Are there other ways of being lawless that matter?  Of course there are, but that’s for a different post.  The foolishness of this example of the Obama administration’s lawlessness is the subject here.

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has announced (sotto voce, via a letter to selected Senators) the latest rewrite non-legislatively effected change to the Obamacare law.

She…would allow people who got cancellations and could not find affordable new coverage to qualify for a “hardship exemption” in order to avoid a penalty next year for not having insurance.

Further…those individuals will be able to purchase bare-bones plans [catastrophic coverage plans] that until now were available only for people under 30.

…expected it to impact fewer than 500,000 people.

Senator Marco Rubio (R, FL) remarked,

Holding a fire sale of cheap insurance is not a responsible fix for a broken program.  This is a slap in the face to the thousands of Americans who have already purchased expensive insurance through the ObamaCare exchanges.

There are more than 5 million Americans in this sinking canceled insurance plan boat, though, not a half million.  And what about those folks who have already re-signed into suboptimal (but more expensive to make up for it) Obamacare plans about whom Rubio worries?  The open enrollment period doesn’t end until next March: how many of those folks will cancel their shiny, new, more expensive Obamacare plans and pick, instead, the Sebelius Plan—to the detriment of the Obamacare law cost structure?

Moreover, the “hardship exemption” under which Sebelius is offering her Plan says this about eligible hardships [emphasis added]:

…experienced financial or domestic circumstances, including an unexpected natural or human-caused event, such that he or she had a significant, unexpected increase in essential expenses that prevented him or her from obtaining coverage under a qualified health plan.

Is Sebelius really saying that Obamacare is a Man-Caused Disaster?

Finally, all this Individual Mandate…folderol…is coming after Obama and his Senate cronies shut down the government rather than delay the Individual Mandate.

Just how idiotic can one grown, adult President and one grown, adult Cabinet Secretary be in one lifetime?