Free Republic

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: (a) mendacity, (b) paternalism and (c) subterfuge.

DECEPTION: In the face of millions of cancellation notices, Democrats want to downplay the president's "keep your health plan" pledge as standard political hyperbole. It was, in fact, a calculated lie that got ObamaCare enacted.

SNIP If you read the Affordable Care Act when it was passed, you knew that it was dishonest for President Obama to claim that “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan,” as he did—and continues to do—on countless occasions. And we now know that the administration knew this all along. It turns out that in an obscure report buried in a June 2010 edition of the Federal Register, administration officials predicted massive disruption of the private insurance market. SNIP Mid-range estimate: 51% of employer-sponsored plans will get canceled But Carney’s dismissal of the media’s concerns was wrong,...

The Governor pulls no punches in her latest piece: President Obama flew in to Boston today to deliver another “ShamWow”-style infomercial for Obamacare, and it went about as well as his entourage’s snarled traffic debacle in Beantown. As millions of Americans are being kicked off their desired insurance plans and seeing their premiums skyrocket, the President had a lot of ‘splaining to do today. For starters we anticipated a Presidential apology for lying to Americans repeatedly when he promised things like, “If you like your current health care plan, you can keep it.” Make no mistake, he knew he was...

The White House argued Tuesday that President Barack Obama didn’t mislead the public when he repeatedly promised Americans “If you like your health plan, you will be able to keep your health plan” under the Affordable Care Act.Press secretary Jay Carney said the president’s declaration was still technically true even as almost two million Americans across the country are getting, or are about to get, letters canceling policies purchased on the individual market.“No, the president was clear about a basic fact,” Carney said Tuesday when asked directly whether Obama had misled Americans about the impact of his signature domestic achievement....

Barack Obama’s Senior Advisor, Valerie Jarrett, tweeted on Monday, “FACT: Nothing in #ObamaCare forces people out of their health plans. No change is required unless insurance companies change existing plans.”

Let's start with the very basics here. About 15 million people purchase health insurance policies on the individual market. That's about 5 percent of the population. Some -- or maybe even most -- of the plans offered on the individual insurance market right now don't meet certain requirements in the health-care law. They may not offer preventive care without co-payment, for example, or leave out coverage of maternity care, one of the health-care law's 10 essential benefits. How many people are going to get cancellation notices? It's hard to put an exact number on this, given that insurance plans are...

White House press secretary Jay Carney on Tuesday denied President Obama had misled the public when he said that consumers could keep their health insurance plans after the passage of the Affordable Care Act. Carney said that consumers who "had a plan the day before the Affordable Care Act passed and signed into law" and who had not either dropped their coverage or "been thrown off the plan" by their insurance companies were "grandfathered in and can keep that plan." "If you've kept it, you can keep it forever, as long as your insurer offers it," Carney said. The controversy...

White House press secretary Jay Carney on Tuesday denied President Obama had misled the public when he said that consumers could keep their health insurance plans after the passage of the Affordable Care Act. Carney said that consumers who "had a plan the day before the Affordable Care Act passed and signed into law" and who had not either dropped their coverage or "been thrown off the plan" by their insurance companies were "grandfathered in and can keep that plan." "If you've kept it, you can keep it forever, as long as your insurer offers it," Carney said.

October 29, 2013 Obama Didn’t Lie About ObamaCare, If You Exclude All His Lies Daniel Greenfield “I did not have sex with that health plan.”The hot new liberal talking point about Obama’s “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan” lie is that it’s actually true of the plans you can keep, but not of the plans you can’t keep.When Obama repeatedly said that, “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan”… he apparently meant only the “good” health care plans that he approves of, but not the bad ones.Somehow this is...

Keep your doctor and your health plan? Not likely."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 this newspaper, 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...

As NewsBusters has been reporting, NBC News has largely ignored senior investigative correspondent Lisa Myers’ bombshell report about how the White House knew for at least three years that millions of people would lose their health insurance once ObamaCare was implemented. Having given only 21 seconds to her report Monday, the NBC Nightly News actually began with Myers talking about the millions of people losing their insurance coverage, but not once did she mention her findings that the Obama administration knew for years that this was going to happen.

As the pitchman for his landmark healthcare law, President Obama promised to make buying insurance as easy as buying a plane ticket online or a "TV on Amazon." It would be simple, he said. If there were problems, the president predicted, they would be "glitches." And he said, "If you like the plan you have, you can keep it." Such claims have come back to haunt the president and his allies less than a month into the launch of the online insurance marketplaces at the heart of his healthcare legislation. With the federal website hobbled by bad design and thousands...

On Tuesday, the White House finally came up with a strategy to explain why millions of Americans are losing their health insurance plans — blame the insurance companies.White House spokesman Jay Carney rewrote President Barack Obama’s much-repeated “you can keep it” promise Tuesday afternoon, and began blaming health insurance companies for canceling millions of individuals’ insurance plans.“If you had a plan… and you liked it, and you’ve kept it, you can keep if forever as long as your insurer offers it,” Carney told reporters during the daily press briefing.In the last few weeks, insurance companies have already canceled more than...

Gone is yesterday’s equivocating defense on the millions of distributed insurance cancellations currently shattering the great ObamaCare myth that was “If you like your plan, you can keep it.” After Valerie Jarrett‘s… er… “creative” contribution to the discussion last night, Carney was much more prepared for the question at today’s White House briefing with a more shrewdly crafted offensive strategy — because as we’re all well aware by now, unintentional concessions (don’t even think about apologies, not gonna’ happen) rarely last long in this administration before giving way to well-rehearsed, righteously indignant spin-doctoring. (Be sure to check out Sebelius’s planned...

Believing in this president is proving to be a health hazard. ~snip~ The liar is none other than the President of the United States. On June 15, 2009, President Obama told a town hall meeting that “No matter how we reform healthcare, we will keep this promise…. if you like your healthcare plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what.” The fine print in his health law proves that he never intended to keep that promise. Sec. 1251(a)(1) of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) says that no...

"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...