President Chalmers, er, Obama

The New York Times reports that the White House is set to issue rules telling employers they can't cut health benefits or increase employees' health insurance costs.

So, ObamaCare is going to increase health care costs. Employers recognize this. They would rationally respond by cutting benefits or asking workers to bear a share of the increased costs. But Obama doesn't want them to do that.

Tom Bowden astutely compared Obama's petulant issuing of orders in full defiance of reality to the behavior of politico Kip Chalmers in Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged. BO's behavior is no better with respect to health care than it is with respect to the BP oil crisis. He can't possibly not have known that the healthcare bill would increase costs. (At least, not honestly. Not when so much evidence has been presented.) So, even though he does know it, he expects employers to act as if their costs haven't changed, and is issuing rules to make them do so.

Of course, this can only lead to more "unintended" (but eminently foreseeable) consequences, just as it did for Kip Chalmers in the novel.