An Easy Way to Prevent Unintended Consequences: Don't Pass Laws That Cause Them

The AP's Q&A on the Obama administration's 1,400 health care waivers, which exempt specific businesses and union organizations from certain provisions of the health care law, strongly implies that the waiver process is best understood as "a safety valve" designed to "prevent unintended consequences." There is, however, an easier way to prevent such unintended consequences: Don't pass laws that cause them in the first place.

That's why the mounting pile of waivers is best viewed as evidence that not only is the law not working, but the administration knows it isn't working. The administration has admitted as much: Take Maine, for example. In March, the state was granted a waiver from ObamaCare's medical loss ratio provision, which requires health insurers to spend a certain percentage of premium revenue on "clinical services," in order to ensure that a health insurer that's been accused of selling "junk insurance." According to Steve Larsen, one of the Obama administration's top insurance bureaucrats, the rule was rescinded because it "has a reasonable likelihood of destabilizing the Maine individual health insurance market." When provisions designed to be applied universally are instead applied selectively, it suggests rather strongly that the provisions in question are faulty.