No she is saying if they blame Obamacare they will be fined
Its not that clear cut. Firstly the word "fine" doesn't even appear in that article, secondly the article is baised and obviously makes no attempt at objective analysis, its there to provide its readers with an opinion. It doesn't even provide you with a source. In other words is not better than a sourceless post on this website.
Thirdly, from the own article it states: "She acknowledges that many of the law's "key protections" take effect later this month and does not deny that these impose additional costs on insurers." And then later states "She promises to issue regulations to require "state or federal review of all potentially unreasonable rate increases."
What it sounds like to me is something similar to monopolies for other services like power or water in many areas. Where there is only one power/water provider which holds a monopoly but must submit its rate increases for gov't approval either state/federal to ensure that the monopoly doesn't run among. The government allows the monopoly to exist in the first place because of how infrastructure heavy it is. THAT is a long established practice and is long backed by legal precedence, so as far as the LAW and the COURTS are concerned there's no violation. Now you can think whatever you like, there's people who think that the laws banning production of meth are violations of their free speech, but legally they have no case.
So lets be clear, if the article is looking at the facts which I think they are looking at, because there's so much bs its hard to tell, then a government agency would have to sue a company in federal or state court if they felt the companies' rates had been unfairly gouged, at that time the court would issue a verdict.
So the laws changing, its not being thrown out the window.
Then you have statements like this "the first year in which state insurance exchanges are slated to get a monopoly on the issuance of individual health insurance policies. Sebelius is threatening to put health insurers out of business in a substantial portion of the market if they state that Obamacare is boosting their costs."
Why would they want to put the company out of business? It would be like refusing to allow the water company to raise its rates after they show that the price of water has increased and if they don't raise their rates they will go bankrupt. What possible motivation would they have for that, there's no explanation. If the water company goes out of business, than no one has water, if they nationalize health insurance companies, which they won't but lets say they do, and force them out of business than NO ONE will have health insurance. Why would anyone deliberately do that? Its borderline conspiracy stuff.
Now what she's threatening is this "We will also keep track of insurers with a record of unjustified rate increases: those plans may be excluded from health insurance Exchanges in 2014."
Do you know what the Health Insurance Exchanges of 2014 are? Probably not, and I'm not 100% on the matter either but here's my understanding. The Exchanges will be an attempt to create the largest pool of insured individuals, the model for insurance is that the larger the pool of customers the less each has to pay in order to cover all costs paid out by the insurer. Thats part of the idea behind "Obamacare" is to create an insurance Exchange where companies can come under one roof, headed by either the state or federal government, and insure each other thus increasing the size and lowering costs. Thats the THEORY. The threat coming from this women is that companies with rates which are too high, may not be able to join and thus will be forced by the market and the size of their consumer base to have rates higher than what the gov't Exchange is offering. Thus harming their business.
Now you might say well thats exactly what I'm talking about! But its not, because its not forcing them out of business its simply competing with them. Its like the Post Office, which hasn't forced Fedex or UPS out of business. Or the Police/military which hasn't forced your AK-47 out of your house. Or government employment offices which haven't forced the classified section of the newspaper, or Monster.com or whatever else out of existence.
So let me say in conclusion that LEGALLY there's no violation of any law in here because this plan fits nicely into established legal precedence. And you should also all know that I don't personally support this health care bill, because while the theory is nice, I don't have high hopes for it working in practice and I'm always nervous about government competing with private industry for consumers. HOWEVER what Sebelius is doing isn't violating any 1st Amendment rights..
