Washington Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler.

Democrat Mike Kriedler is and always has been a supporter of the Affordable Care Act. But Washington state’s insurance commissioner also is the duly elected regulator of the state’s insurance industry. He takes his job seriously, and he is doing it now.

The Wire applauds his quick decision not to give false hope to consumers when no hope existed.

On Thursday, President Obama announced an executive order he said would allow existing insurance policies to remain in force — Americans could now keep their health-insurance plans if they want to. It was his second fib on the subject.  His first fib was “if you like your health care plan, you can keep it.” Anyone who actually read the ACA knew that in the individual market the promise was never true. State regulators knew it. Insurance carriers knew it.

Now U.S. House Republicans with 39 Democrats have passed a bill that repeats the fib. The bill will not pass the Senate, but even if it did, it would not work for a simple reason — in the regulated insurance industry it is impossible to go back at this late date. Perhaps if the president had said this in April 2013 it might have made a difference, but not in November 2014.

To comply with the federal rules for health insurance, carriers have had to change their policies, create new physician networks and win approval from state insurance commissioners. In Washington, the process required thousands of hours of work by each carrier and hundreds of hours of work by the Office of the Insurance Commissioner.

No carrier can simply take its 2013 policies and extend them to 2014 — the entire infrastructure is gone. If your old insurance plan still exists, in many cases your old doctor will be gone.

It is too late to go back. For carriers to rebuild their entire networks, run the actuarial numbers, and win approval from the commissioner by January 1, 2014 is a physical impossibility. It can’t be done.

President Obama is trying to dig himself out of a hole. He is hoping to now shift the blame to insurance companies and insurance commissioners, like Washington’s Kriedler. The White House has to know it won’t work, and the political motivation appears obvious.

Some may be angry at Commissioner Kriedler for saying no. They should not be.  Commissioner Kriedler was right in doing it. He did not give false hope. He called baloney on the White House move (albeit politely).

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