DC Insurance Commissioner Fired For Criticizing Obamacare Fix

D.C. insurance commissioner William P. White learned a huge lesson on Friday,  the First Amendment doesn't really apply during the Obama Administration.   On Thursday, after the President offered his "fix" to his "you can keep your health insurance, period" lie, White expressed his belief the solution would drive the insurance costs up, and suggested that DC might not go along with the fix,  The next day  White was fired. 

On the bright side, he may be the first person Obama has fired because of the Obamacare debacle.

White said the mayoral deputy never said that he was being asked to leave because of his Thursday statement on health care. But he said the timing was hard to ignore. Roughly 24 hours later, White said, he was “basically being told, ‘Thanks, but no thanks.’ ”

White was one of the first insurance commissioners in the nation last week to push back against Obama’s attempt to smooth over part of the botched rollout of the Affordable Care Act: millions of unexpected cancellations of insurance plans.

The fact that critisizm came from the President's back yard, the nation's capital, must have been especially embarrassing. It would not be surprising to learn that the DC Mayor received a call from the White House asking that White be removed from office.

White's Thursday statement was issued on the D.C. insurance commissioner's Website :

“The action today undercuts the purpose of the exchanges, including the District’s DC Health Link, by creating exceptions that make it more difficult for them to operate,” the statement said.

He also pointed to a statement issued by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners that said the Obama order “threatens to undermine the new market, and may lead to higher premiums and market disruptions in 2014 and beyond.”

“We concur with that assessment.”

By Friday morning the statement was missing. Department spokesman Michael Flagg sent out an email explaining:

“Our statement now is that we’re taking a close look at the implications of the president’s announcement on the District’s exchange and we will soon recommend a course of action after taking into consideration the positions of all the stakeholders."

Lesson learned--don't tell the truth if it means you disagree with this President.