I like President Obama. I voted for him twice. And despite how bad things look with the Affordable Care Act, I still believe he’s better than McCain-Palin would have been. But right now he’s got a helluva lot of ’splainin’ to do.
When he kept insisting “if you like your insurance, you can keep your insurance,” did he not know what was in the Affordable Care Act? Did he not care what was in it? Had he been misinformed about what it said? Was he oversimplifying what was in it? Was he speaking in generalities to the majority while ignoring the minority (a mere 2 million people) who would be adversely affected? Was he too enamored with his own pie-in-the-sky oratory to notice the real world?
“If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period,” he said in a speech to the American Medical Association on June 15, 2009. “If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.” Period.
And what of that surreal moment in Boston last week when, even as media across the country were reporting that thousands of people were losing their insurance, he stated flatly, “No insurance company will ever be able to drop you from coverage. Those days are over.” Is his ivory tower really that high? What planet is he living on?
The word “liar” is ugly and too quickly employed by people who should know better. A lie is “an assertion of something known or believed by the speaker to be untrue with intent to deceive.”
I don’t believe Obama has been deliberately lying, that he’s been repeating something he knows is untrue with the express purpose of deceiving the American public. I don’t believe he’s that stupid.
But at some point, and it had better be soon, I want a concise explanation of why he has, so often and for so long, repeated something that for several million Americans has simply not been the case. Trying to shade his meaning now by adding qualifying ifs and buts is not acceptable. It’s far too late for a verbal band-aid like that. We deserve an explanation.
‘Splainin’ the ACA is a lot like ‘splainin’ economics or religion. It ain’t simple, ‘specially when politics has evolved, or make that, devolved, into a game of sound-bites, tweets and twitters. Which it has.
The best explanation I’ve read on the matter, clear and lucid, is found at this LINK.
I’m not arguing anything pro or con about the ACA here, or asking for an explanation of the law or the dropped policies. What I want, and I doubt I’ll get, is an explanation of Obama’s inexplicable, repeated misrepresentation of the effect of the law on people’s existing insurance policies. Surely he was smart enough to realize that reducing the ACA to a catchphrase that wasn’t universally true would have a lot of negative repercussions. I just can’t fathom why he would do it.
I’m very disappointed. No matter what the cause, the statements President Obama made clearly are untrue. What we deserve is an apology and a clear explanation of why he made the statements. Anything less will not serve him well.
Yep, as the saying goes, “‘Sorry’ don’t sweeten my tea.” I want an explanation and some steps taken to protect those people who lost their coverage. An accident or illness now could ruin them.