging open. And yet, if they are in a state where their bosses are on board with the Go Obama Machine, it’s got to be a pretty uncomfortable day at the office if they raise these concerns in public. But what’s the alternative? Just fire them all and keep hiring until you find people who will parrot the company line, facts be damned?

Hey… on second thought, that just might work.

[edwinland]

After the President announced his “fix” to the “If You Like Your Plan” problem, William White, the DC insurance commissioner, echoed concerns that many people expressed, asking if this sort of change might not undermine the entire premise of the system and lead to even more people paying higher premiums or losing their plans. This was clearly an important question, so the Mayor of the District of Columbia called him into the office to discuss the policy and determine the best way forward.

Brilliant wording. It reads like an anti-joke.