Obama promised, repeatedly, that you could keep your plan if you like it. Period.
When called out on that, he tried to deny such a categorical promise, the video notwithstanding.
Politifact gave him a “Pants on Fire” rating for trying to make the promise conditional:
According to Obama, “What we said was you can keep (your plan) if it hasn’t changed since the law passed.”
But we found at least 37 times since Obama’s inauguration where he or a top administration official made a variation of the pledge that if you like your plan, you can keep it, and we never found an instance in which he offered the caveat that it only applies to plans that hadn’t changed after the law’s passage. And seven of those 37 cases came after the release of the HHS regulations that defined the “grandfathering” process, when the impact would be clear…. We rate his claim Pants on Fire.
Tonight Obama said he was “sorry” that some Americans have had their health insurance plans dropped after his repeated assurances that they could keep their plan if they liked it.
From NBC News:
President Obama said Thursday that he is “sorry” that some Americans are losing their current health insurance plans as a result of the Affordable Care Act, despite his promise that no one would have to give up a health plan they liked.
“I am sorry that they are finding themselves in this situation based on assurances they got from me,” he told NBC News in an exclusive interview at the White House.
“We’ve got to work hard to make sure that they know we hear them and we are going to do everything we can to deal with folks who find themselves in a tough position as a consequence of this.”
The President seemed to parse his words carefully, and it’s difficult to determine precisely what that apology means.
In the wake of criticism of Obama’s failed promise, the White House has recently tried to pin the blame on insurance companies for dropped plans, in what the Washington Post’s fact checker called a “classic case of misdirection” and rated three Pinocchios.
Blaming the insurance companies can only go so far. First of all, the administration wrote the rules that set the conditions under which plans lose their grandfathered status. But more important, the law has an effective date so far in the past that it virtually guaranteed that the vast majority of people currently in the individual market would end up with a notice saying they needed to buy insurance on the Obamacare exchanges.
The administration’s effort to pin the blame on insurance companies is a classic case of misdirection. Between 75 and 95 percent of the problem stems from the effective date, but the White House chooses to keep the focus elsewhere.
In related news, Reuters reports today that the House Oversight Committee next week will hear from technology officials involved with the development or rollout of the HealthCare.gov website. Committee chairman Darrell Issa wants to hear from the panel as to whether or not information technology best practices were followed.
“When HealthCare.gov launched on October 1, testing was incomplete, the system had not yet been fully tested for security concerns and new problems kept appearing,” said Issa, a Republican.
“This hearing will ask top administration technology officials what went wrong, what they’re doing to fix it, and whether recognized IT (information technology) best practices were really followed,” he said.
According to the committee’s announcement, those expected to appear are Frank Baitman, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Information Technology at HHS; Henry Chao, Deputy Chief Information Officer, Deputy Director of the Office of Information Services at Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services; Steve VanRoekel, U.S. Chief Information Officer, Administrator, Office of Electronic Government, Office of Management and Budget; and David Powner, Director, Information Technology Management Issues at the Government Accountability Office.
U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park was also asked to testify, but The Hill reports that Park’s office declined, due to his need to stay close to his work involved with the project at this time. His office indicated Park would be available the first two weeks in December.
Obama sorry for saying something yesterday he denied saying
— Legal Insurrection (@LegInsurrection) November 8, 2013
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Comments
Sorry doesn’t cut it Prezbo. Resigning might help but only if all the Democrats who voted for this piece of crap resigned with you.
Pretty much my thoughts exactly, especially if he were to take Holder with him.
As I indicated elsewhere, politics and the Democrats have forced him to face reality.
It’s the first time I’ve seen him make anything close to an apology for something, and it is well past due.
I would lmao if a newsie grew the backbone to take advantage of this event to ask obastard to also apologize to the families of the Benghazi dead as well as those of Fast and Furious “errors”.
No. Obama has build an entire career on the politics of deceit. It would destroy him to begin telling the plain, unvarnished truth now. This looks like a premeditated PR contingency plan, very likely based on the fact that the half-dozen or so Democratic Senators about to face furious voters next year could mean losing control of the Senate, Congress, and the government, and he has to do something to prop them up. It seems that only thing he is really sorry about is that Healthcare.gov crashed on launch, leaving him nothing to brag about to pacify and distract those who are angry at being forced to pay more for less insurance, and that he can blame on any disloyal underlings.
This kind of thing has always worked for him because his supporters want to believe in his sincerity, because so many people are unable to tell the difference between a pro-forma apology and genuine repentance, and because the average citizen is unwilling to believe that he is really that much of a cold-blooded, calculating liar.
I would like to hope that he has gone too far this time, but I don’t trust it.
[…] Who’s sorry now? Plenty of ObaminationCare defenders are plenty sorry: […]
I am sorry, but “sorry” is not good enough.
Repeal that monstrosity.
He’s only sorry because the website isn’t working and so he isn’t in a position to snottily tell “folks” to go shopping.
If the webiste is down people can just call 1-800-F_UCKYO
and give their personal information to a person who has not undergone a background check directly, instead of just putting it into the system for no-background-check people to look up later.
The President seemed to parse his words carefully, and it’s difficult to determine precisely what that apology means.
For clarification, call 1-800-FU.
Apology??
What I heard was just about the equivalent of a cheating husband having been exposed saying “Honey, I’m sorry that you feel hurt because you actually believed me when I lied to you again and again. You see it was OK that I lied to you because it was for your own good and you will be better off in the future. I’m sure you will come to your senses and thank me some day.”
However, there was no Clintonesque finger-wagging…the camera kept his hands out of the shot as much as possible.
Cold fish.
Exactly! This was a classic non-apology. “I’m sorry you got hurt by what I did” doesn’t mend anything. He stands behind the law and all its consequences.
If I said I was sorry, and that I’d done something wrong, it would mean that I was taking immediate steps to remedy the situation. I watched the President say he was sorry, and all I heard was that he was going to continue to do as he intended to do all along. That’s not good enough for a cheating husband, or a lying politician.
How can he be sorry for the actualization of his original mission in life, his intent to create a way to distribute wealth. Mission accomplished…no apology needed. A little fake empathy is the best he can muster. He has 3 years and he will not back up. It’s his personal Jihad.
Exactly. He is absolutely, positively not sorry that people are losing the insurance they wanted to keep. How could he be, when that was the plan all along?
The next time you see a picture of Obama smiling, think of this story ….
A few days ago, Al Arabiya aired a news story in which it described one significant strategy employed by the extremist organizations – posting pictures of smiling recruits after they were killed in battle. The message is clear: the volunteers were happy to die in the battlefield.
The images of the smiling dead are posted to popular social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and Instagram for maximum distribution; web users are asked to celebrate the death of the “heroic fighters.”
… I wonder if they have a smiling picture of Kathleen Sebelius
And how about the $ 2500/year per family savings from ObamaCare that Obama repeatedly and unequivocally promised to deliver?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o65vMUk5so
Lie after lie after lie after lie after lie after lie after lie after lie after lie after lie after …
That one had a caveat. He said it would “save the average family up to $2500….” (emphasis added). All they have to show is that one “average family” (by whose definition?) saved that much, and it’s true.
Considering some 47%ers (the ones Mitt Romney said wouldn’t vote for him no matter what, and got castigated for) now has health insurance a “normal” family would pay over $2500/year for, and they don’t pay a dime, that particular statement by Captain ZerO is probably (and unfortunately) true.
Ken Pope, Ph.D.’s Eight Bogus Apologies.
On the “bogus” scale, this administration is batting a thousand.
We need a law that forbids a lying SOB from lying to us poor folk while that SOB is in office. That self same law should also be used to charge the lying SOB who said that she’d have to have the law passed before us poor folk could know what’s in!
That penalty need not be extremely as severe as that hypothetically levied on Billy Budd yet perhaps at least as severe as extreme servitude for life!
Shakin our collective fingers at those miscreants does not seem satisfactory, not in the least.
I really burns my biscuits when Obama refers to his victims as “folks”.
And what is the point of Issa holding hearings? No matter how they’re questioned, anyone from this administration is just going to lie. We know that now. Since Issa can’t torture them until they confess, the whole thing is just show.
I imagine he thinks that “folks” has a friendly, homey feel to it. He’s probably trying to feign empathy, but he doesn’t know what empathy actually feels like. So he demeans us instead.
I often think it’s deliberate…he’s trying to channel W. E. B. DuBois from his book “The Souls of Black Folk” wherein he says ‘”…the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line.’ Barry has been trying to maintain that color line his entire career.
… And, then there was “no new taxes.”
What Obama needs is a successful launch. But I don’t think it happens. In part, because you just can’t pull code from your arse.
More than likely we will hit New Year’s Day and the problems with the government site will still be there. Maybe, they’ll blame it on Benghazi?
Will some insurer come in and offer catastrophic coverage? Will the people who in the old system just went without healthcare get motivated to spend an arm and a leg o something that benefits others?
2014 is going to be an election year that puts the House up for grabs. And, enough senate seats, that if the GOP wasn’t the stupid party, would be able to control.
Instsead< the GOP picks their noses with coat hangers. Something, perhaps, they can use instead of Viagra?
Face lifts. Viagra. Condoms. And, abortions. Need to be paid for out-of-pocket.
You say people can't afford this? But they can afford the going new rates for "affordable" (HA HA) health care?
Before the government sticks their hands into this pot, they should do tort reform. The John Edwards of this world find jurors much too malleable. I'm only worth one vote. Just like every other person who bothers to do so.
Not as sorry as I am.
The only thing this sociopath is sorry for, is getting caught.
There are more than a handful of evil bastards in the White House.
I’m sorry you’re not worthy of me.
More hearings? Who needs ’em?
The website is not the problem. I don’t care about the website. It’s a just symptom. I also don’t care about Obama’s pseudo apology. It doesn’t make up for the lies he used to help pass a steaming pile of obamacare.
Listen up Republicans! Forget your little hearings and who did what. Fix the problems!
REPEAL OBAMACARE. IMPEACH OBAMA. (In either order)
The Senate will block a repeal measure, (see the recent shutdown for how that will play) and the President would veto it anyway. Congress would need the ability to override a veto, and that isn’t happening either. For impeachment, the Attorney General won’t cooperate in any way, and no matter what Obama does, no Democrat in the Senate will vote to convict him.
The only effective thing that can be done is to unseat the Senators and Representatives who are enabling and empowering this demagogue. For the 2014 elections, there is NO EXCUSE for letting any Democrat run for Congress unopposed. The Republican Party can lead, follow, or get out of the way.
Another “government shutdown” opportunity coming up in February. Could be another opportunity to repeal this mess?
Maybe it’s time to trot out my crazy idea again: the House passes a resolution deeming that the Senate ACA bill was *not* passed by the House in 2009. One good parliamentary trick deserves another, after all, and ‘deeming’ doesn’t actually pass bills, it just assumes their passage, and presumably can assume their non-passage as well.
I’m sorry you look so fat today. I’m sorry you were stupid and got substandard healthcare. I’m sorry you have to pay 3x more, plus more co-pays, plus much greater deductibles to distribute your plenty to all those poor folks out there. I’m sorry you can’t understand that we know what’s best for you. I’m sorry you’re only 5% of the population who’s having a problem. Toughey lucky cancer person– that you had bad insurance. I’m sorry the guy made the video and caused the uprising in Benghazi. i’m sorry that agent what’s his name got whacked with a fast and furious gun. I’m sorry the IRS spied on those right wing extremist moron Tea baggers. I mean this in the best possible way. I always was on Michelle’s insurance plan as a community organizer.
He ‘ got burned’ by his website.
‘They talk about me like a dog’ .
Strange talking man indeed.
I am starting to think he is having some sort of early Alzheimer’s where people start saying things completely outside the box with absolutely no relation reality.
Try imagining just where in his brain these things are coming from. You can’t .
His shaky grasp on simple logic has sometimes astonished me. He once admitted that he got “frustrated” with math when it became “hard.” I have no doubt that I did much better in math than he ever did.
This is not early Alzheimer’s – this was/is intentional deceit. Obama is a very bad man. He has no morals whatsoever. The ends justify the means.
I wonder what the president feels like to be a complete and total failure.
In his mind, and many others, he hasn’t failed yet. The ends justify the means and “ruling” is so sloppy.
If Republicans were smart (and that’s a stretch), they would make 2014 a single issue election.
Obama’s actual apology: “At this point, what difference does it make?”
Healthcare Act in Pictures
http://oforchristsakes.wordpress.com/2013/11/08/healthcare-act-thespian-1-actor-somebody-who-acts-on-the-stage-in-pictures/
Obama lies while apologizing for lying. In his statement he says only about 5% of the health insurance market wil have their polices cancelled b/c of Obamacare. Eventualy all polices will be cancelled even those currently grandfathered. As soon as a policy changes, even a little, such as an increase of $5 to co-pay it will lose it’s grandfathered status.. When the employer mandate takes effect all employer plans will be under Obamacare grandfather status regulatons, and we’ll see millions more cancellations. That was a major reason for the illegal 1 year delay in the employer mandate. How many drafts of this lawyerly “apology” were written? People aren’t having their policies cancelled b/ c of his assurances, which is what he actually apologizes for, it’s b/c of the law itself and the way they wrote the regulations. As late as September 26th 5 days before the botched website launch Obama said in a speech that you can keep you insurance if you like your plan after millions had already received cancellation letters from their insurers.
I am relieved to hear him “apologize” — I guess this means I’m not a “seditionist” for opposing the ACA as I did last month.
Oh wait, I still am, and an “economic traitor” to boot. That’s what the progressives have been calling people who oppose the ACA, and I haven’t heard any sort of apology coming from any of them.
As so many others have commented, this “apology” is not sincere, not in the format of a true apology, and has no expression of remorse or contrition. Champ is going to do what he wants regardless of the facts.
You are sorry you didn’t kill 25,000,000 of us like your honey Bill Ayers said you needed to?
You are sorry you didn’t implement marshal law?
You’re not sorry for hurting us, or lying to us or watching us suffer. Those things are better than gay sex to you Resident Husein.