So, here’s Bob Laszewski’s description of the latest way that the Obama administration rewrote the law and tax code:

If you had a health insurance policy that was cancelled, you are now exempt from the individual mandate and its tax penalty should you not decide to buy a replacement policy. In addition, you can now sign up for the very high deductible Catastrophic Plan that was originally reserved only for those under the age of 30.

If you did not have a health insurance policy that was cancelled, you are still subject to the individual mandate and you are not entitled any special treatment toward signing up for the Catastrophic Plan. You must pay the full price for an exchange plan and accept whatever out-of-pocket costs and network limits it might have for the money.

To drill down even further: if you were uninsured before, you still have to buy a policy or be hit with the tax. If you were insured before, you don’t have to buy a policy. In other words: the only people not getting relief from the ongoing walking incompetence carnival that is Obamacare are the very people that we were told that Obamacare was set up to ‘help.’
And why is that? Because that second class of people is rather smaller than the first class, and the first class of people are a). very, very angry and b). more likely to vote. Mind you, Barack Obama’s latest panicky band-aid is unlikely to make them happy, but it might keep enough of them from having a red haze descend upon their vision and go on a wild voting rampage across the country. Hard to say, really: we’ve never had an administration quite as inept at governing as this one.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: I don’t know where the President got the authority to do all of this, either. I would have thought that the subject might have come up in today’s press conference; alas, the White House press corps thought that it was more important that Barack Obama share with us his New Year’s resolutions. I’d offer some suggestions, except that we’ve had quite enough scatological commentary lately.