Rate shock and what “everybody” knew—and lies

The New Neo Posted on by

An excellent article by Megan McArdle:

It’s absolutely true that every policy wonk who was writing or speaking about the law in 2009 and 2010 understood that it would mean premiums going up for at least some people, many of whom would lose insurance that they would have preferred to keep. Who it would be depended a bit on how the law unfolded, of course, but at a minimum, young, healthy people who made more than $46,000 a year [that’s the approximate figure for a single person making 400% of poverty level] could expect to pay higher premiums for the same level of coverage. They had to; mathematically, it was not possible for coverage to expand and everyone’s premiums to go down — not unless you spent more in premium subsidies than the government could afford.

Obama’s lies about everyone keeping their doctor/health plans if they like them are potentially an enormous problem for him. However, what ultimately happens depends at least in part on whether, when the dust clears and people finally get insurance, more people are helped by Obamacare than hurt by it. I suspect more will be hurt. But even if somewhat more end up being helped, an awful lot of people just don’t like being lied to, especially about a material fact that impacts their lives.

Bill Clinton lied to the American people in what was a flagrant manner when he said, shaking his finger:

Whatever strange and narrow legal definition Clinton had used in his Paula Jones case deposition, virtually no one listening to what he said in that clip would think he was defining “sexual relations” in such an arcane manner. When you address the American public, your words mean what they ordinarily do. And the same goes for Obama’s oft-repeated pledge. It has an obvious meaning that completely resists any spin that operatives may try to put on it. “Everybody” knows what it means, and they are correct.

But in the end Clinton got away with his lies. Not without angst, of course. But he remained president, and he’s now a sort-of-respected elder statesman of the Democratic Party, who just might end up making history by being the first First Man. The difference between Clinton’s lie and Obama’s, however, is that Clinton lied about something intensely private that really did not directly affect the American people very much, and the subject matter (lying about sex) was one with which an awful lot of people could identify. Plus, he didn’t do it to pass a bill that would directly affect their lives in some very intrusive ways on some very personal matters.

Obama did just that. And now it’s the American people who might be paying for it: literally.

In 2009 I wrote a lengthy article comparing Obama to a con man. At the time it was more or less a metaphor, although I thought it was a very apt one. He’d conned them into electing him. He’d conned them into trusting him. He’d conned them into thinking he was more moderate than he was. And so on and so forth.

But this time, he has actually conned them, literally. People tend not to like that very much.

[ADDENDUM: Why did Obama lie? He was reassuring Harry and Louise. It occurs to me that perhaps it was Bill Clinton himself—who was especially aware of the details of what happened with the Clintons’ health insurance reform proposal in the 90s—who might have advised him to lie, and what to lie about. Yes indeed, it’s Bill Clinton’s fault!]

Romneycare, Obamacare: same or different?

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: I wrote the gist of this piece last night and was just polishing it up for publication when I noticed that Obama is giving a speech in Boston that apparently advances the “Obamacare was a Republican idea” argument I discuss here. If so (I haven’t read it or heard it yet), how diabolically clever and—if I may use a favorite word of his—audacious of him. I wonder whether that will be the prelude to a future claim that we need a real Democratic solution rather than a half-baked Republican one: single payer.]

Remember the big Romneycare battle during the 2012 primaries and election? That Obamacare was just Romneycare writ large?

As Obamacare runs into troubles, expect more of that as an argument from the left, “We were just enacting a Republican idea, so don’t blame us, blame them“—even though “they” didn’t vote for it.

I wrote a lot about Romneycare during 2011 and 2012 and how it differed from Obamacare and also from what Romney had wanted enacted in Massachusetts and from what Republicans in general had proposed (including, of course, the state-vs-federal government question). The Boston Globe, which had covered Romneycare in some depth, wrote:

Romney…hated the employer mandate and vetoed the provision that employers of 11 or more offer coverage or face a penalty of $295 per employee. This veto, and seven others aimed at less controversial aspects of the law, were easily overridden by the Democratic Legislature.

Romney considers the Massachusetts plan needlessly gold-plated; he would have pushed for a much cheaper version that allowed minimal coverage options.

He believes the Massachusetts health connector, the insurance exchange which the Obama plan would emulate, has created an excessive regulatory burden, imposing too many requirements on what commercial insurers must offer for a policy to qualify as “minimum creditable coverage’’ under the law. His proposal, to require only a bare-bones policy that covered hospitalization and catastrophic illness, was rejected by the Legislature…

Romney also wanted a way for those of means to opt out of the mandate by posting a bond ”” essentially a promise to pay for future uninsured health care costs. Critics called it a “fig leaf’’ and Romney concedes that few would have taken advantage ”” just as only a handful choose a similar option to post a $10,000 bond rather than buy compulsory auto insurance in Massachusetts.

But the principle mattered to him, and the failure of the Legislature to agree still rankles…

And as for those on the economic margin, Romney thought that no one, however poor, should get insurance for no cost at all. He advocated a small premium, even a few dollars a month, for the neediest, but the Legislature balked.

It’s interesting to note how different Obamacare (and even Romneycare) would have been if they had actually followed Romney’s recommendations. But twas not to be. And now the issue gains renewed importance.

This article by Avik Roy is the clearest and most cogent explanation of another major difference between the two:

In 1996, the heavily Democratic state legislature passed the Non-Group Health Insurance Reform Act, which transformed the individual market for health insurance, the market for people who shop for private insurance on their own.

The contours of that bill will sound familiar to observers of the Obamacare debate; it forced insurers in the individual market to cover everyone, regardless of pre-existing conditions, and it forced insurers to charge nearly equal rates to the young and the old, despite the fact that younger people consume very little health care. Governor Weld signed it into law.

The predictable happened. Because people could stay uninsured until they were sick, and then sign up for insurance afterwards, premiums shot up for the chumps who stayed continuously insured through health and illness. Over time, fewer and fewer people could afford insurance on the individual market; eHealthInsurance.com dropped out of the state entirely.

Romneycare, for all its flaws, was a way to bring Massachusetts’ individual insurance market back from the brink. It didn’t repeal the destructive but popular provisions from 1996; instead, it required everyone to buy health insurance ”” the infamous individual mandate ”” in order to make the market function again. It also merged the individual-insurance market into the one for small employers, in order to stabilize the former.

With a legislature that was 85% Democrat, there was nothing Romney could do to go backwards and do away with the requirement for equal rates and mandated coverage for pre-existing conditions. But he did what he could to move the Massachusetts healthcare insurance system to the right of where it had been before, and he wanted to move it even further right by vetoing certain of its provisions, vetoes which the Massachusetts legislature promptly overruled.

Details matter—a lot. But how many people pay attention to them? Obama is counting on the fact that they don’t, and won’t.

[NOTE: Here’s another big difference: “The majority of the citizens of Massachusetts wanted ‘Romneycare.’ The majority of American citizens did NOT want ‘Obamacare.'”]

[ADDENDUM: If you want some comic relief—and I bet we could all use some—go to the comments at this thread and scroll down to the ones that take the form “Mitt Romney told me to…”]

[ADDENDUM II: Romney replied in advance of Obama’s speech.]

I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords

The New Neo Posted on by

Such as Sally Kohn.

Kohn’s is the kind of mind that feeds on control of others—for their own good, of course—while simultaneously dripping venom. Here’s a short excerpt from Kohn’s piece at CNN, entitled “A Canceled Health Plan is a Good Thing” (I suggest you read it in its entirety to get the full flavor):

…[O]verblown outrage is the stock and trade of conservative politics these days.

But here’s what conservatives won’t tell you, lest it undermine their theatrics: Many insurance plans are shutting down because they don’t meet the higher bar of quality benefits required under Obamacare, and of those people who lose access to their plans, many will pay less and all will have better and more comprehensive options…

I know Republicans love their manufactured outrage…

Kohn somehow manages to write an entire 664-word article on the cancellations of health insurance policies—the very subject about which Obama lied, which is one of the reasons so many people are so “outraged”—while never even mentioning Obama or his multiple pledges that this would never happen, period. The nimble mind of the loyal Party functionary can dispense with such details, and hopes you will, too, once you get your nice shiny stuff.

During the run-up to Obamacare and its passage, the right declared that Obamacare would inevitably compromise freedom of choice in health care, among other things. But many Americans either didn’t pay attention or pooh-poohed the idea. The cancellations and broken promises that have been occurring, and the network restrictions that are part of Obamacare but that people probably haven’t noticed yet, make that loss of liberty and choice feel up close and personal and no longer an alarmist abstraction.

But never fear, Komrade Kohn is here to tell you that it all represents “better and more comprehensive options.” So whether they told the truth to you before (and whether they’re telling the truth now) is a matter of such small import that it doesn’t even bear mentioning.

And there’s nothing manufactured about my outrage, either.

[NOTE: And here’s a blast from Hillary Clinton’s past:

Back in 1993, during the fight over HillaryCare, Mrs. Clinton explained Democratic reasoning to then-House GOP Leader Denny Hastert. If Americans are allowed too much discretion over how they spend their health-care dollars, Mrs. Clinton said, “We just think people will be too focused on saving money and they won’t get the care for their children and themselves that they need . . .

“The money has to go to the federal government because the federal government will spend that money better.”

Also, I was curious how commenters at a liberal site would be reacting to the news of all the dropped policies and trying to square it with Obama’s lies. If you want to see, read the comments here and contemplate the hive mind. Be prepared, though; what you see there may make your blood run cold.]

Join the celebration: it’s National Candy Corn Day

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: This is a repeat of a post from 2008.]

No doubt all of my readers, being unusually well-informed people, were already aware that today is National Candy Corn Day.

But did you know it is estimated that in this country twenty million pounds of the classic treat (invented in the 1880s) are sold every year? I personally might be responsible for approximately a ton of that if I gave in to my worst impulses. However, I keep my addiction in tightly-controlled check.

It is part of my penance to confess here that I really like the dreadful stuff and always have. Once I even went to a Halloween party dressed as a piece of candy corn, and believe me I was already a grownup. Continue reading →

Obama could keep his promise if he wanted to

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s a great piece by Ace describing how NBC’s story exposing Obama’s complicity in the re-writing of the Obamacare grandfathering regulations for health insurance proves that he knew he lied to the American people in his oft-repeated promises about keeping their health insurance.

The fact that it was NBC writing the story surprised and puzzled me. So it’s not at all surprising that there was some post-story turmoil and an attempt to censor the most important part, probably as a result of intense White House pressure. What surprises me now is that NBC seems to have decided to reinsert the censored material and stick with substantially the same story as the original.

Ace makes a further point that has nothing to do with NBC and everything to do with Obama (please read the whole thing):

These regulations, being a creature of the Executive branch, can be rewritten by the executive branch at any time. We don’t need a law for this (though one would be useful, to force Obama to do the right thing).

Obama has it within his power to call up the HHS reg-writers and instruct them to honor the promise he made time and again for two years. And he doesn’t want people to know this, because he is determined to break that promise.

That promise was always a lie, and not a meaningless lie at the periphery, but a central lie propping up the political campaign for ObamaCare. Had he told Americans that they would be losing their current health care in order to be dumped into what is effectively a high-risk pool, so that they could subsidize high-risk clients, the public would have rejected the law even more strongly than he did.

So he lied. And lied. And lied. And lied some more.

And even at this late date, he could still choose to honor his promise.

But he won’t, because he can’t — he always intended to take people’s insurance away from them. Always. And he’s not going to undo, short of a veto-proof act of Congress.

Obama would like to tell the American people that he must do this, or that he didn’t do it at all. That the law requires it (it doesn’t), that he can’t instruct his employees to give a more generous reading of the law in their regulations (he can), that his hands are tied (they’re not), that it’s the GOP’s fault (what?) or perhaps a fall-guy’s like Kathleen Sebelius.

But Sebelius, the HHS, and all executive employees answer to Barack Obama. He is in fact their boss.

They are executing his will.

So there is one man, and one man only, responsible for deliberately lying to the American people and intentionally breaking a promise solemnly swore a dozen times: Barack Obama.

And he is the one man who can undo all of this and honor his promise with a mere phone call.

We must push to encourage the GOP to make an issue of this, so that the media will, possibly, bother to ask Barack Obama why he doesn’t just instruct the HHS to honor the promise he made to the American people

[NOTE: By the way, the name of reporter who wrote the NBC story is Lisa Meyers. Cudos to her, and cudos to the editors who decided to publish it and keep it up there.]

A lie is just a truth that wasn’t precise enough…

The New Neo Posted on by

…saith the Democrats.

Much better than “fake but accurate,” don’t you think? If there were a prize for creativity in making excuses for boldfaced lying, I believe the current crop of explanations for Obama’s oft-repeated “If you like your [fill in the blank] you can keep it [him]” promises would win, hands down.

To refresh your memory:

Flash forward to now. Here’s Steny Hoyer:

“We knew that there would be some policies that would not qualify and therefore people would be required to get more extensive coverage,” Hoyer said in response to a question from National Review.

Asked by another reporter how repeated statements by Obama to the contrary weren’t “misleading,” Hoyer said “I don’t think the message was wrong. I think the message was accurate. It was not precise enough”¦[it] should have been caveated with ”“ ”˜assuming you have a policy that in fact does do what the bill is designed to do.’”

Now, I wonder why Obama and other Democrats didn’t make that admittedly more accurate and complete statement—as in, the truth—in the first place? Because it would contradict the lying message they wanted to get out, which is that if you liked your policy you could keep it. Adding the caveat Hoyer has belatedly suggested would have essentially changed the message into something like this: “Obamacare’s requirements may cause changes in your health insurance plan if it’s not in compliance with the law.” And that was most assuredly not what Obama or the other Democrats wanted to tell the American people.

If Hoyer or any of those defending the lies were actually interested in truth, I would also draw their attention to the unequivocal nature of Obama’s statement, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan, PERIOD.” That “period” in there actually means that the statement is complete and precise as is; no qualifications. Not that the “period” was necessary to make the statement definitive, but Obama added it to make it even more so, the better to emphasize the no “ifs,” “ands,” or “buts” nature of his promise.

But Hoyer et al are most assuredly not interested in the truth. They are interested in spin and butt-covering for one of the most egregious and definitely one of the most important lies ever told the American people by a president.

The real problem, though, is not their spin, which would and should be laughable to any thinking person. It’s that some people accept and/or parrot it, and some of those people are members of the still-influential MSM. And if the majority of Americans either nod in accord or shrug in disinterest, than we as a people have become profoundly stupid and/or profoundly corrupted.

Obamacare girl has disappeared…

The New Neo Posted on by

…from the website:

She is no longer, as of this weekend, the face of the health law’s Web site. In her place are four bright logos, each representing a different way to apply for insurance coverage: Online, over the phone, with a paper application and in person.

I had joked that she was in the witness protection program. Apparently I wasn’t that far off:

Health and Human Services does not plan to release her information. Spokesman Richard Olague told Buzzfeed, “The woman featured on the website signed a release for us to use the photo, but to protect her privacy, we will not share her personal or contact info with anyone.”

More ruminations on Obama’s Big Lie: you can keep it

The New Neo Posted on by

Let me say first that anyone who believed Obama was telling the truth when he promised “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan” was naive.

And that’s an understatement. Not just naive; gullible.

Or perhaps just plain stupid.

Why did he say it? To sooth the public, calm the waters of protest, and make Obamacare acceptable. That it didn’t really work—that Obamacare has remained unpopular from before its passage to the present—doesn’t mean he wasn’t trying to make it sound more pleasing and less disruptive to people’s lives.

Perhaps he thought that once Obamacare actually was implemented people would like it better, especially the ones receiving subsidies. That’s potentially a large portion of the American public and a large redistribution of wealth. Perhaps he thought that, as more older policies were canceled or changed, and more and more people came on the exchanges and many received subsidies as well, it would sweeten the deal. Or perhaps his goal all the time was to create a demand for single payer, and to do that he had to break a few health insurance policy omelets without warning the public it was about to happen.

One thing we do know is that his promise was a lie, as in “a statement the speaker knows to be false while uttering it.” NBC News, of all people, is reporting that:

President Obama repeatedly assured Americans that after the Affordable Care Act became law, people who liked their health insurance would be able to keep it. But millions of Americans are getting or are about to get cancellation letters for their health insurance under Obamacare, say experts, and the Obama administration has known that for at least three years.

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.”

None of this should come as a shock to the Obama administration. The law states that policies in effect as of March 23, 2010 will be “grandfathered,” meaning consumers can keep those policies even though they don’t meet requirements of the new health care law. But the Department of Health and Human Services then wrote regulations that narrowed that provision, by saying that if any part of a policy was significantly changed since that date — the deductible, co-pay, or benefits, for example — the policy would not be grandfathered.

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.”

That means the administration knew that more than 40 to 67 percent of those in the individual market would not be able to keep their plans, even if they liked them.

Yet President Obama, who had promised in 2009, “if you like your health plan, you will be able to keep your health plan,” was still saying in 2012, “If [you] already have health insurance, you will keep your health insurance.”

“This says that when they made the promise, they knew half the people in this market outright couldn’t keep what they had and then they wrote the rules so that others couldn’t make it either,” said Robert Laszewski, of Health Policy and Strategy Associates, a consultant who works for health industry firms.

I doubt this would come as a surprise to any reader of this blog—or to anyone who hasn’t just dropped down from planet Xenon. Did it come as a surprise to NBC News?

Anyway, Jay Carney has an answer—it’s just not an answer to the question asked:

Today, White House spokesman Jay Carney was asked about the president’s promise that consumers would be able to keep their health care. “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,” Carney said. “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, you didn’t really hear the promise you thought you heard. And of course, we did the bait and switch For Your Own Good.

[NOTE: By the way, I first noticed this propensity of Obama’s in June of 2008, in regard to campaign financing. He broke an oft-repeated promise, blamed the Republicans, and got away with it.

It also might be time to revisit this, from November of 2009:

Cons, like Obama, are ordinarily out to deceive people as to their true purposes. But it’s an error to think they come across as sleazy. The most effective ones are unusually likeable and charming, even as they pull off their scams. This likeability is not a tangential characteristic of con artists, either; it is a central one.

“Con,” after all, is short for “confidence.” The con artist works by gaining the victim’s confidence and trust. The successful con artist is so very likeable, in fact, that he seems especially credible, and people who might otherwise be wary and cynical drop their guard around him. They don’t examine him too closely, so great is their desire to believe.

Contradictions are waved away. Acts that would arouse suspicion if they were committed by someone else are excused. Important omissions go unnoticed. Inconsistencies are rationalized. Shady company is defended or ignored. Sound familiar?]

Obama lied for you, not to you

The New Neo Posted on by

[UPDATE: I’m adding this link as an update rather than an addendum, in order to spotlight it.]

Obama lied, millions lost their health care.

A defense is shaping up, though, from Democrats like New Jersey’s Joe Vitale:

Critics, however, say the changes belie the president’s often-repeated claim that if you like your insurance plan, you can keep it.

But state Sen. Joe Vitale (D-Middlesex) said it’s a nuanced promise.

“The president also said he won’t tolerate benefit plans that don’t meet the basic needs of our citizens,” Vitale said.

“Basic needs”—like maternity and newborn benefits for those in their 60s. That sort of thing.

Vitale’s statement expresses a basic liberal tenet, though, which is that liberals (and particularly, liberals in the government) know better than you what you need, and they are determined to “help” you get it. Obama, the good father, is looking out for you, and “won’t tolerate” plans that he, in his infinite wisdom, has decided are not what you need. No matter what you may want.

So if he lied to you about it, it was really For Your Own Good.

[ADDENDUM: Here’s another justification, this time from Josh Barro at Business Insider. His article ends with the words:

“If you like your health plan, you can keep it” was never a reasonable promise; health reform that addressed America’s combination of high cost, middling outcomes and spotty coverage was necessarily going to have to change a lot of people’s health plans. So yes, that statement is proving false ”” and it’s a good thing.]