THREE MARTINI LUNCH: MARCH 13, 2014

Jim and Greg like that President Obama is effectively delaying the individual mandate although he's doing it in secretive fashion, groan as Senate Dems gum up the aid bill to Ukraine, and laugh out loud at Sheila Jackson Lee for saying the Constitution is 400 years old.



The Obama team quietly gives up on making ObamaCare work

It turns out the Obama team has delayed the individual mandate to buy health insurance - though the announcement was quiet and roundabout, to minimize the embarrassment.

What we're left with is a US health-care system whose engine has been partly disassembled - and a mechanic who doesn't know how to make his plan for rebuilding it actually work, even as he insists we're already better off.

The Wall Street Journal editorial page broke the news Wednesday: In a technical bulletin, the Health and Human Services Department carved out new exemptions from the mandate. "In a word," the Journal writes, "these shifting legal benchmarks offer an exemption to anyone who could conceivably want one."

The blogs yesterday were disputing that this would work for people who never had insurance - but how can you exempt the once-insured but not those who never had policies? That has, in the words of Betsy McCaughey, "a political shelf life of about 15 minutes."

Also read:

Slow-Motion Anschluss: Putin refines an old totalitarian tactic

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