If Obama has lost the media, I'm not sure who he has left. Yeah, the ObamaCare fiasco appears to have gotten that bad. Even NBC News has apparently turned on him. And this is not just one of those we-have-to-report-it-or-we-risk-our-credibility things. They actually went to the trouble of doing an "investigation" and labeling the story as such.
To be honest, I think the nature of NBC's report is worse for Obama than what they revealed. A lot of us always assumed that he knew people wouldn't be able to keep their insurance. It strains credulity to think otherwise. Not that Obama understands much about free-market economics, but surely he's heard from enough people in the industry that he understood long ago what would really happen.
But usually the media looks the other way at lies like this in service to the vaunted cause. Not anymore. The emperor's nakedness has become that obvious.
Trouble:
Buried in Obamacare regulations from July 2010 is an estimate that because of normal turnover in the individual insurance market, “40 to 67 percent” of customers will not be able to keep their policy. And because many policies will have been changed since the key date, “the percentage of individual market policies losing grandfather status in a given year exceeds the 40 to 67 percent range.”
That means the administration knew that more than 40 to 67 percent of those in the individual market would not be able to keep their plans, even if they liked them.
Yet President Obama, who had promised in 2009, “if you like your health plan, you will be able to keep your health plan,” was still saying in 2012, “If [you] already have health insurance, you will keep your health insurance.”
“This says that when they made the promise, they knew half the people in this market outright couldn’t keep what they had and then they wrote the rules so that others couldn’t make it either,” said Robert Laszewski, of Health Policy and Strategy Associates, a consultant who works for health industry firms. Laszewski estimates that 80 percent of those in the individual market will not be able to keep their current policies and will have to buy insurance that meets requirements of the new law, which generally requires a richer package of benefits than most policies today.
The White House spin on this is a) OK, sure, your plan will go away, but it will be replaced by one that covers more stuff; and b) even if it costs more you might be eligible for a subsidy.
Here's the problem with that: Some people (this columnist included) prefer paying their own bills rather than relying on a third party, since paying your own bills means a simple, direct relationship with your health care provider in which ultimately you make the decisions about what to pay for whenever possible. Also, some people will not be eligible for subsidies because they make too much money, and in any event might not be real jazzed at the prospect of taxpayers paying for something they could and would pay for themselves.
That's why some people like their plan when it costs less and covers less, and don't want or need a plan that, say, covers maternity or mental health, because they don't need those services and will never use them (but would pay for it themselves if they ever did).
So no, it's not OK that some people are forced to get more expensive but "better" insurance because more stuff is not better if you don't want it.
Obama knew this three years ago, but lied about it continually because he would have faced an insurrection had he told the truth. How brazenly did he lie? This brazenly:
Normally after showing you a video like this, we would lament that the mainstream media would, alas, never hold him to account for his lies. But his credibility is collapsing so quickly, even NBC News isn't holding back.
When he was first elected, I wrote in my old North Star Writers Group column that I could envision this possibility. The media would shamelessly cheerlead for him, I thought, but ultimately they are out for themselves, and if their own credibilty was ever in jeopardy,
I believed then that they would throw him over:
Is Obama prepared for the day when his media benefactors turn on him? I wonder. Clearly, he values the control and presentation of his own image very highly. Most reporters can’t stand people like that. This is why they used to love John McCain so much, because he would sit around and gab informally with them. (Well, that and because he would rip his fellow Republicans for attribution.) By all accounts, Obama does not have a natural sense of humor and doesn’t easily loosen up around people.
During the campaign, the media covered for Obama when he pretended welfare checks were “tax cuts,” and when an ordinary citizen asked Obama a very good question about his tax proposals, the media provided Obama with cover by going after the citizen.
But when Obama becomes president, these won’t be mere campaign platforms. They’ll be actual policy proposals, with real implications for the nation. Will the MSM still cover for the new president when his misleading words have real implications for the lives of their audience? Given their track record to date, Obama may very well think that they will.
The bet here is that he’s in for a rude awakening.
And now he's getting it. Unfortunately, the media covered for him long enough for the scam to become law. The fact that they're turning on him now does the country little good unless they keep the pressure on such that it lays the groundwork for the repeal of ObamaCare. I wonder how much worse this will have to get before Democrats are ready to take that step, and the media are ready to demand it.
