The Washington Post today gives President Obama four Pinocchios for his oft repeated promise, “If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan.”
That’s the highest number of Pinocchios on WaPo’s Fact Checker rating scale. Too bad it doesn’t go to five, because that’s what the promise deserves.
I had a lot of negative things to say about the health care legislation as it was being debated and written. From the very beginning it had some serious shortcomings, and it had even more by the time it was finally passed.
But at no time do I recall reading or hearing about the regulations that are now resulting in hundreds of thousands of people being dropped from their existing insurance plans — the ones they chose, the ones they liked, the ones they could afford.
I have an excuse for my ignorance, however. According to WaPo’s story, the regs I overlooked begin on page 34538. 34538!! I’ve never seen a page number that high. War and Peace only runs to 1,000 or so pages, and I passed on it.
I had no idea, or simply did not understand, that Obamacare included regulations that would result in insurance companies discontinuing certain policies and leaving holders of those policies with no insurance. Clearly the regs should have been written in a way that required existing policies to be amended, not dropped, so that no one would lose their existing coverage.
Those disenfranchised policyholders liked and could afford those policies. The policies might not have been comprehensive Cadillac policies, but they included what the insureds wanted and/or could afford. Not everyone can afford a comprehensive policy. Some people think catastrophic coverage is enough. And that should be their choice, not the government’s. It’s one thing to force everyone to buy some kind of insurance. It’s quite another to force them to buy Cadillac policies.
My ignorance and the intricacies of Obamacare aside, the president, for several years, repeatedly and very publicly misrepresented/misstated his signature program. And some would say if he did it knowingly, he was lying.
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