The health insurance industry announced yesterday that it would accept new HHS regulations clarifying that “children with medical problems can get coverage starting this year.” Insurers had previously said that the new law “does not require them to write insurance for the child and it does not guarantee the ‘availability of coverage’ for all until 2014,” when the majority of law’s provisions come into effect. But a a harshly-worded letter from Secretary Kathleen Sebelius seems to have pushed the industry to publicly accept the change.

This morning, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs announced the industry’s stance in a tweet:

@PressSec: Kids 1, insurance 0 as companies agree to comply with new regs so kids with pre-existing conditions can get health ins http://bit.ly/dBkN48

Now clearly Gibbs didn’t want it to come off this way, but a glib, sarcastic tweet directed at the insurance companies isn’t the best course of action right now. Insurers never opposed the new regulations as long as lawmakers understood that covering children with pre-existing conditions would increase premiums and at least two large insurers — Aetna and Cigna — have already acknowledged that they will raise rates in anticipation of the new reform. The law’s rate review provisions may prevent the most egregious increases, but they won’t make premiums any more affordable.

The reality is, the administration will have to rely on insurers (and state insurance commissioners) to implement reform’s many provisions, including the all-important consumer protections. And while I’m not suggesting that a more conciliatory tone would override the insurers’ profit incentives, purposely antagonizing the industry certainly does not increase the chances that it will work effectively to increase access to coverage and adopt cost containment policies.

As I argued here, the administration was right to criticize insurers in an effort build political momentum for passing health care reform. But now that reform is reality, lawmakers will have to turn to work with the industry to enact the measure. The bill Obama signed isn’t strong enough to allow the administration or anyone else to just blow off the industry; it relies on insurers to make the whole thing work.

If Sen. Harry Reid’s (D-NV) home state of Nevada sued the federal government over the health care bill he helped write and pass, it would make a difficult re-election campaign even more challenging. But thankfully, Nevada’s Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto has informed Governor Jim Gibbons that the current Florida-led effort to invalidate the health care law clashes sharply with Supreme Court precedent.

I’ve criticized the Florida lawsuit for failing to demonstrate that the Supreme Court actually agrees with their interpretation of the constitution, but Masto doesn’t pull any punches. This, in other words, is probably what an actual discussion of the state of law looks like:

One theory to consider is that Congress lacks authority under the Constitution’s Commerce and Spending Clauses. However, the authority give to Congress is extensive and appears strong enough to support the Act. Health care costs affect our nation’s economy, and the Act is Congress’ answer to alleviating those costs. The United States Supreme Court long ago determined that insurance is commerce and is therefore subject to federal regulation. United States v. South-Eastern Underwriters Ass’n, 322 U.S. 533 (1944). Since the 1930s and the “long-rejected Louchner-era precedents,” MeadWestvaco Corp. ex rel. Mead Corp. v. Illinois Dept. of Revenue, 553 U.S. 16, 128 S.Ct. 1948, 1510 (2008) (Thomas, J. concuring), Congress’ broad authority has been acknowledge to, among other things, uphold mandatory contributions to the Social Security Act system, Helvering v. Davis, 301 U.S. 619 (1937), and legislate many other federal programs.

The letter also notes that the lawsuit “would not come without a cost” — as Florida has hired a pricey Washington DC firm to handle the case — and argues that “it would be disingenuous for our state to make the argument that Congress does not have the authority to regulate health care under the Act” after the state “used the legal tools that Congress gave us under the Sherman Antitrust Act and the McCarran-Ferguson Act” to challenge a proposed acquisition of Sierra Health Services by UnitedHealth Group.

Other attorneys general have also refused to join the frivolous Florida lawsuit. Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway told the Hotline last week that he will not “waste taxpayer dollars on a political stunt” and Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray has said that the suit has “no legal merit” and would needlessly tie up the resources of his office. Similarly, Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard issued a statement arguing that the “lawsuits have little merit and that participating in them would be a waste of scarce taxpayer dollars.”

Mitt Romney must have been squirming as he saw President Barack Obama defending the bipartisan nature of the new health care bill by citing its similarities with the 2006 Massachusetts reform. “I think that’s unfortunate because when you actually look at the bill itself, it incorporates all sorts of Republican ideas,” Obama said this morning on the Today Show:

OBAMA: I mean a lot of commentators have said this is sort of similar to the bill that Mitt Romney, the Republican governor and now presidential candidate, passed in Massachusetts. A lot of the ideas in terms of the exchange, just being able to pool and improve the purchasing power of individuals in the insurance market.”

Watch it:

It was as if Obama had taken a page from Romney’s own ever-evolving health care stump speech. Just yesterday, during an event in Iowa, Romney — who has previously argued that the Massachusetts and the federal health reform are “as different as night and day” — proudly acknowledged that his bill included a set of new insurance regulations that “President Obama always likes to talk about in his health care plan.” “Overall, ours is a model that works,” he said, before noting, “We solved our problem at the state level. Like it or not, it was a state solution. Why is it that President Obama is stepping in and saying ‘one size fits all?”

Romney’s rhetorical question aside — Obama proposed federal legislation because that’s what presidents do — his newest position highlights the awkwardness of his predicament. On one hand, Romney needs to bolster his can do image by arguing that the individual health insurance mandate, affordability credits, standard benefit package requirements, government-run exchanges and Medicaid expansion (elements of his health care reform) have improved the system. But to retain the conservative base, he is also claiming that these successful policies should not be exported to other states. Rather than building on success, lawmakers should implement a completely untested set of policies that would deregulate insurance markets and help states adopt reforms that are completely different from Massachusetts’ large risk pool approach.

This argument simply doesn’t make any sense and I suspect that primary challengers will ultimately force Romney to walk away from his own health care law. He could argue that the legislature changed his original proposal — Romney vetoed 8 sections of the Massachusetts bill — but if he does, he’ll have a hard time explaining why he called the final package “exactly what we’d hoped for’’ at the signing ceremony.

The Medicare Part D legislation gives subsidizes of about $1,300 per retiree per year to businesses that provide prescription drugs to their retirees and permits companies to deduct the value of credit. Lawmakers hoped that the policy would prevent employers from ending their retiree drug plans and moving everyone into Medicare.

The new health care law, however, pays for itself by eliminating waste in the system and it closes this particular double dipping provision. Companies would still receive the tax-free subsidy, but they’ll no longer be able to deduct it. And they’re angry. Proving that it is hard to take away what’s already been given, large corporations are mounting a public relations campaign to preserve the deduction. In a series of — what seem like coordinated — press releases, AT&T, Catepillar and John Deer, among others, have announced that the revision would cost them billions of dollars and an association representing 300 large corporations is is now urging Congress to fix the change:

AT&T announced last week that it was taking a $1 billion charge because of the provision. Deere & Company announced a $150 million charge, Caterpillar a $100 million charge, and 3M a $90 million charge.

Many companies said they were taking these charges now, before the current quarter ended, to comply with accounting rules. But some corporate critics asserted that the companies’ rapid response to the health legislation was aimed at pressing the administration to repeal the provision. James A. Klein, the president of the American Benefits Council, called the provision “a serious mistake that is having negative and unintended consequences.”

The charges, however, are “noncash,” meaning companies don’t have to write a check for a billion dollars. As the WSJ explains, “since companies had created an asset based on the expectation they would be getting these deductions over the lives of their current and future retirees, they say they need to take a charge reflecting the fall in the asset’s value.” The money at stake for each company is not all that much in annual terms, and the change doesn’t kick in until 2013.

In more general terms, conservatives who are trying to use this story as a way to drum up opposition to health care reform or suggest that other tax hikes for businesses are just around the corner, should ask themselves if they would be expressing similar outrage if the law prevented welfare recipients from deducting the cost of their checks. It seems to me that this is precisely the kind of wasteful spending that advocates of responsible use of tax dollars should support. But as always, they’re nowhere to be found.