Lies of my President, Revisited

Recall President Barack Obama’s original lie, from mid-July 2009:

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.

Then, when the insurance cancelation notices went out, and Obamacare “insurance” plans didn’t include our doctors in their networks, he lied about his lie.  He had this, for instance, through his Press Secretary Jay Carney:

What the president said and what everybody said all along is that there are going to be changes brought about by the Affordable Care Act to create minimum standards of coverage, minimum services that every insurance plan has to provide.  So it’s true that there are existing healthcare plans on the individual market that don’t meet those minimum standards and therefore do not qualify for the Affordable Care Act.

So it’s “If I like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor.  Maybe.  If I like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan.  Maybe.”

Then he lied with his sham apology:

I am sorry that they, you know, are finding themselves in this situation, based on assurances they got from me.

No apology for either of his prior lies, just regret that all those folks took him at his word.

And Obama thought his lies were funny at the time he made them:

So after I signed the bill, I looked around to see if there any—(laughter)—asteroids falling or—(applause)—some cracks opening up in the Earth.  (Laughter.)  It turned out it was a nice day.  (Laughter.)  Birds were chirping.  Folks were strolling down the Mall.  People still have their doctors.

Five million Americans, and counting don’t have their health care plans, either.

After receiving a letter from her insurer that her plan was being discontinued, Deborah Persico…found a comparable plan on the city’s new health insurance exchange. But her monthly premium, now $297, would be $165 higher, and her maximum out-of-pocket costs would double.

That means she could end up paying at least $5,000 more a year than she does now.

She’s not alone.  In California alone,

Hundreds of thousands…who purchase their own health insurance are bracing to pay more for their plans, as the cost of the federal health care overhaul lands harder on middle-class customers.

The Daily Caller estimates that the total number of Americans about whom Obama is sorry for having believed him will run to 129 million.

Fifty-three Democrats and two Independents in the Senate actively supported Obama in these lies until the cancelations started rolling in.  Now some of those are worried, not about the losses of all these Americans, but about their own political necks.  Two hundred Democrats in the House Actively supported Obama in these lies until the cancelations started rolling in.  Now some of those are worried, not about the losses of all these Americans, but about their own political necks.

And now Obama wants—dishonestly, again—to change the Obamacare law (the law of the land, remember) by Executive Order to force insurance companies to reinstate all those cancelled policies and to extend existing ones.  For a whole year.

Remember that during primary and election season this summer and fall.

Government’s Existence and the Economy

The jobs and GDP reports last week had a couple of interesting tidbits in it, aside from reflecting the continued anemic, below trend recovery in which our economy is mired, courtesy of this administration’s policies.  These reports covered October and the third quarter, respectively.  Now, what momentous things happened that month?  Yes, yes, the ObamaMart rollout, but that’s not what I’m talking about here.  The Democrats’ shutdown of the Federal government happened that month.  Also, the sequester cap on Federal spending continued that month.  Here are some of those tidbits:

  • BLM said private employers added 212,000 jobs on the month
  • [T]he economy grew by 2.8% in the third quarter
  • [G]overnment spending contributed all of 0.04% to that third-quarter GDP

All of this despite that pernicious shutdown and the evil cap on spending.

Government needs to get out of the way.

Who Gets to Decide?

White House Senior Adviser Dan Pfeiffer claimed Sunday on ABC’s This Week that millions of Americans lost insurance their insurance policies because ObamaCare had deemed them inadequate.

[I]f the president were to allow people to have those plans…or insurance companies to keep selling barebones plans…he’d be violating even more important promise to the American people, that everyone would have a guarantee to access of quality…health insurance[.]

Ex-Obama advisor Dr Ezekiel Emanuel (and University of Pennsylvania Vice Provost) said much the same thing on Sunday’s Fox News Sunday.

WALLACE: Dr. Emanuel, simple question—why does Betsy Tadder need you or President Obama telling her what insurance she needs?

EMANUEL: For two reasons: first of all, if she goes in and that insurance doesn’t cover enough…

WALLACE: But she likes her plan.

EMANUEL: But we’re cost shifting.

Plainly our Know Better Progressive Government is the only one qualified to decide.  Not us, not about our insurance, not about our money.

Obamacare and the Sequester

Sequester—that invention of President Barack Obama, with which he intended to extort Republicans and Conservatives into acceding to his taxing, spending, and borrowing economic policy—is starting to cause trouble for Obamacare, now.  The sequester is blocking a set of subsidies that were supposed to help pay deductibles and co-pays under Obamacare.

Amy Payne, writing for The Foundry, quoted Chris Jacobs in The Wall Street Journal on impacts:

There are two possible outcomes.  The first is that individuals who have managed to enroll in subsidized health insurance will find they’ve been misled about their copays and deductibles.  Families who currently think their plan will charge a $20 copayment for doctor visits may instead face a $25 charge when the sequester kicks in.  Individuals who now believe they face maximum out-of-pocket costs of $2,000 may end up paying hundreds more.

Wonderful performance by a President who’s a better policy wonk than his policy staff.

And So It Begins Anew

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D, NV) is at it again.  Interrupting his Nevada NPR host, he demanding that all talk of cutting taxes be stopped.  This Progressive does not approve of such speech, and so we have no right to hear it.  He also

said Republicans would have to agree on tax-revenue increases for Congress to achieve a large-scale agreement, but they instead have their mind set on “nothing more on revenue.”

“And until they get off that kick, there’s not going to be a grand bargain.  There’s not going to be a small bargain.

Straight from the horse’s mouth.  Never mind the $600 billion in tax rate increases he got earlier this year.  He wants more, with no spending cuts (that’s just “happy talk,” he says), or he’s perfectly willing to, once again, blow up negotiations and to threaten the viability of our economy.

All for Progressive ego.