That was then:
This is now:
On Monday The Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed by a San Diego woman who is a seven-year survivor of gall bladder cancer. She liked her health care plan and her doctors, but she was being summarily dropped.
Later that day the paper’s James Taranto’s Best of the Web Today online screed carried the headline: “How Low Can They Go? The White House attacks a cancer patient.”
It seems presidential assistant Dan Pfeiffer sent out a tweet saying, “The Real Reason That The Cancer Patient Writing In Today’s Wall Street Journal Lost Her Insurance http://thkpr.gs/1hHgZjp via @TPHealth. The link is to an article at ThinkProgress.org with the same headline, blaming California health insurance competition for the cancellation. It claims the cancer patient can buy other insurance — though she liked her plan and wanted to keep it — and ignores the fact she is unable keep her doctors, specifically the ones in another state.
No matter how you parse the language and backtrack, the administration knew it was lying and did so repeatedly.
Four sources deeply involved in the Affordable Care Act tell NBC News that 50 to 75 percent of the 14 million consumers who buy their insurance individually can expect to receive a “cancellation” letter or the equivalent over the next year because their existing policies don’t meet the standards mandated by the new health care law. One expert predicts that number could reach as high as 80 percent. And all say that many of those forced to buy pricier new policies will experience “sticker shock.” …
Buried in Obamacare regulations from July 2010 is an estimate that because of normal turnover in the individual insurance market, “40 to 67 percent” of customers will not be able to keep their policy. And because many policies will have been changed since the key date, “the percentage of individual market policies losing grandfather status in a given year exceeds the 40 to 67 percent range.”
As one former administration official explained to the WSJ:
“You try to talk about health care in broad, intelligible points that cut through, and you inevitably lose some accuracy when you do that,” the former official said.
The former official added that in the midst of a hard-fought political debate “if you like your plan, you can probably keep it” isn’t a salable point.
Have Obama and Dan Pfieffer no shame? (AP photo via WSJ)
4TH ST8 
I hope I live long enough to see this criminal go to prison!
In the last sentence by the “former administration official” does anyone else think he, or she, meant “salient point”, instead of “salable point”? Maybe I’m reaching and this guy was admitting they were selling a bill of goods, I suppose soon enough the flowery promise “hope and change” will be equivocated to “hoax and chains”.
Sorry, Bruce, he will never go to prison, he’s a bit different than the usual Chicago and Illinois politician that goes to prison, he has the power to pardon his henchmen and if he deigns to step down after this term, there’s no guarantee of that, his predecessor, likely the Clinton duo, will pardon him for any alleged criminal acts to keep the liberal and minority votes coming. Better you hope to live long enough to see the end of the Clinton dynasty, there is some hope for that with the very young, it took decades but we’ve lived long enough to see the Kennedy influence wane.
Could this explain why all things Obama seem to go so consistently wrong, or is it right? The measurement of success depends on the actual goals…
Why ObamaCare is a fantastic success:
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/10/21/why-obamacare-is-fantastic-success/
[…] ObamaCare promise: It was all just a big lie and they knew it « 4TH … […]
“don’t meet the standards mandated by the new health care law.” I’m thinking there is a semantic issue here. In my humble opinion, the word “standards” equates to a level of quality which might be desirable. I question the desirability of a health insurance policy which includes maternity benefits and the attendant costs foisted on a couple past child bearing age or a couple in which the husband has had a vasectomy and the wife a hysterectomy. I am suggesting that news writers jettison “standards” in favor of “specifications,” which has the Orwellian sound more appropriate to the “one size fits all” Obamacare policy. Perhaps writers should harken back to J. Pulitzer when he said ” … ask any of the [reporters] . . . and you will see that accuracy, accuracy, accuracy, is the first, the most constant demand I have made on them.” Fat chance probably, but in the words of Fats Waller, “one never know do one?”
“I question the desirability of a health insurance policy which includes maternity benefits and the attendant costs foisted on a couple past child bearing age.”
I wonder – do you think women question the desirability of a health insurance policy which includes coverage for prostate exams and prostate cancer?
Should someone in their 20s question the desirability of a health insurance policy which includes coverage for heart attacks?
What about a single man – why should he pay for coverage for breast cancer?
The woman in the WSJ article lost her insurance policy last spring because her company pulled out of the market because it could not compete with larger local insurance providers. You are blaming President Obama for that? Pre-ObamaCare she likely would not be able to find new insurance at all because of her extremely severe and expensive pre-exisiting condition. Now she is guaranteed affordably, quality insurance with no medical screening, with a choice of world-class treatment at Stanford University Medical Center. How is she being disadvantaged?
How nice NYP, you continue to make the points I espouse. Millions of people who are not paying for what they don’t need are going to lose that option, after they were assured of the opposite.
She can’t keep her doctors.
Besides, she was lied to.
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If people without children shouldn’t be forced to pay for maternity coverage, then we should also not be forced to pay for the education of other peoples’ children through property taxes.
Adults without children have been saying that for decades.
The answer is always to the effect we all will be relying on those next generations in our old age so we all have to be sure they are properly educated. I feel real good about the kids coming out of the schools today, don’t you? And I am real happy how my money is being spent. So much so that I went to a couple PTA meetings. I was told that since I don’t have kids I should shut up and sit down or better yet, leave.
Made feel even better about the future….
Ricon, you are talking apples and fish heads here. Our society has a moral, if not legal, obligation to educate our young, much as we were educated and few will argue that a well-educated population is not beneficial to all. We are not morally obligated to subsidize other people’s health insurance.
So let’s see…before Obamacare, if some uninsured couple or mother had a baby, then the rest of us would pay the bill through higher insurance rates and medical charges. Under Obamacare, we pay the bill through higher insurance rates. Sounds like the rest of us pay the bill either way, so why the fuss?
The bill is made even higher.
Joe – you seem not to comprehend that all employer-sponsored health plans (which comprise more than 80% of all health insurance in this country) include coverage for maternity care, prostate cancer, heart diseases, diabetes — all the things that you scorn. I strongly suspect you have such a plan. Has there been some cry of moral outrage about this from the 4 out of 5 Americans who receive group health insurance? No, because that would be nuts.
You seem to believe that an insurance system can be conducted in which each individual insures only against the the types of medical costs which they already have or to which they are most susceptible. If you spend 90 seconds thinking about it, you would realize that that is also nuts.
Now your starting to think about how we can REALLY improve our health care system, Rin!
Congratulations!
Why not drop the employee health care tax exemption, let the companies pay the employees that benefit in cash, give EVERYBODY a tax credit for insurance, and let us go on the open market and select what we want?
Hmmm. What’s the down side of that idea?
Saw the 9/26/13 video with zero telling the lie of keeping your health plan. That was only 5 days before the roll out.
Only the crooked, stupid or desperate still believe this snake oil salesman.
Athos – your plan
1. Would cost much too much
2. Would throw a hundred million people off of their healthinsurance
3 would eliminate all economies of scale
The only reason there’s an economy of scale is the antiquated way that insurance companies choose to sell their product – with personal visits by a salesman. Would we enjoy greater economies of scale if we got our home and auto insurance through our employers? Not likely. Wal-Mart has great economy of scale while making individual sales averaging perhaps a few dozen dollars. Take away group sales and insurance companies would quickly adapt. Problem is, as nyp said, how would we keep the insurance companies from denying coverage or jacking up fees for the less healthy?
Health insurance doesn’t lend itself very well to capitalism anymore. The only way to make capitalism more suitable is through (take a deep breath) intelligent government regulation – an oxymoron, of course. As an example, one necessary regulation would be the posting of prices and results of care. Without clear information for the user about a medical provider’s cost and performance,capitalism could not function.
So why did they bother passing ObamaCare in the first place? Money is fungible.
“So let’s see…before Obamacare, if some uninsured couple or mother had a baby, then the rest of us would pay the bill through higher insurance rates and medical charges. Under Obamacare, we pay the bill through higher insurance rates. Sounds like the rest of us pay the bill either way, so why the fuss?”
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You know, I can’t believe you would suggest that there is no difference between having an expectant mother go without adequate health insurance and making sure she has insurance.
Let’s just start with the money part, since some here care more about that then about questions of basic decency. A woman who has insurance under healthreform has been purchasing insurance before she became pregnant and will continue purchasing insurance for herself and her baby after her delivery.
A woman who doesn’t have affordable insurance will not be contributing premium to the insurance system. Not before her pregnancy. Not during. Not after.
then there is the little question about what kind of care she receives. A woman with no insurance is much less likely to go to the OB for checkups. She is less likely to be tested for problems with the baby. Or to get counseling in how to get proper nutrition, such as folic acid. The odds of inadequate care are much greater.
petey, your description of my plan, sounds the same as Øcare with one big difference. My plan doesn’t include the DC power grab.
athos – under your plan every single person currently covered by an insurance plan at work would receive a cancellation notice. And the insurance companies would have no requirement to cover people with pre-existing conditions.
Under healthreform, some people in the individual market (about 20% of all insurance) are being told that their current plan does not meet quality standards and they are being offered new ones whether or not they have preexisting conditions.
“offered”
More like forced to choose from replacements they wouldn’t have chosen before.
Average 41% increase in premiums is not a 2500 dollar reduction…
petey, the employer mandate hasn’t kicked in yet. You want to guarantee all employer covered insurance plans will stay the same, PERIOD, when it does?
Or do you have more integrity than the bozo in the WH?
Latest bs from sebelius…no rolling heads yet…
http://www.nbcnews.com/health/sebelius-faces-more-questions-health-law-8C11542596?ocid=msnhp&pos=1
It will take some time to sort out the true cost of care. Markets usually don’t respond instantly. In the meantime, corporations aren’t taking any chances with profits and they know their competition are doing the same. Until new competitors come along, prices will be high. One of the disadvantages of private vs government health care. Let’s hope the advantages outweigh them eventually. Unfortunately, the big generators of our high medical costs are the medical providers. Obamacare does nothing about them.
Steve! They took your video!
Fascists!
Oh, here’s a good example of that old programmer’s joke:
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18563_162-57611592/s.f-programmers-build-alternative-to-healthcare.gov/
That’s OK Athos. Its internet and You Tube. Nothing ever gets totally scrubbed…take your pick of the choices in this link:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=obamacare+by+morning&sm=3