By Jonah Goldberg
Wednesday,
October 30, 2013
"All we've been hearing the last three years is if
you like your policy you can keep it. ... I'm infuriated because I was lied
to," one woman told the Los Angeles Times, as part of a story on how some
middle-class Californians have been stunned to learn the real costs of
Obamacare.
And that lie looks like the biggest lie about domestic
policy ever uttered by a U.S. president.
The most famous presidential lies have to do with
misconduct (Richard Nixon's "I am not a crook" or Bill Clinton's
"I did not have sexual relations") or war. Woodrow Wilson campaigned
on the slogan "He kept us out of war" and then plunged us into a
calamitous war. Franklin D. Roosevelt made a similar vow: "I have said
this before, but I shall say it again and again: Your boys are not going to be
sent into any foreign wars."
Roosevelt knew he was making false promises. He explained
to an aide: "If someone attacks us, it isn't a foreign war, is it?"
When his own son questioned his honesty, FDR replied: "If I don't say I
hate war, then people are going to think I don't hate war. ... If I don't say I
won't send our sons to fight on foreign battlefields, then people will think I
want to send them. ... So you play the game the way it has been played over the
years, and you play to win."
The burning question about Barack Obama is whether he was
simply "playing to win" and therefore lying on purpose, or whether
his statements about Obamacare were just another example of, as Obama once put
it, "I actually believe my own" spin, though he used another word.
"No matter how we reform health care, we will keep
this promise to the American people," he told the American Medical
Association in 2009. "If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep
your doctor, period. If you like your health-care plan, you'll be able to keep
your health-care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what."
No matter how you slice it, that was a lie. As many as 16
million Americans on the individual health-insurance market may lose their
insurance policies. Just in the last month, hundreds of thousands have been
notified by their insurers that their policies will be canceled. In fact, it
appears that more Americans may have lost coverage than gotten it since
Healthcare.gov went "live" (a term one must use advisedly). And when
the business mandate finally kicks in, tens of millions more probably will lose
their plans.
Ah, but they'll get better ones!
That appears to be the new rationalization for Obama's
bait-and-switch. "Right now all that insurance companies are saying is,
'We don't meet the requirements under Obamacare, but we're going to offer you a
better deal!'" explained Juan Williams on "Fox News Sunday."
A better deal according to whom? Say I like my current
car. The government says under some new policy I will be able to keep it and
maybe even lower my car payments. But once the policy is imposed, I'm told my
car now isn't street-legal. Worse, I will have to buy a much more expensive car
or be fined by the IRS. But, hey, it'll be a much better car! Why, even though
you live in Death Valley, your new car will have great snow tires and heated
seats.
This is what the government is saying to millions of
Americans who don't want or need certain coverage, including, for instance,
older women -- and men -- who are being forced to pay for maternity care. Such
overcharging is necessary to pay for the poor and the sick signing up for
Obamacare or for the newly expanded Medicaid.
At least Darth Vader was honest about his
bait-and-switch: "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any
further." Obama won't even admit he lied.
At the 2008 Democratic National Convention, Obama talked
at great length about the middle class and not once about the poor. His critics
on the right said he was lying, that he was really more interested in income
distribution. Such charges were dismissed as paranoid and even racist. But the
critics were right. Obama was either lying to himself or to the rest of us --
because he was playing the game to win.
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