memeorandum: Koch-backed nonprofit spent record cash in 2012 (Michael Beckel/The Center …)

5:20 PM ET, November 14, 2013

Top Items:

White House to Allow Insurers to Continue Canceled Health Plans — Obama to Deliver Statement — WASHINGTON—The White House on Thursday will announce a plan for allowing insurance companies to continue offering existing individual insurance policies even if they fall short …

Discussion: Washington Wire, Roll Call, The Heritage Foundation, PERRspectives, Washington Monthly, BuzzFeed, National Review, American Spectator, The World's Greatest … and Conservatives4Palin

Evan McMorris-Santoro / BuzzFeed:

Insurance Industry Rips White House Obamacare Fix — “This doesn't change anything other than force insurers to be the political flack jackets for the administration,” says an insider. — Joe Skipper / Reuters — WASHINGTON — The health insurance industry is already attacking …

Discussion: Wonkblog, The Week, Associated Press, Hot Air, National Review, Weasel Zippers, Ace of Spades HQ and The PJ Tatler

Glenn Thrush / Politico:

LOCKED IN THE CABINET — The worst job in Barack Obama's Washington. — Steven Chu is a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, a brilliant innovator whose research fills several all-but-incomprehensible paragraphs of a Wikipedia entry that spans his achievements in single-molecule physics …

Discussion: Erik Wemple, emptywheel, Weasel Zippers, ABC News, Washington Wire, Poynter, TheBlaze.com and National Review, more at Mediagazer »

Politico:

Obamacare fix: Keep plans — President Barack Obama gave a rare and extensive “mea culpa” news conference Thursday on the rollout of the Affordable Care Act, as he repeatedly conceded that he and his administration had made mistakes in implementing key pieces of his signature policy achievement.

Discussion: CNN, Little Green Footballs, The Week, BizPac Review, Weasel Zippers and White House Dossier

ThinkProgress:

Everything You Need To Know About Obama's ‘Fix’ For Insurers Canceling Plans — The White House announced an “administrative fix” on Thursday that will allow insurers to continue offering their 2013 individual health care plans in 2014 without complying with the Affordable Care Act's minimum benefit standards.

Discussion: Hullabaloo and Shakesville

Jonah Goldberg / National Review:

Obamacare Schadenfreudarama — To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, you'd have to have a heart of stone not to laugh at the unraveling of Obamacare. — First, the obligatory caveats. It is no laughing matter that millions of Americans' lives have been thrown into anxious chaos as they lose their health insurance …

Discussion: Washington Monthly, Conservatives4Palin, Ed Driscoll, The Other McCain and Instapundit

Michael Tomasky / The Daily Beast:

The Democrats Need to Stop Freaking Out About Obamacare and Take Charge — Well, here we are again—the Democrats are ‘in disarray,’ flailing on Obamacare. It's a potent story line, but this time Obama must crack the whip, stop the panicking, and make it work.

Discussion: The Moderate Voice, p m carpenter's commentary and NewsBusters

Nick Gillespie / TIME:

Ads Hide Obamacare Truth: It's Generational Theft — Get a clue, bro. New spots targeting millenials disguise the health insurance plan's real impact — Is massive stupidity covered under Obamacare? What about sexual promiscuity and heavy drinking? Those are some of the questions raised …

Discussion: msnbc.com, Hit & Run, FreedomWorks, Health Policy Solutions, The Latest Word, AMERICAN DIGEST and The Gateway Pundit

Ezra Klein / Wonkblog:

Everything you need to know about the plans to ‘fix’ Obamacare — Democrats are engaged in a tricky game right now: They want to do something to respond to public outrage over the flawed implementation and broken promises of Obamacare. But they don't want to do something that further breaks Obamacare.

Discussion: Washington Post

Washington Post:

Obama announces change to address health insurance cancellations — President Obama announced Thursday an administrative change in one of the bedrock ideas of the new health-care law, allowing people with individual insurance policies to keep them for another year even if they do not comply with the law's rules for minimum benefits.

Discussion: Right Turn, Power Line, The Plum Line, PostPartisan, Politico, Daily Kos, The Fix, Towleroad News #gay, Post Politics and The Lonely Conservative

New York Times:

A Contrite Obama Unveils a Health Fix — WASHINGTON — President Obama bowed to mounting political pressure from across the country and on Capitol Hill on Thursday, announcing new rules that will let insurance companies keep people on health care plans that would not have been allowed under the Affordable Care Act.

Discussion: Close Read, Outside the Beltway, Real Clear Politics, Talking Points Memo, National Review and Balloon Juice

Peter Suderman / Hit & Run:
Obama Admits That Obamacare is Unworkable

Discussion: Wonkblog, JustOneMinute, Bloomberg, Washington Wire, The Dish, National Review, The Fix, Post Politics, Campaign for America's Future and The Other McCain

Daniel Halper / Weekly Standard:
‘Fairy Tale’ Continues as Obama Proposes Extralegal Obamacare Fix

Discussion: Right Turn, Ed Driscoll, The PJ Tatler, Politico and The Lonely Conservative

David Freedlander / The Daily Beast:
Republican Party Weighs a 2016 Shakeup With ‘Midwestern Primary’

Discussion: BuzzFeed and The Reaction

Washington Post:
Full transcript: President Obama's Nov. 14 news conference on the Affordable Care Act

Discussion: National Review, PostPartisan, Liberal Values, Wonkblog, Weasel Zippers and The Fix

USA Today:
Obamacare credibility going up in smoke: Our view

Discussion: National Review and Conservatives4Palin

Brian Beutler / Salon:
GOP's big Obamacare trap: Not as brilliant as they think!

Discussion: The New Republic, The Plum Line, Weekly Standard, Politico, Mediaite, Washington Monthly, Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion and The Hill

Dylan Scott / Talking Points Memo:
How The White House Wants To ‘Fix’ Obamacare

Discussion: The Volokh Conspiracy

Maggie Fox / NBCNews:
‘You deserve better’: Obama offers fix for canceled health insurance plans

Discussion: Red Alert Politics, Taylor Marsh and Weasel Zippers

Ashley Killough / CNN:
Cruz talks about ‘vindication’ with rocky Obamacare rollout

Discussion: The Hill, Talking Points Memo and Politico

CNN:
First on CNN: Obama to push fix for insurance cancellations

Discussion: Mediaite, Weasel Zippers, The Week, Taylor Marsh, p m carpenter's commentary, Washington Free Beacon and The PJ Tatler

Wall Street Journal:
The GOP starts to offer Americans a better alternative.

Discussion: National Review and Washington Examiner

Jonathan Strong / National Review:
Boehner: Upton Bill a Step On Path to Obamacare Repeal

Discussion: Crooks and Liars, DownWithTyranny!, Daily Kos and PoliticusUSA

ThinkProgress:

House Speaker John Boehner: LGBT Employment Protections Are ‘Unnecessary’ — On Thursday, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) reiterated his opposition to allowing a vote on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), which the Senate passed last week. According to Boehner, the bill …

Discussion: Mediaite and Booman Tribune

Igor Bobic / Talking Points Memo:
Boehner Calls ENDA ‘Unnecessary’

Discussion: Joe. My. God.

Eli Lake / The Daily Beast:

Exclusive: Why Dylan Davies Disappeared — The ex-contractor, a key source for last month's ‘60 Minutes’ report on Benghazi, has gone into hiding. British police are investigating allegations his family was threatened. — It is the kind of note a publisher dreads.

Discussion: Mediaite

Nancy A. Youssef / McClatchy Washington Bureau:
Questions about ‘60 Minutes’ Benghazi story go beyond Dylan Davies interview; CBS conducting ‘journalistic review’

Discussion: Politico, Yahoo! News, Washington Monthly, The Moderate Voice, AMERICAblog News, Crooks and Liars, Hullabaloo, emptywheel and Daily Kos

KOMO News:

State rebuts Obama plan to allow old health insurance policies — By KOMO Staff & Associated Press Published: Nov 14, 2013 at 12:06 PM PST Last Updated: Nov 14, 2013 at 1:19 PM PST — SEATTLE (AP) - Washington state's insurance commissioner says President Barack Obama's proposal …

Discussion: Wonkblog, Mediaite, Weasel Zippers, Hot Air and The PJ Tatler

Michael Beckel / The Center for Public …:

Koch-backed nonprofit spent record cash in 2012 — Americans for Prosperity's expenditures last year exceeded all previous years' spending combined — Americans for Prosperity — the main political arm of billionaire industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch — spent a staggering $122 million …

Discussion: ThinkProgress, Washington Monthly and Political MoneyLine Blog

Donald G. McNeil Jr / New York Times:

Car Mechanic Dreams Up a Tool to Ease Births — The idea came to Jorge Odón as he slept. Somehow, he said, his unconscious made the leap from a YouTube video he had just seen on extracting a lost cork from a wine bottle to the realization that the same parlor trick could save a baby stuck in the birth canal.

Discussion: Daily Kos, ThinkProgress and Shakesville

New York Times:

Don't Give More Patients Statins — ON Tuesday, the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology issued new cholesterol guidelines that essentially declared, in one fell swoop, that millions of healthy Americans should immediately start taking pills — namely statins — for undefined health “benefits.”

Discussion: The Moderate Voice