New York Times: Obama just misspoke when he said you could 'keep' your plan

Well, that didn't last long. After a week of admitting the truth about the President's Obamacare failure, the New York Times is back to doing what it does best: spinning the President's hokum. Today, they're taking on the 'evil' congressional Republicans who would dare suggest that Obama lied when he said "If you like your current plan, you can keep it." According to the NYT editorial board, that wasn't a lie. Obama simply "misspoke."

From their Sunday editorial:

Congressional Republicans have stoked consumer fears and confusion with charges that the health care reform law is causing insurers to cancel existing policies and will force many people to pay substantially higher premiums next year for coverage they don’t want. That, they say, violates President Obama’s pledge that if you like the insurance you have, you can keep it. Mr. Obama clearly misspoke when he said that. By law, insurers cannot continue to sell policies that don’t provide the minimum benefits and consumer protections required as of next year. So they’ve sent cancellation notices to hundreds of thousands of people who hold these substandard policies. But insurers are not allowed to abandon enrollees. They must offer consumers options that do comply with the law, and they are scrambling to retain as many of their customers as possible with new policies that are almost certain to be more comprehensive than their old ones.

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First of all, it's not "hundreds of thousands" who are losing their current coverage. It's "two million and counting." We're sure the New York Times simply "misspoke" and regret their painfully obvious error. More importantly, there's an clear problem with the NYT spin. How, exactly, can the editorial board explain the fact that the President "misspoke" hundreds of times - over a four year period - each time uttering the exact same phrase? Why, that almost seems like some kind of "willful misspeaking" designed to help him get re-elected. To be blunt, you'd have to be insane to believe that the President ever "misspoke" since he knew all the way back in 2010 that millions would lose their coverage. His "you can keep it" snake oil was a blatant, oft-repeated, bald-faced lie designed to bamboozle low info voters across the electoral spectrum. He was well aware that telling millions of Americans their insurance was about to be eliminated, and replaced with something more expensive, would have doomed his chances for a 2nd term. So, instead, he perpetrated the most extensive lie-a-thon in American political history. Now, the truth of his "signature legislation" has become self evident and his faithful media allies are desperate to save him from three years as a lame duck. The New York Times piece provides us with the White House blueprint going forward: Obama meant to say that if you like your insurance, you can keep your current insurer. No, you can't keep your current plan, but the company that offered it will present you with a much more expensive policy with a higher deductible - and the President has decided that's better for you. If you choose not to accept the pricier upgrade, well, that's your problem. No one forced you to refuse - you made that decision all on your own. It's a little like telling someone who's leased a Ford Focus that their car is being taken away. Don't worry though; it's being replaced with a massive F-150 pickup. It's way more expensive, uses way more gas, and you probably don't need any of its more expensive features, but you're going to pay for it whether you like it or not. No one refused to lease you a car - they just refused to lease you the affordable car that you liked, because the President has decided that this gigantic one is better. If people such as the New York Times editorial board are to be believed, no one is "losing their insurance." Anyone who claims otherwise is simply an ignorant ingrate who's refusing to accept the benevolence being foisted upon them.