No, Obama Didn't Lie to You About Your Health Care Plans

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/no-obama-didnt-lie-you-about-your-health-care-plans

President Obama has been getting a lot of grief in the last few weeks over his pledge that with the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in place, people would be able to keep their insurance if they like it. The media have been filled with stories about people across the country who are having their insurance policies terminated, ostensibly because they did not meet the requirements of the ACA. While this has led many to say that Obama was lying, there is much less here than meets the eye.

First, it is important to note that the ACA grand-fathered all the individual policies that were in place at the time the law was enacted. This means that the plans in effect at the time that President Obama was pushing the bill could still be offered even if they did not meet all the standards laid out in the ACA.

The plans being terminated because they don't meet the minimal standards were all plans that insurers introduced after the passage of the ACA. Insurers introduced these plans knowing that they would not meet the standards that would come into effect in 2014. Insurers may not have informed their clients at the time they sold these plans that they would not be available after 2014 because they had designed a plan that did not comply with the ACA.

However if the insurers didn't tell their clients that the new plans would only be available for a short period of time, the blame would seem to rest with the insurance companies, not the ACA. After all, President Obama did not promise people that he would keep insurers from developing new plans that will not comply with the provisions of the ACA.

[B Calm]

1. I don't think he lied. So you don't like the new plan,

you can still keep the same insurance company!

[liberal N proud]

2. Well that doesn't make for a very good headline when you are trying to attack anything Obama does

Our propaganda machine formerly known as the media is very careful to chose only those words from a story that portray the image they are told to portray.

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

3. Kick

[cthulu2016]

4. He did not lie, he broke a promise. It is a subtle distinction.

A false statement about what you *will* do is not a lie because it is not yet true or false.

But the (intentional) implication was that the present tense of the promise was 2013, not 2010.

But since the regulations were not written yet then what Obama intentionally communicated was not at odds with the regs... cause th regs didn't exist yet.

Most normal people would take it as a promise that Obama would ensure that the regs would (when written in the future) be written to best comply with the promise.

If folks really want to get into this "it depends what the meaning of is is" territory they are free to, but other people are hardly obliged to take such sophistry seriously.

Had he been under oath President Obama would not have been guilty of perjury. Agreed.

Woo. Hoo.

[treestar]

5. Yes and the same people who think gubmint is so bad

Need to STFU if they bought those plans. Caveat Emptor. They want libertarian freedom to make shitting contracts with huge companies with which they are not at arms length, they can STFU if the contract turned out bad for them. These are the same people who think consumer protections are too much gubmint interference in the free market. Let them have the freedom to pay too much for too little.

[HuckleB]

6. Recommended!!!