A day after he questioned President Obama’s decision to unwind a major tenet of the health-care law and said the nation’s capital might not go along, D.C. insurance commissioner William P. White was fired.
White was called into a meeting Friday afternoon with one of
Mayor Vincent C. Gray’s (D) top deputies and told that the mayor “wants
to go in a different direction,” White told The Washington Post on
Saturday.
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.’ ”
In a statement issued Thursday, White hinted strongly that he opposed the idea.
“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,” White said Thursday.
White’s
statement was removed from the department’s Web site sometime before
Friday morning. Asked about the removal Friday, spokesman Michael Flagg
said the department’s statement had changed. (Continues)
No comments:
Post a Comment