Not satisfied with the colossal amounts of power that she would acquire under Obamacare if it isn’t repealed, Health and Human Services (HHS) secretary Kathleen Sebelius has issued a 136-page “rule” that will now give her (and her subordinates) largely unchecked power to pass judgment on the prices of health insurance throughout the United States. Notwithstanding the fact that 43 states already regulate and approve health insurance premiums, Sebelius claims that we need an additional, more centralized, protection against insurers’ unseemly ‘profit motive.’ But a far greater threat to the future of American republicanism is posed by the impulse that animates Sebelius and the bulk of the Obama administration: the power motive.

It’s staggering that one person would think that she should ultimately get to decide what a product, which Obamacare would soon require all Americans to purchase, should cost. Moreover, the Wall Street Journal writes that Sebelius’s “rule” marks “an effort to end-run Congress, which by some miracle declined to give HHS the formal legal authority to explicitly block premium increases, despite a direct appeal from President Obama.” Not having been granted that formal power, “Ms. Sebelius is creating by regulatory fiat larger de facto powers to achieve the same end.”