Don's Tuesday column

               THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   12/10/2013

Obama lied—Americans, their health care died

One of the many phony “straw men” arguments populating Obamacare’s kingdom of lies, peddled by hacks and mouthpieces throughout the land, even on this page, was a political cartoon subject. A puzzled-looking man with furrowed brow, scratching his head, says: “Let me get this straight. The law requires insurance companies to change their plans. Then the law forces insurance companies to drop coverage for people whose plans have changed. Then lawmakers blame the insurance companies.”

What can you really expect from the same ideologues that repulsively, despicably called Tea Party Republicans “hostage-takers” and “terrorists” (also on this page) for demanding changes or delays to Obamacare? Obamacrats used the pretext to shut the government down rather than negotiate. Democrats, now embarrassed by Obamacare’s fiasco, have demanded that President Obama make unilateral, extra-constitutional changes or delays to his signature, badly flawed, law. Get it? Republicans demanding changes are “terrorists” but Obama, waving his hand to change it, is a bold leader. Is anyone’s hypocrisy meter hitting “11”?

Our Congressman, Doug LaMalfa, spoke on the House floor about the real-world impacts of the President’s health care takeover, on residents of California’s First Congressional District. “I’ve heard directly from hundreds of constituents who have had their families’ plans canceled. Already, 1.1 million Californians have lost their coverage due to Obamacare … Here in the North State, real people are losing health care plans that they like, plans that the President told them they could keep, and being forced onto more expensive plans with worse coverage and less access. A self-employed family from Tulelake wrote me that their $800 a month family plan is no longer allowed and that they’re only option costs over $1,000 per person. What’s more, they’ll no longer be able to visit their family doctor in Oregon; now they’ll need to drive several hours to Redding for routine visits … Millions of Americans around the nation are paying the price for the President’s broken promises.”

“Broken promises” would be the tactful way to say, “lies”. A politician once was described as such an incorrigible liar that even “and” and “the” were falsehoods. To that, we can now add “period,” as in “… you can keep your plan, period.” This is not some “on one hand, on the other hand” matter of not pleasing “some of the people, all of the time.” This is a matter of utmost gravity and consequence as people were persuaded by a campaign of lies to give grudging political support for Obamacare’s passage; millions are losing insurance coverage; some Americans without coverage will endure unforeseen accidents or maladies after January 1.

Some will fail to have replaced their previously acceptable health insurance, cancelled due to unnecessary, arbitrarily-mandated additional coverage. Or they will show up needing health care and think, based on flawed Obamacare website exchange assurances, that they have a policy that they don’t really have. Already, incomplete or inaccurate information is being transmitted to insurers making policy completion problematic. If the actual premium is based on such bad data, or if the subsidy differs significantly from what was stated on the website exchange, who decides questions of coverage? Some will reasonably decide to go without, based on their good health, youth or inability to purchase non-subsidized or no-longer-legal catastrophic insurance. And some of those will wind up in an unforeseen visit to the emergency room, or will postpone a checkup or test that would have warned of a life-threatening condition.

Obamacare advocates offered statistical projections that if the ACA passed, tens of thousands of lives would be saved (Ezra Klein: Urban Institute … “because they lack health insurance, 22,000 people died in 2006”). If Americans were persuaded by such promises that Obamacare was necessary, won’t it fall on President Obama’s, Nancy Pelosi’s and Harry Reid’s shoulders if, through a flawed, falsely sold set of expectations, people lose insurance and end up dying? How can Obama’s supporters possibly then deny that “Obama lied, Americans and their health care died”? (Bush never lied about WMDs; Katrina was not a Republican creation)

William Warren’s cartoon for “Americans for Limited Government” was titled simply “The Crook.” Obama’s head topped Nixon’s body, in his outstretched arms, V-fingered pose, surrounded by over a dozen of now-infamous Obama lies: “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan. PERIOD,” “Obamacare will REDUCE premiums,” “Obamacare won’t add ONE DIME to the deficit,” “I never said ‘If you like your plan you can keep your plan’”. Classics include: “We’ll create shovel-ready jobs,” “I will cut the deficit in half,” “The private sector is doing fine,” “I didn’t set a red line on Syria,” “Benghazi was caused by a YOUTUBE video,” “Bill Ayers was just a guy in my neighborhood,” “I didn’t know the IRS was targeting conservative groups,” “I had no idea about the AP wiretapping,” and “This is the MOST TRANSPARENT administration in history.”

At least 27 Democratic senators made the same false promise to their constituents: “The list includes the entire Democratic leadership in the Senate as well as Democrats facing tough reelection races in 2014 …” (Byron York). Andrew C. McCarthy brilliantly and devastatingly made the case in (searchable) “Obama’s Massive Fraud—If he were a CEO in the private sector, he’d be prosecuted for such deception.” Nothing so manipulative, and falsely forced on America, has any moral or legal legitimacy, the way I see it.