Obamacare laid bare: mendacity, paternalism and subterfuge

Published November 1, 2013

by Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post Writers Group, published in News and Observer, November 1, 2013.

Every disaster has its moment of clarity. Physicist Richard Feynman dunks an O-ring into ice water and everyone understands instantly why the shuttle Challenger exploded. This week, the Obamacare O-ring froze for all the world to see: Hundreds of thousands of cancellation letters went out to people who had been assured a dozen times by the president that “If you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan. Period.”

The cancellations lay bare three pillars of Obamacare: mendacity, paternalism andsubterfuge.

Mendacity

Those letters are irrefutable evidence that Obama’s repeated you-keep-your-coverage claim was false. Why were they sent out? Because Obamacare renders illegal (with exceedingly narrow “grandfathered” exceptions) the continuation of any insurance plan deemed by Washington regulators not to meet their arbitrary standards for adequacy. Example: No maternity care? You are terminated.

So a law designed to cover the uninsured is now throwing far more people off their insurance than it can possibly be signing up on the nonfunctioning insurance exchanges. Indeed, most of the 19 million people with individual insurance will have to find new and likely more expensive coverage. And that doesn’t even include the additional millions who are sure to lose their employer-provided coverage. That’s a lot of people. That’s a pretty big lie.

But perhaps Obama didn’t know. Maybe the bystander president was as surprised by this as he claims to have been by the IRS scandal, the Associated Press and James Rosen phone logs, the failure of the Obamacare website, the premeditation of the Benghazi attacks, the tapping of Angela Merkel’s phone – i.e., the workings of the federal government of which he is the nominal head.

I’m skeptical. It’s not as if the Obamacare plan-dropping is an obscure regulation. It’s at the heart of Obama’s idea of federally regulated and standardized national health insurance.

Still, how could he imagine getting away with a claim sure to be exposed as factually false?

The same way he maintained for two weeks that false narrative about Benghazi. He figured he’d get away with it. And he did. Simple formula: Delay, stonewall and wait for a supine and protective press to turn spectacularly incurious.

Look at how The New York Times covered his “keep your plan” whopper – buried on page 17 with a headline calling the cancellations a “prime target.” As if this is a partisan issue and not a brazen falsehood clear to any outside observer – say, Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler, who gave the president’s claim four Pinocchios. Noses don’t come any longer.

Paternalism

Beyond mendacity, there is liberal paternalism, of which these forced cancellations are a classic case. We canceled your plan, explained Jay Carney, because it was substandard. We have a better idea.

Translation: Sure, you freely chose the policy, paid for the policy, renewed the policy, liked the policy. But you’re too primitive to know what you need. We do. Your policy is hereby canceled.

Because what you really need is what our experts have determined must be in every plan. So a couple in their 60s must buy maternity care. A teetotaler must buy substance abuse treatment. And a healthy 28-year-old with perfectly appropriate catastrophic insurance must pay for bells and whistles for which he has no use.

It’s Halloween. There is a knock at your door. You hear: “We’re the government and we’re here to help.” You hide.

Subterfuge

As for subterfuge, these required bells and whistles aren’t just there to festoon the health care Christmas tree with voter-pleasing freebies. The planners knew all along that if you force insurance buyers to overpay for stuff they don’t need, that money can subsidize other people.

Obamacare is the largest transfer of wealth in recent American history. But you can’t say that openly lest you lose elections. So you do it by subterfuge: hidden taxes, penalties, mandates and coverage requirements that yield a surplus of overpayments.

So that your president can promise to cover 30 million uninsured without costing the government a dime. Which from the beginning was the biggest falsehood of them all. And yet the free lunch is the essence of modern liberalism. Free mammograms, free preventative care, free contraceptives for Sandra Fluke. Come and get it.

And then when you find your policy canceled, your premium raised and your deductible outrageously increased, you’ve learned the real meaning of “free” in the liberal lexicon: something paid for by your neighbor – best, by subterfuge.

 

November 1, 2013 at 9:47 am
Norm Kelly says:

Yet the question is still asked about why conservatives claim that Kay Hagan does NOT represent the people of NC. Liberals claim that Kay is actually working FOR those who haven't had insurance. Conservatives know that millions are having their existing insurance policies cancelled in order for the feds/central planners to provide 'free' insurance to some other group. This is not working for NC citizens. This is why conservatives claim that Kay isn't working for all of NC. She only represents the free-loaders, the socialist, the Democrat party first. Kay represents her party first and foremost, and if there is any room left for the tax payers, then she thinks about them. But she acts for the socialist party first.

Kay continues to carry the lie of Obama. Kay has her head buried in the sand. Just like her leadership asks her to do. Kay continues to lie to her constituents just like her leadership is doing and expects her to do. If Kay represented the taxpayers of NC, the citizens in NC, she would be proposing a delay in the implementation of Obamacare. Kay would be finding a way to allow a free-market plan to replace Obamacare. Except Kay is more a socialist than she is a free-marketer. Wasn't it Kay who wanted to change the name of the plan from ACA to Single Payer Plan? What is single payer if it isn't socialized medicine? What is it when the central planners determine for me what I MUST BUY under penalty of law? Thinking people know it's called socialism.

Obviously I agree with Charles. The entire idea of Obamacare is nothing but lies and deceit. Oh, and add in the know-it-all central planners who tell me that the plan I chose, with the options I chose, is substandard, doesn't meet THEIR idea of adequate coverage, and therefore can NO LONGER be a CHOICE of mine. The central planners always know better.

What a line of crap!

Who is John Galt?