The Obamacare rollout has been a huge mess, by pretty much anyone’s standards. Democrats are doing their best to distance themselves from it and we’ve had to endure the President’s apology tour and ridiculous proposals to “fix” the countless problems with the law and its rollout.
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Here are five of the top fumbles the president has made throughout the process.
1. It’ll be just like shopping on Amazon or Travelocity!
Actually, it won’t be. Mainly because those sites, you know, work and people get good deals on products they are generally pleased with. Even the AP called B.S. on this one months before the rollout even happened, when it was revealed that they missed deadline after deadline and things were shaping up to be the disaster that they ended up being.
“I’m accused of a lot of things, but I don’t think I’m stupid enough to go around saying, ‘This is going to be like shopping on Amazon or Travelocity,’ a week before the website opens if I thought that it wasn’t going to work,” he said.
2. The lie he repeated, over and over, for a really long time
When they were busy selling this new law, the President was careful to assure Americans that if they were happy with their insurance, nothing would change. Statements along the lines “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” were pretty commonplace in his speeches.
So, imagine the surprise of over 4 million Americans who have already had their plans canceled. Some say as many as 16 million will have their plans cancelled by the time everything is said and done.
How do we know Obama’s promise was a lie? The Obama administration knew back in 2010 that as many as 93 million Americans would lose their current coverage under the new law.
Meanwhile, only 106,000 have signed up for the law since October 1st. That’s not a very good ratio.
3. The Apology
When reports started surfacing about millions of health care policy cancellations the President gave a speech, because that’s how he fixes things. He offered an apology to all of the Americans who had lost their health insurance because of his disastrous reforms.
The problem is that this was not some unfortunate unintended consequence. He lied. He told the American people — repeatedly — that they would be able to keep their plans. A ‘sorry you’re no longer insured, guys’ statement doesn’t make that go away, even if you’re the president.
The result was that Obama completely downplayed a huge problem that he had caused for a lot of Americans, who surely found it incredibly insulting.
The apology has become a bit of an apology tour now, as the first one just didn’t stick. Merrill Matthews put together a list of things that we learned during the Obamacare Apology Tour.
4. When he revealed he was “burned” by the Obamacare website
The President decided to play the victim during an MSNBC interview — because how he looks is obviously more important than the actual experience of those Americans trying to purchase the health insurance he promised them.
Via The Weekly Standard:
Obama said that “I’ve been burned already with — a website,” before correcting himself and saying, “the American people have been burned by — a website that has been dysfunctional.” He made the comments in an interview with MSNBC host Chuck Todd.
The slip up revealed a self-serving look at the rollout that didn’t go over very well.
5. The “Fix”
This week, President Obama finally addressed the mass insurance policy cancellation issue and offered a “fix.” Avik Roy over at Forbes explained it best:
“The bottom line is insurers can extend current plans that would otherwise be canceled into 2014,” he said. The real bottom line is this. If you like your plan, you might be able to keep it for another year.
Basically, Obama is trying to buy himself some time and keep people pacified through the mid terms. This isn’t going to do anything except draw out the pain and save the political ramifications for later, so he can’t be affected by them. He’s not real big on process – too complicated – so unilateral action is sort of his style when it comes to these ‘fixes.’
Related articles
- 5 takeaways from the president’s Obamacare apology tour (rare.go-vip.net)
- Obama vows to veto GOP bill because it helps too many Americans (rare.go-vip.net)
- Why Obama’s “fix” could blow up in his face (rare.go-vip.net)