• “On Friday, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced that the department had decided to pull the plug on CLASS [a major provision of ObamaCare]. ‘I do not see a viable path forward for CLASS implementation at this time,’ she wrote in a letter to congressional leaders. This is the right conclusion. Although Republicans were quick to leap on the move as an illustration of the unworkable nature of the health-care law, that is an unfair dig. The CLASS program was conceived as a separate, standalone measure.”—editorial, Washington Post, Oct. 18

From the same editorial:

• “At the time the measure was being debated, the Obama administration insisted that it could be implemented in a workable fashion. The administration was also happy to count premium revenue from the CLASS Act—it brings in money in the short term but pays it out later—as part of the projected “savings” of the health-care law. The CLASS Act accounted for $70 billion of the $143 billion in deficit reduction projected during the first 10 years.”

(Source: The Wall Street Journal)