Obama Said He Was SorryBut The GOP still Lying About The Law

 
President Obama acknowledges that he was wrong when he said Americans could keep their existing health plans under the Affordable Care Act. He’s apologized, and he’s told insurance companies they should let people keep those plans for a year.

But has that mollified Republicans eager to kill Obamacare, either outright or by draining it of all meaning? No way. If anything, this perceived weakness has them sharpening their political rhetoric.

On Saturday, their designated attacker as much as said Obama lied when he repeatedly assured the public, “If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health-care plan, you will be able to keep your health-care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what.”

Among the phrases used by Sen. Ron Johnson (R) of Wisconsin in the weekly GOP radio and Internet address: “phony…fraudulent…grand deception…false promises.”

“President Obama's so-called apology was as phony as his fraudulent marketing of Obamacare,” Sen. Johnson said.

“Those assurances weren't slight exaggerations or innocent shadings of the truth. They were statements that were fully vetted, coldly calculated, and carefully crafted to deceptively sell your health care plan to a trusting public,” Johnson charged. “It was a political fraud echoed relentlessly by House and Senate Democrats who should be held accountable for the disastrous consequences of their grand deception.”

“Consumer fraud this massive in the private sector could – and should – bear serious legal ramifications,” he said. “For President Obama, however, it helped secure enough votes to pass Obamacare, and win reelection.”

Whether or not Obama knew early on that some people would be kicked off their health insurance policies may never be known. There’s no smoking gun – no secret Oval Office tape – so far.

But large numbers of Americans – already fed up with the HealthCare.gov debacle – are not inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Asked whether Obama “knowingly deceived the public when he said that if people liked their health insurance plans they would be able to keep them under the 2010 health care law,” 46 percent of respondents in the latest Quinnipiac University National Poll say “yes,” including 17 percent of Democrats and 51 percent of independents. (Forty-seven percent say “no.”)

A new Fox News poll came up with similar results: half of those surveyed believe the president knowingly lied when he made the notorious “you can keep it” pledge, nearly 60 percent believe the administration knew ahead of time that people would have their health insurance policies canceled because of the law, and 55 percent think the White House has “tried to deceive” people about it.

With midterm elections around the corner, Republicans are stalking political prey – especially any Democratic incumbents who voted for Obamacare. And they’re using Obama’s “grand deception,” as Sen. Johnson put it Saturday, in politically predatory fashion.

"There's nothing more damaging than when your word is devalued and people think they were misled," Rep. Greg Walden, (R) of Oregon, who heads the National Republican Congressional Committee, the House GOP's campaign arm, told the Associated Press. "And especially damaging is when it actually affects you and your family. So in terms of degree of impact, this is off the Richter scale."

For his part, Obama might have been expected to talk about the Affordable Care Act in his radio and Internet address Saturday.

But at this point, it’s actions instead of words that will be judged. And to dwell on it in this venue – apologizing some more, promising that things will get better with HealthCare.gov – would look like he’s trapped in one issue.

In his address, Obama talked about energy policy.

“Just this week, we learned that for the first time in nearly two decades, the United States of America now produces more of our own oil here at home than we buy from other countries,” he said. “That’s a big deal. That’s a tremendous step towards American energy independence.

Christian Science Monitor

AFoxie Side Dish:

"To reoffer old plans means to go through the whole process again – and some states may simply say no to that. Insurers cannot simply reissue old plans: They must recrunch numbers, refigure the benefits and rates for a complex array of populations, and then resubmit them to state regulators.

“Now you have to have the 50 states and Puerto Rico agree to offer the old plans,” says Thom Mangan, CEO of United Benefit Advisors, an employee-benefits advisory firm in Chicago. “And that’s not very easy to do. You’re going to have the more-liberal states say, nope, we agree with Obamacare, this is the way we’re going, even as the red states – who never wanted to be part of it anyway – say, fine by me.”

Indeed, in blue Washington State, where, unlike HealthCare.gov, the state-run exchange has rolled out with great success, the insurance commissioner rebuffed the president and announced his state would not be reissuing old policies.

“I do not believe his proposal is a good deal for the state of Washington,” Mike Kreidler, the commissioner, said in a statemen. “In the interest of keeping the consumer protections we have enacted and ensuring that we keep health insurance costs down for all consumers, we are staying the course. We will not be allowing insurance companies to extend their policies. I believe this is in the best interest of the health insurance market in Washington.”

Allowing people to keep the plans they liked, many insurers worry, would be catastrophic for the new numbers they have already worked hard to crunch.

One key component of Obamacare, insurers point out, is getting younger and healthier Americans to pay for health insurance. This is necessary to help subsidize the higher costs of other individuals, who will be putting more pressures on a system already exploding in costs.

In the previous system, rates for the young and healthy were generally much lower: Since they generally don’t get sick as much, they were able to pay less, in a setup similar to safe-driver discounts. Indeed, it is many of these Americans who have seen their cheaper health plans canceled and have seen their rates increase.

Now, they can go back to these old plans – assuming states will allow insurers to offer them. But this will undermine the cost structure for those already on new Obamacare plans – those with preexisting conditions, say, who now cannot be denied coverage. These new plans were designed with the assumption that more premiums would be paid by the young and healthy.”