I’ve got a new piece up at PJ. It’s about MIT economist Jonathan Gruber’s claim that only 3% of the population will be hurt financially by premium changes as a result of Obamacare, a statistic that’s currently being trumpeted by the left.
[NOTE: I just noticed this article by Megan McArdle that critiques a graph based on Gruber’s predictions.]
President Obama repeatedly and brazenly lied to the American people about keeping their health insurance plans and their doctors, and now he uses sophistry and more lies to weasel out of it, adding that they should just “Shop around” for a new one if they lost the one they had.
Here’s a three-and-a-half-minute excerpt from Obama’s speech, including (at about 1:33) the part where he uses that phrase:
I was going to analyze what he said in the excerpt, but I quickly became overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task. Although it’s short, it contains so many lies, prevarications, distortions, errors, and attempts to mislead that the analysis would be novella length.
And to what point? There are those who have noticed and been offended by lie after lie after lie, and those who have either been taken in by them, are not paying attention, minimize them, excuse them, or applaud them because the ends justify the means and they agree with his ends.
Is there even one liberal talking head on TV or pundit in print who has admitted that the president flat-out lied? Is there one who hasn’t offered a convoluted excuse that should fill that person with shame but somehow does not? The only one I’ve seen so far who admits Obama lied is Douglas Schoen, and he’s hardly any sort of Democrat at all, although he still calls himself one. He opposed Obama’s 2012 run, and some time ago declared the ACA a “disaster” for the Democratic Party.
So as a Democrat, Schoen certainly has a large asterisk next to his name.
The others offer a cornucopia of excuses, proving (if there had previously been a particle of doubt) that they have given up any pretense of integrity. Smilingly, they present the official talking points, from “he didn’t know the truth when he made the promises” (despite this) to “it was an incomplete statement; what he really meant was…” to “all the canceled policies were junk and those who liked them fools, so we must make the decision for them in order to protect them from their terrible judgement” to “oh, it only affects a few people anyway.”
Obama doesn’t plead ignorance—most likely because that would be to admit error, and Obama does not acknowledge errors. His stance is basically that there was absolutely nothing he did wrong. But as you can see from the tape, he does offer his own versions of the other excuses.
This is how tyranny comes to America. Watching the smug faces behind him during the Faneuil Hall speech I sense yet again that this is a plot I’ve seen before, but with slightly different lines and characters. I’m pretty sure the worst excuse of them all would be the “we must make the decision for them” one. That thought is the base on which the tyranny rests.
Some of those nodding, smiling people around Obama while he made that speech want to take over control because they love power itself. Some are just arrogant and think they know best and can actually create a better world. Some are mere followers who bask in reflected glory and like to dance in a ring. But they all have conceded that they have the right to do this.
[NOTE: A bunch of excuses from the administration itself, especially the “incomplete statement” one: it wasn’t a lie, it was a “simplification.” Note, also, that Jonathan Gruber, MIT economist and architect of Obamacare, uses the minimization excuse: the “president’s description of it was ‘pretty low on the totem pole of political overstatements.'” Wow: “overstatement.” From an economist, yet.]
The inspiration is Bob Dylan’s “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again” (you can find Dylan’s original lyrics here).
The singer for this version is Obama, of course. And I didn’t even have to change the lyrics all that much.
STUCK INSIDE OF DC WITH THE OBAMACARE BLUES AGAIN
Oh, the MSM draws circles
Up and down the block
I ask them what the matter was
But it’s all just empty talk
And the press corps* treats me kindly
And records me on tape
But deep inside my heart
I know I can’t escape
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of DC
With the Obamacare blues again
Well, Hillary, she’s in the alley
With her pantsuits and her Bill
Speaking to some Ayers man
Who says I’ve lost my will
And I would send a message
To find out if she’s talked
But the post office has gone bankrupt
And my emailbox is blocked
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of DC
With the Obamacare blues again
Valerie tried to tell me
To stay away from the insurance line
She said that all the insurance men
Just drink up your blood like wine
An’ I said, “Oh, I didn’t know that
But then again, there’s only one I’ve met
An’ he just smoked my eyelids
An’ took away my cigarette”
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of DC
With the Obamacare blues again
Biden cried last week
He’s into Scotch on the rocks
But everybody still talks about
How badly they were shocked
But me, I expected it to happen
I knew it was getting surreal
When I signed the bill in the East Room
And he called it a big effing deal
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of DC
With the Obamacare blues again
Now the senator came down here
Showing ev’ryone his gun
Handing out free tickets
To the wedding of his son
An’ me, I nearly got busted
An’ it’s really not a plus
To get caught without a ticket
And be discovered beneath a bus
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of DC
With the Obamacare blues again
Harry Reid looked so baffled
When I asked him why he dressed
With twenty pounds of scandals
Stapled to his chest
But he cursed me when I proved it to him
Then I whispered, “Not even you can hide
You see, you’re just like me
I hope you’re satisfied”
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of DC
With the Obamacare blues again
Now Pelosi gave me two cures
Then she said, “Jump right in”
The one was public option
The other was just exchanges’ spin
An’ like a fool I mixed them
An’ it strangled up my mind
An’ now people just get uglier
An’ I have no sense of time
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of DC
With the Obamacare blues again
Sebelius said “whatever”
In her grilling by the Reps
When I could watch her talk for free
And then descend the Capitol steps
Now people say, “Aw come on now,
You promised!” they tease and taunt,
An’ I say, “You just know what you think you like
But I know what you want”
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of DC
With the Obamacare blues again
Now the bricks lay on K Street
Where the lobbyist madmen climb
They all fall there so perfectly
It all seems so well timed
An’ here I sit so patiently
Waiting to find out what price
You have to pay to get out of
Going through all these things twice
Oh, Mama, can this really be the end
To be stuck inside of DC
With the Obamacare blues again
[*Can be pronounced “press corpse” if preferred.]
It may well be that what’s been going on lately with Obamacare is that imagology has met reality.
Before the rollout, everything was theoretical. Even now, almost everything is a prediction and projection about what we think will happen.
But there have been a couple of realities. One is the website, even worse than its most vehement naysayers had predicted, and frustrating users in a very personal way. That has a direct effect on the credibility of those who promoted, passed, and designed Obamacare.
Another reality is the people who already perceive themselves as having been hurt by the law. Of course, a certain portion of them—and we have no idea how big or small this group will ultimately be—may be mistaken and may find in time that they actually qualify for better (or worse) insurance policies and more (or fewer) subsidies than they think they do at the moment. But they are very, very real, and they are speaking up and telling their stories.
The link at the beginning of this piece was to an article containing a relevant quotation from the book Immortality by Czech author Milan Kundera. It bears repeating:
…[C]ommunists used to believe that in the course of capitalist development the proletariat would gradually grow poorer and poorer, but when it finally became clear that all over Europe workers were driving to work in their own cars, [the communists] felt like shouting that reality was deceiving them. Reality was stronger than ideology. And it is in this sense that imagology surpassed it: imagology is stranger than reality, which has anyway long ceased to be what it was for my grandmother, who lived in a Moravian village and still knew everything through her own experience: how bread is baked, how a house is built, how a pig is slaughtered and the meat smoked, what quilts are made of, what the priest and the schoolteacher think about the world; she met the whole village every day and knew how many murders were committed in the country over the last ten years; she had, so to speak, personal control over reality, and nobody could fool her by maintaining that Moravian agriculture was thriving when people at home had nothing to eat. My Paris neighbor spends his time an an office, where he sits for eight hours facing an office colleague, then he sits in his car and drives home, turns on the TV, and when the announcer informs him that in the latest public opinion poll the majority of Frenchmen voted their country the safest in Europe (I recently read such a report), he is overjoyed and opens a bottle of champagne without ever learning that three thefts and two murders were committed on his street that very day.
…[S]ince for contemporary man reality is a continent visited less and less often and, besides, justifiably disliked, the findings of polls have become a kind of higher reality, or to put it differently: they have become the truth. Public opinion polls are a parliament in permanent session, whose function it is to create truth, the most democratic truth that has ever existed. Because it will never be at variance with the parliament of truth, the power of imagologues will always live in truth, and although I know that everything human is mortal, I cannot imagine anything that would break its power.
[ADDENDUM: Andy at Ace’s discusses some mighty fine imagology from the Atlantic.]
Obamacare has so dominated the headlines it’s easy to neglect other important news. But there’s plenty of it:
I suppose this first one in connected with Obamacare, too, but it’s a different aspect of it. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has struck down the ACA’s birth-control mandate as violating business owners’ religious freedom. The case may ultimately go to the Supreme Court.
There has been a shooting at Los Angles airport in which several people were wounded (one critically) and a TSA agent killed. The shooter is reported to have been a white male who appeared to have been targeting TSA agents and who “pulled an assault rifle out of his bag, began to open fire in the terminal and proceeded to the TSA screening area.”
This is a nightmare scenario that’s not difficult to imagine, because the checkpoints for weapons are focused on preventing them from getting on an airplane, not the airport itself. Israel, needless to say, has different ways of dealing with these things.
Speaking of Israel—according to Caroline Glick, Israel needs to understand that Obama has and will lie to and betray it. A brief excerpt:
Since Obama first entered the White House, Netanyahu and his colleagues have used the term “strategic interests” as a euphemism for American pressure. By using the term in the context of the freeing of murderers, Netanyahu and Ya’alon made clear that the US has blackmailed Israel into keeping up concessions to the PLO despite the fact that the concessions demoralize the country, destabilize the government, embolden terrorists determined to murder still more Jews, and encourage Abbas to escalate his support for terrorism and his diplomatic war against Israel.
Read the whole thing.
And William Jacobson of Legal Insurrection covers the recent and depressing goings-on at Brown University.
…before they were against it:
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…
On a party line vote, Democrats killed the resolution, which could come back to haunt vulnerable Democrats up for re-election this year.
Senate Democrats like Mary Landrieu, Jeanne Shaheen, Mark Pryor, Kay Hagan and Mark Begich ”“ all of whom voted against stopping the rule from going into effect and have since supported delaying parts of Obamacare.
The Republicans were prescient and tried to protect people—or insurance companies, anyway. The Democrats were not and/or did not. How many people will end up making these connections? Interestingly enough, though, the article appears at CNN. The MSM seems to be covering this story with greater fairness than usual—for the moment, anyway.
[Hat tip: Instapundit.]
I am going to post an excerpt from a post I wrote in March of 2010, two days after the ACA was passed and signed into law. I’m not doing it just to say how prescient I was. And I still don’t know exactly how this will pan out in the long run. I’m posting it to show that what’s happening now with Obamacare was not so difficult to predict. In fact, it was rather easy.
Here you go:
…[T]his bill affects people’s lives in the most intimate way possible””their access to health care””and (despite promises to the contrary) the majority of them are concluding that it will ultimately take away from them more than it will give. They judge that it will take not only more money from them, but their present access to medical choice, something most are quite satisfied with now. They calculate that it will take away the high standards of medicine and particularly medical innovation they have come to expect in this country. And it may even take away the country’s solvency, already highly compromised.
All this has been done by the government without their consent””unless you believe that, once an election has occurred, anything that government chooses to do is by definition done with the people’s consent, even if the government’s plans had been misrepresented before the election.
Arguments that Obama campaigned and was elected on this particular bill are ludicrous (worse than ludicrous: transparently duplicitous). The centerpiece of his campaign was a new bipartisanship and transparency, and some general sort of health care reform was going to be part of it. But the specific provisions of this bill (including, for example, the individual mandate, which he had explicitly disavowed) most certainly were not, nor was this process of bill passage. His most oft-stated promise””that you could keep your current health plan if you like it””has become another joke (unless you understood that the promise came with an expiration date of a year or two).
No, there has never been another bill like it. Historical. The comparisons to Social Security or Medicare are laughable as well. Yes, there was some opposition to both among conservatives of the time. But they were very much minority voices and did not carry the day even within the Republican Party. Both bills were hugely popular with large majorities of Americans, and passed with overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress. No one had to go out afterwards to “sell” them like a snake-oil pitchman; they had already sold themselves.
The process by which the bills passed was the normal one, as well. And, more importantly (even though we see the enormous fiscal costs now), they were mostly seen at the time as “win-win” situations by the American public. Nearly everyone paid into them and everyone would be getting something out of them, and for the vast majority of Americans they did not replace better benefits that were already in place.
In contrast, the current bill is seen as taking from the many to benefit (theoretically, at least) the few, as threatening mightily to endanger the economy of the entire country, and was rammed through against the will of the American people. That’s the sort of “historical” we could have done without.
Big F-ing deal, indeed.
I got a bit of a chill reading that, I must say. And it’s not even Halloween anymore.
…and the Obama administration and the Democrats may not be able to finesse this one:
According to an Affordable Care Act timetable established by administration officials, early next October insurance companies will announce their new menu of health care plans for the ACA marketplaces — plans that may be more varied and numerous than those offered this year, but that almost certainly will come with higher prices.
The likely price hikes will hit the individual and small-business insurance markets only weeks before Election Day on Nov. 4, 2014.
“What genius came up with that timetable?” asked one key Democrat, who declined to be quoted by name because he is involved in private White House talks.
Democratic senators and their political advisers have been lobbying the White House and the Department of Health and Human Services to push back the next “open season” date until after the election, to no avail.
The concern about the 2014 timetable highlights a fundamental political reality of Obamacare: The success or failure of the program depends largely on the kindness of strangers — the insurance companies — and whatever happens in the marketplace, for good or ill, will be ascribed to President Obama and the Democrats, since Republicans refused to vote for the law or cooperate in efforts to make it work.
Obama may come to regret dissing the insurance companies.
He may come to regret a lot of things. Of course, he could postpone the announcement date till after the election—but even low-information voters might start to get a mite suspicious.
[ADDENDUM: Scary stuff. Well, it is Halloween.]
Accent on the very.
The story is from CBS. Reporters seem to be doing some actual reporting lately.
Bob Laszewski describes his old health insurance plan, one of those cancelled ones that the administration is referring to as junk. And he also describes the plans he could get to replace it.
Read the whole thing, and see which you think is junk. The question for the Obama administration is: how many of the people can you fool, how much of the time?
It becomes increasingly clear why the ACA’s implementation was delayed till long after the 2012 election. It wasn’t just to game the CBO, it was to con the country. So I’ll add to the question above: how many of the people can you fool, how much of the time, and for how long?
[NOTE: See also this. Hat tip: Mrs Whatsit.]
…quoted in this article by Ace should read Thomas Sowell’s Intellectuals and Society.
But they won’t; they’re too smart for that. “Intellect is not wisdom,” wrote Sowell, and truer words were never spoken.
The particular weakness of intellectual elites is that they don’t know how much they don’t know. People who have a lot of knowledge of a narrow field often imagine that their knowledge is far more generalized that it actually tends to be. Ace calls the political stance of so many of them “self esteem progressivism.” Sowell wrote another book in which he called it “self-congratulation: The Vision of the Anointed.
One of the reasons an Obamacare debacle would be so very very important is that the stakes are even higher than the health insurance system of the US, although that would certainly be high enough. It’s the Conflict of Visions (as Sowell termed it) between progressivism and conservatism. These two have been clashing for centuries. Wouldn’t it be ironic if, in its hour of triumph, progressivism overreached? Hubris, nemesis.
But even if that does end up happening—and it’s not at all certain that it will—remember Reagan’s words, and don’t feel any hubris yourself:
A lot of happy fans in New England tonight.
And by “New England,” I mean north of Hartford. Hartford is the dividing line. The weather even changes south of Hartford.