On March 7th we learned the number Obamacare waivers issued by the Department of Health and Human Services had topped 1,000. Today we learn that the Obama Administration has granted a waiver to an entire state:
The federal government Tuesday granted Maine a waiver of a key provision in President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul, citing the likelihood that enforcement could destabilize the state’s market for individual health insurance.
The U.S. Health and Human Services department said in a letter it would waive the requirement that insurers spend 80 cents to 85 cents of every premium dollar on medical care and quality improvement. Instead, the letter said, the state could maintain its 65 percent standard for three years, with the caveat that HHS intends to review the figures after two years.
The decision makes Maine the first state to receive a waiver of the requirement. Similar requests are pending from Kentucky, Nevada and New Hampshire.
There’s a lot of things I could say here, but instead I’m going to point you to Jon Hall’s American Thinker piece ‘Waiving’ goodbye to the Constitution. Mr. Hall very rightly points out that these waivers go to the very heart of what “a nation of laws, not men” is all about. In short, they violate the Constitution’s equal protection clause… As Mr. Hall notes: “The law is the law only if it applies to everyone.”