Control freak regulators replace rule of law in Obama administration
Image via WikipediaLast week we saw a troubling new pattern: The Obama administration is embracing an “unreasonable” standard — pun not necessarily intended, but it fits — for deciding if it likes what private sector companies are doing.There is more.
The unreasonable standard is being applied to both private sector health insurers and companies that provide Internet service. But expect the White House to impose the standard on a lot more industries as the Obama blob continues to absorb every aspect of the economy.
What it means is that we are abandoning the rule of law for the rule by bureaucrats. Unelected officials have been given the power to fundamentally remake industries based on their political and value judgments.
Take the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (aka, ObamaCare). The law empowers the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to monitor health insurance premium increases. If HHS bureaucrats identify increases they think are “unreasonable” — which they define, at least for now, as a 10 percent increase or higher in one year — they can begin to harass the company.
The New York Times explains, “A rate increase will be considered unreasonable if it is excessive, unjustified or ‘unfairly discriminatory.’” Translation: HHS bureaucrats, not an objective standard, get to decide who is playing fair and who isn’t.
And the punishment? “Under the new federal law, insurers that show ‘a pattern or practice of excessive or unjustified premium increases’ can be excluded from the centralized insurance market, or exchange, to be set up in each state by 2014.”
What do ya bet that big Obama donors who make nice with the administration will be more likely to get a pass on high premium increases?
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This is what happens when objective standards are replaced with subjective insults, which give the bureaucrats the ability to do what ever theythink is resonable regardless of the facts. This is being done at the same time the government is driving up medical cost that must be covered by the insurers. This is a law that needs to be repealed most ricky tick.
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