A “lying apology,” but what did it say?

by Paul Mirengoff in Obama Administration Scandals, Obamacare

John does a an excellent job of showing that President Obama’s “apology” regarding Obamacare merely attempts to perpetuate the administration’s cover-up effort. But what exactly did Obama apologize for?
Here is the main apology sentence:

I am sorry that they [i.e., people who have lost their insurance plan] are finding themselves in this situation based on assurances they got from me.

But no one lost insurance coverage because of Obama’s assurances that they wouldn’t lose it. They lost their coverage by the natural operation of Obamacare.
Obama is probably saying — insincerely — that he’s sorry people find themselves in the situation of having lost their health insurance and are surprised about it due to his assurances that this wouldn’t happen. Indeed, Obama can’t plausibly say he’s sorry merely for the loss of insurance coverage since (1) he has insisted that losing these “bad apple” plans is a good thing and (2) the law was designed so that people would lose coverage.

My interpretation is consistent with the “regret” Obama expresses in the same paragraph:

I regret very much that what we intended to do, which was to make sure that everybody is moving into better plans because they want them as opposed to because they are forced into it, but we weren’t as clear as we needed to be in terms of the changes that were taking place. . .

So again, the “regret” is over people being surprised — ambushed, really — due to the administration’s lack of clarity.

But, Obama had to ambush people. If he had spoken honestly about the effect of Obamacare on existing coverage before Congress voted on it, the law wouldn’t have been enacted. If he had spoken honestly afterwards, he would have suffered immense political damage and jeopardized his reelection.

The real question, of course, is whether Obama’s “apology” will help him and his Party. I don’t think it will. The apology is too garbled. It sounds too much like what it is — a politician attempting to squirm out of a lie.

Moreover, this statement from the same interview may come back to haunt Obama:

We are talking about 5% of the population who are in what’s called the individual market. They’re out there buying health insurance on their own. And even though it only affects a small amount of the population, it means a lot to them, obviously to get this letter canceled.

But, as John says, this 5 percent is only the tip of the iceberg. Once employer plans begin to be cancelled en masse, Obama will be seen to have doubled-down on deception, rather than coming clean in an interview in which he purports to do so.

Voters probably will want to know why their president, when apologizing for not having explained in advance to folks in the individual market that they would lose their coverage, misled folks in employer plans into believing that the problem did not extend to them.

Most will conclude, or be reinforced in their belief, that Obama is an inveterate dissembler.

 

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/11/a-lying-apology-but-what-did-it-say.php