Is the Latest Obamacare Delay About Elections?

Last night brought two significant pieces of news in the saga of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act's health insurance exchanges.

The first is that the government is delaying the second-year start of enrollment for health plans until Nov. 15, 2014. Various rationales have been suggested for this, but to me the most plausible explanation is that the administration does not want consumers finding out their health-care costs until after the midterm elections. Practically speaking, this is a terrible idea: It leaves millions of consumers only a month to get on the website and select a new plan to cover them by Jan. 1, 2015 (to allow for administrative processing, you generally need to buy next month's insurance by the 15th of the current month). And substantively, it's outrageous. The government seems to be making things harder on consumers in order to prevent them from having vital information about their health-care system before they go to the polls on Election Day.