The last time we had a Democratic president who wanted to overhaul the entire U.S. health care system, his measure never even got out of a single congressional committee.
Why? Because Bill Clinton had no compelling response to an insurance-industry ad campaign in which “Harry and Louise” talked about the president’s proposal and the likelihood it would force them to lose their current health coverage and choose from a handful of government-approved options.
The ad campaign was so potent because it understood that most Americans are satisfied with their health coverage — and thus fear change.
The blowback Democrats faced because of the Clinton health initiative led to a Republican takeover of the House in November 1994 for the first time in nearly a half-century.
Barack Obama knew this history. So when he became president in January 2009 and began his push for a similarly ambitious overhaul of U.S. health care, he told people over and over that if they liked their health plan, they could keep it. There were no caveats. No strings attached. If you liked your doctor, you could keep your doctor.
It’s quite possible that the president said this so many times that he came to believe it. But it is a matter of fact that three months after the Affordable Care Act was signed into law in 2010, the Obama administration issued rules that will force the cancellation of vast numbers of policies. This is from the administration’s own words in the Federal Register: “The Departments’ midrange estimate is that 66 percent of small employer plans and 45 percent of large employer plans will relinquish their grandfather status by the end of 2013.”
So three years and four months ago, the Obama administration anticipated that some 90 million Americans would be forced to change their coverage. Yet as recently as last month, the president once again said, “If you like your plan, you can keep it.”
This is White House dishonesty on an epic scale. And on Wednesday, instead of apologizing, the administration made things worse. Press Secretary Jay Carney continued to dismiss the cancellation issue, saying only “5 percent” of Americans would be affected. And the president, in a display of epic denial, said that it was the critics who were being “misleading” because they didn’t point out that the policies being canceled were bad policies.
This is surreal. For years, Barack Obama constantly told Americans that if they liked their health coverage status quo, they had nothing to fear from Obamacare.
Then Obamacare begins to roll out, and millions of Americans learn they’re going to lose the plans they like, and how does the president respond? By telling these Americans they should realize they have bad plans that they shouldn’t want.
So the truth isn’t that if you like your health plan, you can keep it. Instead, if the president likes your health plan, you can keep it.
This bait-and-switch isn’t just appalling. It’s obnoxious.
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