Today Obama spoke to the Governors about health care reform. In remarks to the National Governors Association, Mr. Obama said he backed legislation that would enable states to request federal permission to withdraw from the law's mandates in 2014 rather than in 2017 as long as they could prove that they could find other ways to cover as many people as the original law would and at the same cost. The earlier date is when many of the act's central provisions take effect, including requirements that most individuals obtain health insurance and that employers of a certain size offer coverage to workers or pay a penalty. This is obviously something they've been working on for awhile because today Secretary Sebelius also wrote about it on the White House Blog. Steve Benen does a good job of summing up what's going on here. So, how big a deal is this? It marks a fairly significant departure from the administration's status quo, but at its root, what we're see
Nancy LeTourneau's big picture look at politics and life