Just trust them, right?

This is an amazing back-and-forth from yesterday's White House press briefing.  They are doing this on the fly, folks.  They are governing based on public opinion polls and the 24 hour news cycle.  (Yeah, I know... this administration is not the first, but they are getting better with experience.)

Anyway, just read this.  Notice that Secretary Gibbs has no clue how to explain this.  Obviously he was badly prepped.  After reading this, and even after reading the NY Times article, I am left wondering what this would really do.  Is this just a device to strong-arm the states or would it have real power?  Have they even worked that out yet?  It's not clear to me.

What is clear to me is that it could put a lot of power to influence price and quality into a politically appointed panel being run out of a cabinet office.  What could go wrong?

Q    This new idea for the health insurance rate commission, I guess my confusion is, is this a commission that would sort of be -- serve as a guide to the other states, to the 50 states that do the actual regulating?  Or is this supposed to be a regulatory agency with --

MR. GIBBS:  No, no, no.  This is a -- the Secretary in conjunction with states will develop a review process for unreasonable premium increases.

Q    So the states are still going to be the regulators?  The federal government is --

MR. GIBBS:  Well, obviously they're still going to have --

Q    -- acting as a guidance counselor of sorts?

MR. GIBBS:  They're going to still have a big role in this.  Obviously there are state insurance commissioners that have some ability to change these.  Not everybody does.  But these can -- these will be looked at and evaluated in conjunction with the states, and then steps and measures can be taken.  Because again, Chuck, I think that -- I mean, we've even seen it now with Anthem, that proposed the 39 percent increase, that they've even put that increase on hold.  I think they understand that this was not a --

Q    No, I understand, but is this supposed to be a new federal regulatory agency?

MR. GIBBS:  It's not a new federal agency.  There's no new bureaucracy.  This will be done out of the Secretary's office in Health and Human Services.

Q    Out of HHS?

MR. GIBBS:  And we'll get -- I'll get Reid to walk you through some more --

Q    Okay, because that -- it's just a little confusing if this is a new agency.

MR. GIBBS:  Yes, ma'am.