Did Obama Break His Promise?

“…argues that Obama didn’t mean what he said but that everyone should have known that.”

Didn’t they use that same excuse when Obama almost dragged us into a war? Something about red lines.

Do they think they are helping by making Obama seem clueless, unserious and dissembling?

And a lot of people who paid attention did know he was lying and said so. But he wasn’t speaking for their benefit, he was speaking to the people who would take his words at face value. Critical thought is increasingly rare. Most university programs fail to train their students in it these days.

A couple decades ago, I read a book on mental development and speaking. I’ve forgotten the name. The author pointed out that the 6-yr old mind was black and white. It was also the level that politicians spoke at to capture the majority of the public. Would a 6-yr old have known Obama didn’t mean it? Or would they have trusted him on his word?

Could anyone have believed at any point that you could do anything non-trivial to health insurance finance and it not have a negative effect on someone somewhere? The point of keeping your insurance if you like it is to say that the American Heitage-Romneycare flavor of health inurance reform was the most like the status quo of the kinds being considered. I’m waiting to hear from someone who supported ACA that would have opposed it “if only I’d known!”

The only problem I see with this analysis of Bernstein’s piece is this: “In other words, by Bernstein’s own admission, these ‘nuances’ were ‘in the open’ when it was too late to oppose the legislation.” Too late to oppose it? 40 delay/defund/repeal votes, a presidential election, and a government shutdown later, I wouldn’t say the opposition boat sailed the day the legislation passed.

The grandfather clause says the plans have to change to become ineligible for grandfathering. How did all these plans change that made them ineligible for grandfathering?

David –
You said that people would not be able to keep their insurance if it wasn’t consistent with the new regulations, yes.

But were you really under the impression at the time that Obama was saying that policies not consistent with ACA were just fine? Was anyone thinking that or saying that? Not that I can recall. That’s really the question.

The context of the quote was people crying “socialist”. Bernstein’s assessment is exactly correct as far as I can tell.

I’d be interested to know if there is one single example of anyone anywhere whose existing policy has not changed in a way that either significantly raises his rates or significantly reduces his coverage. There is no way that everyone with an existing policy could have been expected to somehow intuit that a statement like “You can keep your existing insurance” meant that every single policy would fundamentally change.

It’s certainly a lie if there is no one to whom the statement applied. I have yet to hear of one single example of anyone to whom the statement applied.

Every single person I know personally who currently has an insurance policy, either through an employer, as a business owner, or individually, has either been informed there will be a large rate increase or has been reassigned (or had all his employees reassigned) to a so-called “comparable” policy that in the fine print involves a coverage reduction so substantial as to make it untenable to argue that it is keeping the same policy. Evidently no existing insurance policies anywhere are in accord with the new ACA standards. One could argue I’ve polled only a small sample, though–perhaps a function of the small number of states my friends and I live in or perhaps I have a bias in folks who become my friends. But for the record, I’ve polled a lot of people at this point.

Well, actually, I haven’t polled my friends who are government employees. Perhaps they get to keep their existing policies. Not to be cynical or anything.

Thomas Boyle –
Well let’s be clear, we’re BOTH adding footnotes. You’re adding the footnote that he will abrogate everything about the law, which I find absurd, and I am adding the footnote that this is a statement in the context of the accusations made against him and the rest of the law (which you find absurd… I’m not quite sure why).

The plain language of the statement is perfectly consistent with both our readings of it. Your task is to convince me or anyone else that a reasonable person thought Obama was tossing the law out the window with that statement.

Proving that is a tall order, to say the least.

It’s an extremely suspect claim on your part for me at least. All these mandates we were talking about in 2009 and 2010 and not one whiff of a mandate that employers cannot cancel existing plans that are not in conformity with the law.

But that’s what you’re asking me to believe everyone thought was said. I don’t buy it.

The political calculus was clearly: say whatever, to sooth peoples’ nerves, and once it has passed, inertia will be on our side.

President Obama’s comments with respect to “keeping your existing healthcare” are simple declarative statements which he has categorically repeated on at least nine occasions. It is patently disengenuous for Berstein or anyone else to assert that we should have known the President meant anything other than what he said. If the now existing healthcare law contravenes those statements, the President should none the less be taken at his word and held to account for his utterances, as well as for the abysmally bad legislation which bears his name.

Daniel,

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/15/obama-ama-speech-full-tex_n_215699.html

You state that you believe his context was a refutation of the claim that the PPACA is “socialized” medicine.

That’s what I’ve come to talk about today. We know the moment is right for health care reform. We know this is an historic opportunity we’ve never seen before and may not see again. But we also know that there are those who will try and scuttle this opportunity no matter what – who will use the same scare tactics and fear-mongering that’s worked in the past. They’ll give dire warnings about socialized medicine and government takeovers; long lines and rationed care; decisions made by bureaucrats and not doctors. We’ve heard it all before – and because these fear tactics have worked, things have kept getting worse.

The next paragraph is the oft debated:

So let me begin by saying this: I know that there are millions of Americans who are content with their health care coverage – they like their plan and they value their relationship with their doctor. And that means that no matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise: 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. My view is that health care reform should be guided by a simple principle: fix what’s broken and build on what works.

What you are trying to do, Daniel, is break apart in some ways and conjoin in others pieces of a speech that, despite popular rhetoric about the President’s speeches, is structured incredibly poorly. If it’s your position that the President meant this second paragraph to refute the claim of socialized medicine then it stands to reason that the President believes that his audience believes (a speech given to the AMA) that socialized medicine means, again given the content of the second paragraph you believe relates to the prior, that it is a removal of choice for a healthcare consumer in seeking the services of a medical expert or practitioner.

And the second bit is harder because President Obama constantly interchanges healthcare plan and health insurance. It becomes difficult to know exactly what he means. But I understand it to mean my health insurance plan. So it would seem he is saying, to someone like me with my particular interpretation, that I can keep my health insurance plan, just as it exists *now* (2009). How that relates to socializing medicine is a bit unclear and he never bothered to address it in any real way in any of his speeches ever. But again let’s consider his audience in this case is the ACA. Did he literally mean health care as in health practices? I don’t think so. He said plan. And he referred to it as being a thing that can be “taken away”. He could possibly mean that some practices could be banned or priced out of practicality. But again he said plan. And that really sounds like insurance plan to a simpleton like myself.

And as far as your remembering the zeitgeist differently than pretty much everyone who is talking about it right now that hasn’t readily shown themselves to be an appologist for the PPACA it’s really quite simple. Perform some searches to articles and blogs of that time frame. You’ll find, quite easily, that actually a LOT of people were discussing this in exactly the manner we are discussing it now. And let’s say you continue to hum loudly and squeeze your mind shut. Consider that the way people are discussing it now suggests that WAS the impression they got from the speech. You might just have to admit that perhaps, even if the President had not intended to suggest that insurance companies would never need to drop existing plans out of compliance concerns or practical business need due to the PPACA, that’s the way it came off.

I’m not suggesting President Obama is the clear-worded, speech God that so many people claim of him (I don’t think he ever invited that claim). And I’m not suggesting you believe him to be that gifted at conveying information. What I am suggesting is that what you got from that speech is minority opinion of almost everyone. And if you can somehow accept that then the implication is that the President and his faithful followers and those who enact policy based on the PPACA should consider that they’re now “doing something” to a vast majority of Americans that they did not want done.

What should result from that realization is far, far more interesting and important than trying to explain to you that what you think he said means NOTHING compared to what it meant to everyone that is not you.

[comment resubmitted with edit–Econlib Ed.]

I think everyone agrees that what the president said mislead a large percentage of those who heard him. Either Obama:

– was uninformed and, off the cuff, told the American people what he thought he wanted them to hear. (That’s hard to believe given the number of times he repeated these statements)
– was misinformed and passed that information to the American people (see above, “that’s hard to believe…”)
– was informed and in turn misinformed the American people

This should rank up there with a previous Republican president’s statement: “read my lips, no new taxes”. At least Bush was overcome by events. In this case, Obama mislead everyone from the get-go

In any event, both of Bernstein’s statements claim that in some way plans were getting “significantly worse” and that’s the reason they were cancelled. I don’t believe that’s true at all. They have been cancelled because they don’t offer expensive benefits mandated in the new law. The administration has, by design, forced the termination of these existing plans.

Well, the very first comment pretty much says it all. Hard to improve on it.

The point, Daniel, is this- a lot of people did point out that Obama’s words in this regard were likely to be lies when taken literally, however, people like Bernstein were as silent as stones when the supporters of ACA chimed in to support Obama’s assertions. They certainly were not out there correcting the misinterpretation. They only speak up now because the original position is untenable on its face and defending it now is just foolish.

[comment edited with permission–Econlib Ed.]

Just find me one example of an ACA supporter who wrote before September of 2013 that Obama was being disingenuous and misleading when he said:

I know that there are millions of Americans who are content with their health care coverage – they like their plan and they value their relationship with their doctor. And that means that no matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise: 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.

Extra points if that person is Bernstein, Sally Kohn, Jonathan Chait, Ezra Klein, or Jonathan Cohn, or anyone from HHS or the Obama Administration. Just one.

1) Obama said what he said.
2) Most news outlets and pro-Obamacare pundits have since repeated it without footnote.
3) Obama (and his apologists) did not do anything to correct the common interpretation of what he said.

The best case scenario for Obama is that this is a sin of omission: he failed to correct the record.

The worst case is a bald faced lie.

Many would call a sin of omission a lie…

Daniel,

Your interpretation of what Obama meant was/is a minority position, and I note that I have only read this position from ACA supporters in the last month– really only in the last week. Quite a few non-supporters of ACA pointed out that what Obama was saying over and over, without footnotes, had to be untrue, and supporters of the ACA consistently said/wrote otherwise. So, where was Bernstein then, or Sally Kohn?

Daniel/Berstein’s contortions are really rather incredible. How many other ways are we, or anyone, to understand the following:

NO MATTER HOW WE REFORM HEALTH CARE…

That implies, no, that necessitates (?) the interpretation, that there is nothing in this reform law, there is nothing hidden that will later surprise you, there is nothing that will suddenly happen that will break the following promise:

“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.”

Period.
Twice.

To most honest people not bent on abject tribalism and partisan apologetics that means my health care isn’t going to change. I can trust the President on this.

But to hear Daniel or Bernstein tell it, here’s what the the President actually said:

NO MATTER (translation: Things are actually way different so ignore this bit. It’s cool, you guys on my side know double speak. –secret handshake, epic fist bump–) HOW WE REFORM (you won’t get to keep your plan. I mean, c’mon, right? If it’s reform and you get to keep your plan, then what are we reforming? AMA Right!!??) HEALTH CARE (health care, health plan, tomato, tomahto).

You gents get the idea. But it’s pointless to argue this because the Left never argues in good faith…’cause they got the truth on they’re side, haven’t ya heard?

Daniel,

In response to your second point, as I suggested, you will find you are wrong about what the prior discussion revolved around if you do some searching. When Obama made these claims – several times as others have pointed out – it was immediately seized upon as being an impossible promise given the language of the law by opponents of the PPACA at the time the President was making these statements. I’m absolutely sure some people talked about the PPACA as being socialized medicine. No doubt. No argument. Many prominent bloggers, neither libertarian nor conservative, specifically utilized this point by the President to declare criticisms of this claim of a “hands off” position by the Administration with regard to current health insurance plans as the very fear-mongering the President spoke of in the “first” paragraph I quoted. But I think you might be surprised to find out a lot of people understood it to mean what the rest of us are trying to convey to you.

Then again, your very claim that it was “only seen… in libertarian and conservative crowds” is a very weak position to hold. Especially since, given those are political viewpoints that are not the political viewpoints of the President, it would make sense that they would be the ones to make a criticism. So to say it was only in the last few weeks is to make it known that you’ve done no research other than to search your own memory. And to claim it is baseless because the only people complaining are the people a logical person would expect to complain is truly what’s “silly”.

And that’s why your own third point completes the counter-argument against your very position!

In Point 2:

I’ve only seen this in libertarian and conservative crowds, and only in the last couple weeks.

In Point 3:

Sure, certainly it’s not like everyone was inventing this up on the spot. My point is that a most weren’t, and the ones that interpret my way are leaps and bounds more plausible.

You directly contradict yourself. Which is why it’s occurred to me that you aren’t talking about what the rest of us are talking about.

*We* are talking about the promise to allow people who prefer their existing health insurance plan to continue to purchase it. *We* maintain, and have for some time, that this was a lie of one form or another as has been outlined very, very clearly above by many.

*You* maintain this oft repeated quote was simply a refutation of a criticism he outlined in the prior paragraph. I outlined very clearly why this can only result in the conclusion that the President did a poor job at it. But I don’t think your point was that he did a good job, either. I can only assume you don’t disagree with this assessment because the majority of your effort has been to repeat that this is a new concern invented by Not The Left as opposed to actually defending the position you claim to be:

leaps and bounds more plausible.

What I ask is that you clarify that last position. Because you haven’t at all in any of the comments you’ve shared here. I think you’ve overstated the positions of those you disagree with by stating that *we* must believe he meant our plans could lock in place as of the implementation of the PPACA as opposed to understanding it to mean that plans that did not include the additional coverage items, risk exposure, caps, etc. could be maintained.

Because what’s far, far more plausible is that you simple didn’t actually know what people thought. And proclaiming people to be unreasonable for their understanding makes no sense whatsoever.

You think the President said that to ensure people it wasn’t socialized medicine. Fine. You need to accept the possibility that others did. In fact a lot of others did. And these others weren’t in your news feed, don’t blog, and perhaps don’t do much conversing on the internet at all about wonkish stuff like health insurance. So if “the news” suddenly decides to bring this to light, it might expose you to a possibility that isn’t unreasonable. Instead it might be a possibility you just didn’t know about.

My interpretation of his strong “Period” statements goes even farther than most of his current opponents.

To really keep his promise (and that’s what it was) there should have been something in the law that prohibited insurance companies from canceling (or significantly modifying, including major premium increases) any existing policy, or dropping any existing doctor from an existing plan. (I think it would go too far to say the president was promising that your doctor wouldn’t ever die though.)

Any bill that did not include these guarantees should have been vetoed by him if we was going to keep his promise.

He made a promise to individuals of two very important guarantees, neither of which was present in the law he signed.

Insight –
There are two options. He could be lying by not including the provision. Or perhaps not including the provision is evidence against your interpretation.

Politicians lie a lot. But pseudonymous posters on blogs that discuss hot ideologically charged topics get things wrong a lot. So there’s no particular reason to have a strong prior either way.

Hmm I sort of agree with Daniel Kuehn here (I am not a liberal btw). Did anyone seriously think that ALL plans would have been acceptable under the ACA guidelines? I agree that liberal health care policy wonks may not have all been honest on that point, but I don’t understand why conservatives and libertarians are so shocked to discover that many plans will be discarded under Obamacare.

Daniel Kuehn, I never mentioned lying.

He broke his promise (possibly unintentionally — is it clear he actually knew what was in it when he signed it, since it is clear Congress did not when they passed it) by signing a law that lacked the protections he promised to include. It was hard to get a bill passed at all, and in the end, the bill fell far short of what he promised, but he signed it anyway.

After signing, when he repeated the statement, he may have been lying or he (still) may have not fully understood the direct and indirect consequences of the law.

Broken promise: most definitely. Lying: not so clear.

pyroseed13: “Did anyone seriously think that ALL plans would have been acceptable under the ACA guidelines?”

No, but there was supposed to be a grandfathering provision consistent with the president’s promise. In reality the provision was too weak to cover a large number of people.

pyroseed13,

People who discussed it online knew it was a lie. It was discussed at great length as being very unlikely. It was discussed at great length that likely Obama was being dishonest to sell the ACA. (A still then unknown beast which we were all still reading to begin to comprehend)

A lot more plans are dropped than people expected. And because in taking these people at their word there are now ACA defenders who are saying things like “duh”, “you’re better off”, “you’re being dishonest about your concern”, “I’m shocked that you’re concerned”, etc. it’s grown into something which should be quite obviously infuriating if a person is honest with themselves. This comment section has proven to me that a lot of people aren’t honest with themselves that other humans a) exist and b) have thoughts other than one’s own.

I find it magical that a person could claim people are unfairly deducing the meaning of one individual’s thoughts and statements and then in the same paragraph perform the very same act on the “opposition” in the argument. It’s so fantastically inconsistent it begs one to wonder why anyone should take a person like that seriously.

What this debate (new or old) has done is to illuminate two kinds of wonks be they professional or amature.

1. Conservatives and/or libertarians or those who opposed the ACA who are saying,”What did you think would happen?” to people who supported the ACA and now feel slighted by it’s effects or those who supported the ACA and believed the President at his word about existing policies.

2. Progressives or supporters of the ACA saying,” What did you think would happen?” to those people who took Obama at his word that even if they didn’t like the changes in the ACA they could continue to purchase health insurance as they had been.

So, if I’m to lump myself in with the tribalism to make it easier to digest, we’re just mad that we were right and we’re being told we aren’t.

The President lied.

pyroseed13 –

I’m glad you said this: “(I am not a liberal btw).” (I’m not either).

And what’s more relevant is that I said back in December 2009 that the mandates are “a very bad idea” and that they force one to consider whether the ACA is a bad bill (on balance I decided it was still worth passing so you could class me as a defender of the ACA, but not of the mandates causing this movement off plans).

Unfortunately, several commenters here have played the game of saying that this perspective we find more plausible is a defense of politicians or the ACA (I wonder if the moderator would let my comment stand if I said David was making excuses for Republicans the way she let RPLong’s comment that I was making excuses for Democrats stand).

This sort of thing is to be expected, of course, but it’s good to drive the point home that we find these arguments convincing and that there’s no real political agenda here.

Daniel,

Given that President Obama made multiple statements to the effect of “you can keep your insurance…” but in each instance was not stating it as a refutation of the claim of socialism how is it you maintain your position is more plausible?

Please be specific.

“Did Obama Break His Promise?”

I have a better question: “Did Obama keep any of the promises he made since 2008?”

@Insight – While I am not a fan of Obama, I am hoping ACA will work. Things like this certainly do not help in that regard. These policy holders should have been notified of impending cancellation once their plans no longer qualified for grandfathering instead of getting surprised now. I don’t blame the insurance companies for this I blame the writers of ACA. And given the way people are getting surprised now Obama’s statement qualifies as a whopper.

Steve J: “These policy holders should have been notified of impending cancellation once their plans no longer qualified for grandfathering instead of getting surprised now.”

It goes beyond that. The grandfathering doesn’t prevent plans from being canceled. It merely ALLOWS the insurer and insured to continue to contract outside the scope-of-coverage regulations if they both choose to. The insurer may not (for whatever reason, but massive changes in the marketplace are certainly a reasonable one), in which case people can’t “keep their plan.”

And then there is the drastic reduction of provider networks.

Obama’s promises were very clear and very broad. He said that “no one” (not just the federal government, no one!) would take away your plan or doctor. That is nothing like what is actually happening.

Read it yourself:

“And that means that no matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.”

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-annual-conference-american-medical-association

Daniel Kuehn,

Let’s suppose you’re right that Obama’s “promise” was aimed at deflecting charges of socialism. Do I correctly understand you, then, as saying that Obama’s statements were intended to mean something like this?

“ACA is not socialized medicine. You will not be required to give up your plans for some government-created plan. We will not make you give up your plan. But of course we can’t control whether insurance companies choose not to offer your plan any more.”

If so, how does this make the statement any less false or misleading? The reality is that the outrage is NOT about insurance companies choosing to cancel policies. It’s about insurance companies NOT BEING ALLOWED TO OFFER previous plans because they are not sufficiently loaded with goodies, or in the case of cadillac plans, not being allowed to offer too many goodies. The ACA severely restricts the diversity of permitted plans and therefore requires by government fiat that insurance companies abandon plans preferred by millions of Americans. And this is clearly in violation of what Obama appeared to promise.

Obama certainly knew that millions would be forced to change plans when he made his statements. The reality is that he repeated his long-standing campaign promise, even though he knew it wasn’t true, because he was appealing to voters’ status-quo bias (h/t to Bryan Caplan) and knew this was the best way to deflect criticism of the plan.

For the average voter, who was far less knowledgeable about the details of the ACA, this has every appearance of a broken promise and they have every right to be angry about it. The only surprise here is that you should be shocked by their reaction.

I don’t think it’s fair to jump to the conclusion that Obama was lying or intentionally misleading the public (no one can claim to know exactly what he meant at the time), but I think saying that his statement was anything less than misleading in effect – once again, not necessarily in intent – is disingenuous. There isn’t much room for interpretation in his statement, “If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period.” When I verbalize “period” at the end of a sentence – and I don’t think I’m in the minority here – I mean without qualification. Clearly, there was a big qualification that he didn’t mention, and now a few million people are unexpectedly unable to keep their health care plans. You can debate if those people should have been more informed or less trusting of a politician, and thus not surprised, but not if Obama’s statement had the easily avoidable effect of misleading a lot of people.

Erik: “When I verbalize ”period” at the end of a sentence – and I don’t think I’m in the minority here – I mean without qualification.”

How do you (or those defending Obama here) interpret his next sentence?

“No one will take it away, no matter what”

(See my post a few back for context.)

Erik,

You say “I don’t think it’s fair to jump to the conclusion that Obama was lying or intentionally misleading the public ….”

Here’s what the Washington Post said yesterday:

“Fact-checkers and journalists have ruled that Obama wasn’t being truthful when he claimed that people who liked their insurance could keep it.”

It’s fair to jump to that conclusion when the evidence is as obvious as it is. Obama purposely misled out of political expediency and calculated that it wouldn’t matter by the time ACA was implemented.

Indeed, in an earlier article the Washington Post gave Obama’s statement “Four Pinocchios,” which is their “Whopper” rating. They appeared to hold in the same high regard a tweet from Valerie Jarrett just three days ago:

“FACT: Nothing in #Obamacare forces people out of their health plans. No change is required unless insurance companies change existing plans.”

The administration is STILL lying.

The way the regulations are written, almost any change, even very minor ones (for example increasing co-pays by $10), will cause a plan to lose grandfathered status.

Since the regulations are under the control of the HHS, they obviously CHOSE to write them that way.

And I can see why. The people already in the individual market on the grandfathered plans are (a) the most likely to continue to buy insurance under the ACA, and (b) the relatively healthy.

Since there is so much concern about enough healthy people buying into the exchanges, it was necessary to force this group of people to pay more in insurance costs in order to subsidize all the sick people entering the exchanges. You can’t have 50% of the individual market on grandfathered plans, and have that 50% be the bulk of the healthy population that is willing to buy insurance, and still keep rates down on the exchanges.

That is probably why we see so many stories where the people whose plans are being canceled go on the exchange and find out that their rates have doubled.

Daniel,

are you familiar with Occam’s Razor? Your loyalty to Obama cannot be questioned. Your willingness to contort intellectually an obvious falsehood into some resemblance of “truthiness” does have an air of heroic pathos. Unfortunately, I am too simple a man to follow your reasoning.

Sincerely,
Thomas Strenge

Erik,

President Obama signed the law with a grandfathering provision which was later “clarified” by an HHS decree which crippled it into meaninglessness.

If a person says one thing at time “n” and does another later at time “n+1” what do you personally call that?

Obama seems to be staggeringly ignorant about all sorts of things that his administration does, so I don’t find it implausible at all that he may have honestly thought that the grandfathering provision was ironclad.

Is incompetence a better or worse trait as a politician than liar in the eyes of “the public”? The President “doesn’t write legislation” but this President sure has gone before Congress laying out exactly what he want’s legislation to look like and those who also share his political party name seem quickly to jump on board with it. And, again, the President signed it. Is a President saying s/he didn’t know “what was in it” an acceptable thing for them to say?

I’m just shocked at the level of understanding given to this President. Is it literally impossible for him to do wrong? To be culpable for anything he does? Is it appropriate for a President to express anger at a group of people he is tasked with commanding to imply that he somehow is separate from them?

Erik,

Consider the very things you just said.

He made the statement, in plain English, as follows:

And that means that no matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise: 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.

And then, granted some time later, he allowed or asked HHS to issue a clarification that went back on what he said.

Now consider your analogy phrased in the same sort of way:

1. Hey boss, I’m coming to work tomorrow.

2. [Hey boss, I’m going to be making some changes to the way I work for you. But I’m not going to be lazy like some have said I’ll be.] And that means that no matter which route I take to work, I will keep this promise: If you want me to come to work, I will come to work. Period. If you like the time I arrive at work, I will arrive at work at that time. Period. No one will change that. No matter what.

There’s a really big difference between those statements. Your analogy just isn’t at all analogous to what actually happened.

If President Obama had, in one of his I’m-looking-away-from-the-prompter-so-you-know-how-much-I-care moments and said more simply, “If you like your health plan you can keep it”, I might sort of see your point. But that’s not even remotely what happened.

And to complete the analogy: Later that evening your wrote an email to your boss from home saying you needed to run an errand in the morning and you were going to be 30 minutes late. You wrote it at a time when your boss had no possibility of responding and informing you that they really needed you to stick to your word. And you wrote an email instead of calling your boss about it even though you have the boss’ number and your boss will take a call from you at any time.

Now you may say that in changing your mind about coming in on time you simply misled your boss. But it turns out it’s probably not unrealistic for your boss to think you lied when you made that statement. In fact it wouldn’t be shocking at all. And it sure doesn’t help that you haven’t been at all interested in explaining yourself to your boss other than to say the time you said were coming in to work was dumb and your boss will get much better results from you when you come in at the new time.

I’m sorry but the man just used language far too strong for me to believe anyone who tells me it was an innocent little claim that the poor old guy just didn’t know he couldn’t pull off and we should all just be “awe shucks” about it.

http://www.gao.gov/assets/600/592411.pdf

The GAO provided an estimate for the number of people who would be dropped as a result of the PPACA. The President and his administration continued with the same talking point. The President continued to make this claim after evidence was provided that it could not be so. The claim still exists on the White House website. The President took action by way of the DHHS to further clarify the law which had the effect of reducing the scope and therefore likelihood that his statement would be true. The President continued to make this same assertion of his original claim.

I think it is fair to say that Obama’s frequent use of his favourite soundbite – “you like your plan, you can keep your plan” ended up misleading people.

Whether it was deliberate or unintentional we can only speculate.

When politicians make these sorts of claims (read my lips, no new taxes comes to mind) it is clearly wise to read the small-print.

Let’s try the following analogy:

Your doctor calls you to say, “having run all the available tests, there’s nothing wrong, you’re fine. Period.” Six months later when you start getting sick you go to another specialist, who looks at your previously run tests and informs you that you have a serious condition that was flagged in the results. If you had known about that condition at the time of the original report, you would have done things differently and not be in this dire situation now.

You call the first doctor’s office to ask why you were intentionally mislead? The doctor doesn’t respond directly but his office manager (Jerry Bern) writes a note saying that you are being disingenuous for claiming to have been mislead. As he helpfully points out, you could have easily asked for and read the (2000+ page) test report at the time and would have known of the seriousness of your condition. Clearly, the nuanced meaning of what the doctor said to you was, “besides what’s in the report, you’re perfectly fine.”

This becomes an issue on your blog and a few clear thinking commenters also helpfully point out that: 1) You are missing the context. In context, the doctor was holding what any sensible person would have assumed to be your report when he spoke to you, by which he strongly implied that he wasn’t referring to what’s actually in your test results and you need to read the report yourself. 2) One commenter adds, since this doctor is known to be misinformed/uninformed about many reports that come to his desk, it is silly for you to assume that he’s basing his opinion on what’s actually in the report. 3) Another commenter points out that the venerable doctor did not intentionally mislead (as you so crassly said) because when he informed you in time period x that you were fine, he believed that to be true. Later in time period y, when he was informed by you of the actual test results, he fully understood your condition. Undoubtedly, these were independent events that only a knave or a fool would conflate.

Hope this helps, though I’m not holding my breath.

Standard practices for vetting presidential speeches leave no doubt that Obama’s team deliberately deceived us.