In a speech to supporters, Pres Obama claimed that he didn't say what he said about Obamacare.
But ever since the law was passed, if insurers decided to downgrade or cancel these substandard plans, what we said under the law is, you’ve got to replace them with quality, comprehensive coverage, because that, too, was a central premise of the Affordable Care Act from the very beginning.If only there existed some recording device that would allow us to verify if he actually said that...
Got that? "Period." End of statement. Nothing more need be said. "No matter what you've heard." That doesn't sound much like, "if insurers decided to downgrade or cancel these substandard plans, what we said under the law is, you’ve got to replace them" to me. Maybe I'm wrong.
Since then, Pres Obama gave a semi, sort of, non-apology-apology to the millions of Americans who don't get to keep the health insurance they liked.
That prompted this response from Conn Carroll.
I dont get it. Why is Obama apologizing for people losing their insurance? Last week he said they were all junk policies. Was he lying then? [Hint; yes. ~ O.S.]Or is he lying now? (Hint; yes) Also, does that mean that those of us who opposed Obamacare from the start are no longer hostage taking terrorists with a gun to poor, sick Americans' heads?
Nah... can't be.
Trouble is that, as of today, the White House website still read...
If You Like the Insurance You Have, Keep It:... and as of two days ago, it read...
Nothing in the proposal forces anyone to change the insurance they have. Period.
"For Americans with insurance coverage who like what they have, they can keep it. Nothing in this act or anywhere in the bill forces anyone to change the insurance they have, period."Citizen Link also found the president's defense of his own comments curious.
So, the very clip the White House used in 2009 to "debunk the mythology" is now the very clip they say people don't understand?
The argument goes like this: if the president says it, it's true, and you're wrong. And if the president now says that what he said is not what he is saying, then that becomes what's true, and you're still wrong!Of course! Don't you know? Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia! And when it's not, Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia! Now shut up and enjoy your "free" "health" "care", you racist ingrate!
By the way, those Republican terrorists warned back in 2010 that this would happen, and tried to prevent it, but Democrats voted unanimously to block the intervention.
Senate Democrats voted unanimously three years ago to support the Obamacare rule that is largely responsible for some of the health insurance cancellation letters that are going out.
In September 2010, Senate Republicans brought a resolution to the floor to block implementation of the grandfather rule, warning that it would result in canceled policies and violate President Barack Obama’s promise that people could keep their insurance if they liked it.But hey, it's "only 5%" of the population, right?
Five percent of 317 million is just under 16 million people.
Imagine if Bernie Madoff had swindled 16 million people.
No, that doesn't quite do it justice. Imagine if Bernie Madoff had swindled 16 million people, many of whom never agreed, or had any desire, to do business with him in the first place.
Good point. Madoff was a crook, but he never took anyone's money with threats of prison time and worse. Government does that yearly. Besides, what if it's more than just 5%?advisers did say in 2010 that there were large caveats and that anyone whose insurance plan changed would lose the promised protection of being able to keep existing plans. And a report in 2010 said that as many as 69 percent of certain employer-based insurance plans would lose that protection, meaning as many as 41 million people could lose their plans even if they wanted to keep them and would be forced into other plans. Another 11 million who bought their own insurance also could lose their plans. Combined, as many as 52 million Americans could lose or have lost old insurance plans.Yep. Told you so. Now Pres Obama promises to fix the problem.
Q Josh, the President last night mentioned, when he apologized for problems with the cancellations of policies,that he was going to instruct his administration to go back with some sort of a loop. Can you flesh that out? What are you guys looking at in terms of canceled policies?
MR. EARNEST: I’m not in a position to add a whole lot of additional detail to what the President said last night. The President did acknowledge that there are some gaps in the law that need to be repaired. He has directed his team to consider some administrative solutions to those problems, some steps that his administration could take unilaterally that would address some of those gaps.Wait a minute. I thought this wasn't a problem. I thought the percentage of Americans affected was insignificant, and they could just "look for better insurance on the exchanges", because "that's what they're for". Why would he need to fix this non-issue?
And what if the cure is worse than the disease?
The problem with the President’s public statement is that he has now frozen the individual insurance market in place until he announces his new solutions. If you are one of the 8-10 million Americans with a canceled insurance policy, President Obama just created an enormous incentive for you to hold off on buying a new policy, to wait for the Administration to offer you a new solution.
Had they announced a new solution today, they would not have created this problem. The disincentive to buy a new plan comes from offering hope of a better outcome with no specificity or timeframe.Obamacare desperately needs people to sign up, especially young, healthy people to make up for the cost of ensuring older, sicker people. But they aren't.
Younger, healthier Americans needed to make Obamacare financially viable are not signing up in sufficient numbers. Most enrollees have been people older than 50, many with pre-existing medical conditions.
The skew toward the older crowd raises concerns that there will not be enough payments from young people to offset the cost of providing coverage for the older, ailing population, the Wall Street Journal reported.
If the older drift continues, a more expensive base of customers, older and less healthy, would drive up costs for everyone. The federal government has committed to reimburse insurers if they underestimated costs.Even the uninsured are avoiding the Obamacare exchanges.
The health exchange websites are not only fraught with the technical problems that have led to so much news coverage in recent weeks, but have also generated relatively little interest or use among uninsured Americans -- the primary target group for the exchanges. The majority of uninsured Americans are unfamiliar with the exchanges and relatively few have tried to access them to date, even among those who say that eventually, they will most likely get their insurance through an exchange website.Most uninsured Americans are young and healthy, which is why they opt out of health insurance in the first place. But they are precisely the people Obamacare needs to succeed. And because Obamacare actually makes insurance more expensive (the opposite of what it was supposed to do), they are more likely to continue to opt out and instead pay the fine.
And now, Pres Obama just gave them another incentive to avoid the Obamacare exchanges. Told you so.
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