Sen. Ted Cruz continues to be a problem. Today he decided to pontificate at the Senate hearing on Stand Your Ground laws on how useful this law is for Black people while standing in front of Black families whose children are dead. Sure, Stand Your Ground is being used as a defense for one killer and mentioned in the jury instructions for another, but don’t worry, Black people, Stand Your Ground benefits you, too!
Want more blatant manipulation of the facts? NBC Investigations reports that “the Obama 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.” Sure they explained that in 2010 and it has nothing to do with the administration as much as it has to do with Insurance companies changing the rules BUT WHATEVER! OBAMA! SOCIALIST! AMERICA IS BEING RUINED!
On today’s #TWiBRadio, #TeamBlackness breaks down this ball of magical poop tarts plus the Barneys apology, Jay Z tells people to calm down and let him get the facts, and smoking a blunt in our nation’s capital may soon be decriminalized.
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This morning on #amTWiB, the Morning Crew is splintered by Elon and Ljoy’s impending podcast divorce but we manage to find time to discuss an interesting quirk about diaper usage and the discovery that clinical tests of medicine are not balanced across ethnicities.
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Gene108
More than 40 to 67 percent …. WTF
I can understand between 40 to 67 percent, but more than 40% includes 67%, more than 67% does not include 40%.
There is something very wrong with that statement and the reading comprehension of the person who wrote it.
pseudonymous in nc
“OBAMA LIED, MY CRAP INSURANCE THAT DOESN’T PAY OUT A PENNY DIED.”
I suppose I shouldn’t be shocked to see so many defenders of shitty junk insurance — along with whining dudebros talking about maternity coverage — but I am.
Peak Wingnut is never.
Yatsuno
@pseudonymous in nc: Peak wingnut is a lie. There is no event horizon at which teh crazy will be impossible to be exceeded. It’s the dirty little secret of wingnut politics.
TG Chicago
This is silly. What about this from the article:
Are those not broken promises? I’m not saying it’s the end of the world, but it’s silly to pretend that Obama can go out there and lie to the American people and not expect it to be a political problem.
Mnemosyne
@pseudonymous in nc:
I don’t get it either. Obama stopped my insurance company from ripping me off, and I’m ENRAGED!
I know there’s a sucker born every minute, but I doubt even PT Barnum imagined that the suckers would be upset if someone stepped in and rescued them.
Hal
40 to 67% is a huge swing. Also, are most getting better insurance for the same or less money? If so, what’s the big deal?
Baud
@Hal:
Better insurance. More often than not, more money is my guess. There were some really crap plans out there. I’ve seen some myself. Nothing you would recognize as insurance for most people who get insurance through their employment.
Hill Dweller
@TG Chicago: If you had a policy before 2010, it is supposed to be grandfathered in. But the insurance companies are choosing to cancel those policies, and blaming it on Obamacare. This is about insurance company greed, not the ACA.
That said, even if the insurance companies do this, chances are the person will get much better coverage at or near what they were paying before, and save thousands if they have an accident, illness and/or hospital stay.
Baud
@Hill Dweller:
I should have said the insurance is probably more expensive if you don’t have claims. Your statement is more accurate.
TG Chicago
@Mnemosyne:
If Obama had promised to stop insurance companies from being able to rip people off, there would be no issue. But he promised people would be able to keep the crappy policies they were comfortable with.
Yes, it’s entirely possible that people will be better off under the new laws. But that doesn’t change the fact that Obama lied about what would happen. And when a president lies, he suffers political consequences.
MattR
@TG Chicago: Criticizing Obama’s comments is legitimate. However, it is not legitimate to base that criticism on the idea that Obama was hiding these numbers which revealed the truth in 2010 when those numbers were included in political reporting and the report that included those numbers was used by Sen Enzi to justify changing the grandfather clause.
Mnemosyne
@TG Chicago:
Wait, you’re upset that the PPACA no longer allows insurance companies to rip people off just because people claim they “like” being ripped off?
ETA:
I guess we’re hearing two completely different things from that statement since you seem to be hearing, Sure, we’ll let the insurance companies keep ripping you off if you’re okay with being ripped off and If you’re getting everything covered now, you can keep that policy.
Seriously, ostensible liberals are now complaining that Obama “lied” because he didn’t carefully explain that some insurance companies were ripping their customers off and those customers would not be able to choose to continue being ripped off?
Omnes Omnibus
@TG Chicago: There are only so many things about which I can get outraged on any given day. I choose not to make this one of those things.
TG Chicago
@Hill Dweller:
Well, the ACA itself is about insurance company greed, but anyway…
By “supposed to be grandfathered in”, do you mean “legally obligated to be grandfathered in”? If they’re breaking the law, then they should be prosecuted. If not, then they’re doing what anybody could have predicted and Obama shouldn’t have claimed otherwise.
Mnemosyne
@TG Chicago:
And yet you’re upset that the ACA is preventing people from getting ripped off and think that should have been allowed to continue.
Omnes Omnibus
@TG Chicago:
An 85% medical loss ratio is going to make insurance companies work pretty hard to satisfy that greed.
TG Chicago
@Mnemosyne: No, I’m saying Obama was dishonest, and he’s paying a political price for it.
muddy
Speaking of Rand Paul, did everyone see the segment on Rachel Maddow last night, with Rand Paul doing a speech in support of Cuccinelli? He was plagiarizing whole paragraphs from the Wikipedia page of the movie Gattaca. I’m not sure what this had to do with anything, he’s quite bizarre. It was the top video on her site today
Sorry if everyone saw this last night already.
Baud
@TG Chicago:
FWIW, I don’t consider it a lie because I understood that Obama meant that the law wouldn’t force people who had insurance to drop their existence insurance, and not that all insurance companies would always offer the same products they had previously offered in perpetuity. YMMV.
TG Chicago
@Mnemosyne: I never said or implied anything of the sort. My complaint is entirely with the fact that Obama was dishonest. Keep your eyes on the road.
TG Chicago
@Baud: I’m not sure how you got that interpretation out of:
JordanRules
@TG Chicago: He’s paying a price because he is who he is. Luckily he doesn’t have 4 more years to worry about. Any consequences that may be blamed on this statement wouldve been levied anyhow.
Mnemosyne
@TG Chicago:
So not carefully explaining to people that some of them had insurance policies that they “liked” that were actually rip-offs is dishonest?
MikeJ
@TG Chicago:
Are you being purposefully obtuse? The law said you could keep your crap policy if you had it before it went into effect. It didn’t say the insurance companies had to continue to offer them.
Mnemosyne
@TG Chicago:
Sorry, a single quote pulled out of context from a longer speech proves what, exactly?
MattR
@Mnemosyne: This article from Mediaite digging deeper into a CBS report about people who were losing their coverage hit all the major points. One thing it did not explicitly mention which I finally realized after reading through it a couple times was that BCBS wasn’t just telling the woman about the expensive new plan they offer that she can enroll in now that her old policy was cancelled, they were automatically enrolling her in that plan (which was more expensive and had worse coverage than other options availabe through BCBS) unless she made an effort to opt out. It is unfortunate that the media is so focused on blaming Obamacare that they will ignore shady practices from insurance companies (and employers).
Baud
@TG Chicago:
I read those statements with a common sense understanding of how the world works. I don’t expect any politician to be able to guarantee market outcomes.
Baud
@MattR:
This will go on for a little while. Bashing Obamacare is ratings gold for the news networks.
TG Chicago
@Omnes Omnibus: It’s entirely fine if you don’t wish to be outraged. But it’s reasonable that others are.
I just think it was foolish for Obama to say things about an extremely contentious law(*) that he knew or should have known were untrue. It was guaranteed to become a problem.
(*)”contentious” due to Republicans deciding their entire political and, ahem, “policy” standpoint was to oppose anything and everything Obama supported. I’m not blaming Obama for the fact that Republicans have made the ACA the SOCIALIST END OF AMERICA. But the average person who gets a letter kicking them off the health insurance they were satisfied with is going to be unhappy. So Obama would have been wiser to prepare them for that, to soften the blow. Instead he guaranteed them it would never happen. What is an average low-information person going to think? They’re going to think that Obama lied (which he did) and thus the ACA is a terrible law (which is not a fair conclusion, but understandable from their perspective).
Chyron HR
@Mnemosyne:
That the True Progressive Firepups in the GOP need to KILL DA BILL, post-haste.
TG Chicago
@JordanRules:
Unless you’re saying that “who he is” is a congenital liar (I would not agree with this), I don’t know what you mean.
How could anybody expect this not to blow up in his face?
Felanius Kootea
@TG Chicago: Oh I get it now. You are being purposefully obtuse.
Mnemosyne
@MattR:
This right here. The media is taking it on faith that insurance companies are acting honestly — because, really, it’s not like health insurance companies have ever ripped their customers off, amirite?
And by presenting it as, This is Obamacare’s fault, they’re not cluing people in to the fact that they can report these shenanigans to HHS and get the companies in trouble for it. The government can’t penalize companies for breaking or skirting the rules if they don’t know about it, but the media is encouraging a learned helplessness of, Oh, well, Obamacare did it, so there’s no way to appeal or complain.
Though I have to admit that this quote from the NBC story made me shake my head:
Dude. You got that lower premium because of Obamacare. You didn’t magically come across some secret loophole.
TG Chicago
@Mnemosyne:
Not carefully explaining to people that some of them had insurance policies that they “liked” that were actually rip-offs isn’t dishonest. Telling people that they wouldn’t be kicked off of those policies when they would — that’s dishonest. And that’s what Obama did.
Not carefully explaining to people that some of them had insurance policies that they “liked” that were actually rip-offs was foolish, since that would have prepared them for this moment.
Mnemosyne
@TG Chicago:
Hey, if you want to join forces with Michelle Malkin and the National Review in crying, Obama lied, my healthcare plan died! be our guest. But don’t expect to come in here spouting right-wing bullshit and expect not to have it pointed out to you that it’s right-wing bullshit that you swallowed hook, line, and sinker.
ETA: Still debating — actual right-wing troll pretending to be on the left, or incredibly naive leftist who genuinely doesn’t understand that he’s parroting right-wing bullshit?
TG Chicago
@MikeJ: From the article:
My emphasis.
The story is saying that the policies are being cancelled because they don’t comply with the law, not because the insurance companies are merely choosing to cancel them.
Baud
@Mnemosyne:
Hmm. Just because he went through an insurance agent doesn’t necessarily mean the plan wasn’t available on the exchange. I think in some states agents can help consumers buy exchange plans.
Omnes Omnibus
@TG Chicago: Soundbyte culture. Detail and nuance gets ignored.
Mnemosyne
@TG Chicago:
They weren’t “kicked off” the policies. The policies were ended because the insurance companies broke the rules — they raised the premiums too much or otherwise didn’t conform to the law.
So your complaint is that Obama didn’t tell people that their policy that they “liked” might be illegal. In fact, you feel that he “lied” by not telling them that their insurance company didn’t follow the rules and pulled their policy because it was illegal.
MattR
@TG Chicago: The reason this will blow up in his face is that the public believes that Obama lied to hide the fact the ACA is a disaster that will harm millions of people. But if the media was doing a decent job of researching these various claims and explaining the actual details, rather than breathlessly repeating anything negative they hear about the ACA, the public would not be in such a frenzy over a “lie” that doesn’t significantly harm the majority of people affected by it and even helps many of them.
TG Chicago
@Mnemosyne:
Are you suggesting that there was additional context in the speech that makes the comment honest? If so, please provide it.
However, I think it will be difficult to find context that changes “If you like your health-care plan, you will be able to keep your health-care plan. Period.” into an honest statement.
Mnemosyne
@TG Chicago:
So, again, your complaint is that insurance companies are no longer allowed to rip their customers off. And yet Obama is a “congenital liar” because he didn’t explain to people that their insurance company had issued an illegal policy.
Baud
@MattR:
What is the evidence that this is happening? So far, I’ve only seen the usual suspects in the GOP and the media talking about this. It’s not like they haven’t tried to make mountains out of molehills before.
jenn
@TG Chicago: Yes, and the story you’re referencing is misleading.
Mnemosyne
@TG Chicago:
I’m not the one who pulled a single quote as proof of anything, much less of Obama being a “congenital liar.” You are. You made the claim, so you provide the proof.
Otherwise, admit you took right-wing propaganda at face value and got swindled. Again. You did at least notice that every “expert” quoted in that NBC report was employed by the insurance industry, right? You didn’t assume that “a consultant who works for health industry firms” was an objective observer reporting the facts, right?
piratedan
yup, this is a joint effort with your private insurers, who then, under their own auspices cancelled the policies and state, correctly that it’s due to the ACA. What they don’t say, is that those policies didn’t comply with the requirements that the ACA has implemented and naturally, the business community circled their wagons to absolve themselves of the notion that their policies were lacking and let the Pres take the hit. When the “sticker shock” wears off and people rationally compare what they had then and what they can get now. Most will be pleased, this is nothing more than taking the pacifier away from the baby.
If TG wants to take his victory lap so he/she/it can count coup against the Pres… feel free, the rest of us will take this in context like the majority of all of the other GOP/MSM freakouts.
TG Chicago
@Felanius Kootea: I imagine there is some obtuse thinking around these parts.
Obama said, “If you like your health-care plan, you will be able to keep your health-care plan. Period.”
Some people will not be able to keep the health-care plans they like, and Obama knew or should have known that.
But somehow that’s not dishonest. Obtuse, indeed.
TAPX486
OBAMACARE is a Rube Goldberg of a system built on top of an abortion of a medical care system. Whither it was single payer or a system with stronger government control over the product offerings, it was the only thing the political system would accept.
As a country we seem to want 5 star results at 1 star prices, As long as we (or at least the red states) continue to send fools like Cruz, Goohmert, and the Iowa King to congress then that is what we will get.
TG Chicago
@Mnemosyne: So Obama did lie, and these peoples’ health care plans did die, but saying so is right wing bullshit.
Kay
@TG Chicago:
The policies were grandfathered unless the insurer changed the policy.
The NBC news report was sloppy. It’s just bad information. The private plan policies always changed frequently, because they were subject to just a few federal laws on cancellation, etc. This time when they changed they lost their grandfathered status.
Mnemosyne
@TG Chicago:
Some people liked using ephedra. Sure, it was killing people, but that was no reason to pull it off the market.
aimai
@TG Chicago: You are disgusting.
TG Chicago
@Omnes Omnibus: Okay, but if you live by the soundbite, you can die by the soundbite.
Nothing about “soundbite culture” makes dishonesty the wise option.
MattR
@Baud: You are right. I should have said “If this blows up in his face, it will be because the public believes …”
OTOH, I think it would be a mistake to get complacent and assume this is just another GOP/media circle jerk.
raven
@TG Chicago: I’m suggesting you are a whiny bitch.
TG Chicago
@Mnemosyne:
No, my complaint is that Obama actively told people that the policy they liked would remain legal when it would not.
And did insurance companies “break the rules” or did they “break the law”? If they broke the law, then Obama should get on top of this with prosecutions. So far, I’m not aware that’s forthcoming.
? Martin
@TG Chicago:
The policy was that plans in effect when ACA passed would be grandfathered in, and people could indeed keep those even if they were out of compliance. However, if insurers changed those plans during the period, they would lose their protection. Insurers were aware of this and changed many plans, knowing they’d lose their grandfather status. That could not have been known until insurers took that step, and if insurers wanted to keep those policies around, they had (some) mechanisms to do that. One wrinkle in that was that states don’t always honor that kind of policy, so the state can implement new rules that insurers must adapt to. In those cases, the states forced the insurers to change the policies and the grandfathering was lost. IIRC, originally the plan was that states wouldn’t have that ability but it was stripped out somewhere in the negotiation.
So, not so simple to predict what would have happened.
Mnemosyne
@TG Chicago:
Still waiting for your proof of the “lie.” So far, we have a single pull-quote from an unidentified speech from an article filled with “experts” who are paid by the insurance industry.
But I guess you love your right-wing bullshit too much to actually look at where it comes from. Must be nice to live in your world where insurance companies are as honest as the day is long and it’s only that mean ol’ lying Obama who forced them to stop
ripping offproviding low-cost insurance to their customers.Baud
@MattR:
Anything can catch fire, I suppose, whether real or not. Ultimately, if enough people sign up for Obamacare, and most other people will not in fact see any significant changes, I don’t think anyone is going to care about the fact that Obama was not precise in describing how the law worked.
Mnemosyne
@TG Chicago:
And your evidence for this is a single pull-quote from an unidentified speech in an article full of health insurance employees.
ETA: If you’re trying to show us that you’re not susceptible to every piece of right-wing bullshit that gets pooped through the MSM, you’re certainly not doing a very good job of it.
Yatsuno
@TG Chicago: Well that settles it. I’ll never vote for that stinking lying ni-CLANG!!! again!
aimai
@TG Chicago: I really hate this entire meme–its so bone deep dishonest. Obama was trying to tell people that the ACA did not include a plan t to force people with insurance to go to the exchanges–if they wanted to try to stick with their original insurance plan they would not be forced to go on the exchanges and choose new insurance. Your insurance company could go belly up and stop insuring you–the ACA did not affect that. Your company employer could stop offering the plan you were on–the ACA did not affect that. You could age out of being able to afford your premiums–Obamacare has nothing to do with that. Your circumstances could change: you could get divorced or married or adopt and your plan might not continue to cover you. In the real world, not occupied entirely by brain damaged children, it was obvious at the time what Obama was saying. He was not promising that nothing would ever change for people buying insurance in a complex private market because he didn’t control the insurance companies and the way they reckon profit and loss. If they don’t want to supply a customer with insurance for whatever reason they are not obligated to do so–the customer has never controlled that.
TG Chicago
@Mnemosyne:
First and foremost, recheck the post where I used the phrase “congenital liar”. You will see that I specifically said I believe Obama is NOT a congenital liar.
People were worried that Obama would make their policies illegal. Obama assured them he wouldn’t, then he did. The companies didn’t issue illegal policies; they issued policies that Obama subsequently outlawed after saying he wouldn’t.
Chris
@Yatsuno:
What exactly is meant by “peak wingnut?” Are we saying “there’s a point beyond which even wingnuts will not go?” If so, peak wingnut is a lie. Or are we saying “there’s a point beyond which the rest of the country will not follow?” If so, peak wingnut is real, I think. (Though I’m not sure exactly where that point is).
Mnemosyne
@aimai:
But TG Chicago has a single quote from an unidentified speech! QED.
Omnes Omnibus
@TG Chicago:
Note the bracketed word. What was there in the original speech? NBC doesn’t link to it, nor do they give the date. They used a quote that they changed in order to support an allegation of dishonesty. Now, the change may have been for readability, but they make it hard to tell.
Kay
@TG Chicago:
Well, but the policies could have remained in effect if insurers hadn’t changed them,. The “grandfather” mechanism isn’t unheard of in new laws. The insurers left the policies the same for a while and then changed them.
The bigger picture is, they could ALWAYS do that, in the past- change the policy, cancel the policy- this was ALWAYS a risk. None of those people were ever guaranteed to keep the policies they “liked”.
Mnemosyne
@TG Chicago:
Uh-huh:
I’m not saying that Justice Souter fucks goats, I’m just mentioning that if he did fuck goats, that would make him a goat-fucker. What? I didn’t say that he fucks goats.
Baud
@aimai:
Pretty much this.
This has happened before, where something Obama said could be read to mean something, but in context (and with a little bit of common sense) it was clear what he meant, but the media nonetheless went crazy. There have been so many fake scandals, however, I can’t recall what that was.
TG Chicago
@jenn: Can you please point me to a better story from a major news outlet?
raven
Mornin Joe did the same thing this dork is doing over and over this morning.
Kay
@TG Chicago:
No, they issued different policies that were no longer grandfathered. New policies. Changed policies.
Mnemosyne
@TG Chicago:
Several people have already explained this to you, but I’ll try it again: companies changed their policies so that they were no longer compliant.
But the fact that insurance companies changed their policies after the fact in ways that made those policies no longer compliant with the law means that Obama “lied.”
TAPX486
@? Martin: if you weren’t paying attention, and most people who aren’t policy wonks were not, then Obama’s statements were lacking in detail and designed to not give the GOP a talking point. However look at the length of your answer. Can you see that on a 30 second campaign commercial or bumper sticker. For most people their eyes start to glaze over before the politician gets out his last name.
TG Chicago
@Mnemosyne: If you don’t believe NBC News, would you believe White House Spokesman Jay Carney?
It could not be clearer that this statement is in opposition to “If you like your health-care plan, you will be able to keep your health-care plan. Period.”
If Obama had said “If you have a quality health-care plan, you will be able to keep it,” that could be defended. But that’s not what he said.
cckids
@MattR:
This. My daughter’s employer (AMC Theaters) cut everybody’s hours to less than 28 per week in January & told everyone it was because of Obamacare. Oy.
MattR
@Mnemosyne: FWIW here is a speech Obama gave to the AMA in 2009. (as an example)
I think aimai is spot on with her assessment of what he meant, but I also think he did not always add the proper caveats (which admittedly were largely unnecessary in this specific speech based on the target audience) which leaves him open to charges of lying or deliberately misleading the public.
Kay
@Baud:
He could have said this: you can keep your private-market individual policy because it will remain grandfathered as long as the insurer doesn’t change the policy.
Or unless your state law changes, I think he’d have to add, to be really precise.
pseudonymous in nc
In a saner America, Obama would say this:
“If you want to call it a lie, then fine. I’m happy you can’t pay any more for dogshit that pretended to be health insurance. You should be happy. Here’s a dozen people who had dogshit insurance that didn’t pay a penny when they got sick.”
But wingnut America likes the taste of dogshit.
TG Chicago
@piratedan:
My entire point is that Obama set himself up for this. He could have said non-false things that would have been politically helpful during the ACA rollout.
Even the White House Spokesman is admitting the president was wrong. Why can’t everybody else?
Omnes Omnibus
@Kay: Or as long as you can afford the premiums. Or as long as you pay the premiums. Or as long as the insurance company doesn’t go out of business.
piratedan
@TG Chicago: well I guess we better impeach that lyin’ sombitch then hadn’t we?
listen, if you wanna die on this hill, fine we’ll leave you a canteen that you can use to maintain your purity, I think the rest of us will move on and send someone back to help afterwards, provided your healthcare plan hasn’t been cancelled due to non-compliance with the healthcare law that has been in effect since 2009.
Baud
@MattR:
OMG. Obama promised that all doctors would be immortal.
He lied!
Scandal!
TG Chicago
@Mnemosyne: It was absolutely wise to pull Ephedra from the market. But if that happened after the president promised not to pull it from the market, that would mean the president broke a promise, right?
The Thin Black Duke
Why are you guys arguing with this fool?
Mnemosyne
@TG Chicago:
So, again, you come out strongly in favor of insurance companies being allowed to rip off their customers and change their policies whenever the insurance company wants:
But, hey, who cares about lowly consumers when there’s Obama-bashing to be done?
TAPX486
While I think he could have been more specific lets just remember Joe the Plumber. Obama gave a 4 minute answer to good old Joe and the only thing that got picked up was ‘spread the wealth’. Same thing with ‘you didn’t build it’.
Violet
@Baud: No doctor will ever retire or move. Never!
Omnes Omnibus
@The Thin Black Duke: Boredom.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
Pretty much.
Kay
@MattR:
It’s just tough for me to get my head around because when I heard him say it I don’t think, “I can keep MY SPECIFIC employer-provided policy at the same price, forever”
Is that what people with private insurance thought? How much control over the plan or price did they have before? Almost none, right? They thought they got a guaranteed policy at a guaranteed price?
Mnemosyne
@TG Chicago:
Still waiting for you to show us the full speech to back up your claim that Obama “lied.” Again, it’s the responsibility of the person making the claim to prove it, not the responsibility of others to disprove it.
You made the claim, you provide the proof. Otherwise, admit you got punked by the right wing and yummed down a giant plate of their bullshit because it fed into your existing hatred of Obama.
TG Chicago
@? Martin:
Perhaps it wasn’t easy to predict, but it was predicted.
Mnemosyne
@The Thin Black Duke:
Slow afternoon at work.
Baud
@Kay:
Exactly. So Obama was promising a world with tighter federal controls than single payer? I don’t think so.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne: Technically, NBC made the claim. TGChicago is running with it.
Tomolitics
@TG Chicago: Here ya go from Ezra (finally taking a break from his FIre! in a crowded theater routine):
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/10/29/this-is-why-obamacare-is-cancelling-some-peoples-insurance-plans/
Kay
The WaPo says the private plans changed frequently, so I think you’d have to ask people “how often did it change before? Every year?”
They got 90 days warning and then the insurer could drop, change, whatever, under the old rules, right?
I get that they didn’t want it to change, but it was by definition changing if it was no longer grandfathered, because that’s what “no longer grandfathered” means: it changed.
piratedan
@Kay: I dunno Kay, every year the prices went up for my spouse and as such, any pay raise she might have anticipated got sucked up with it (yet the salesmen go to Mexico every year and the top guys still get their bonuses)….. and while costs are being leveled and the changes are percolating their way thru the system, somebody is still looking for a pony down at the stables.
aimai
@TG Chicago: You are lying. See how you like it?
What he said was not false at the time that he said it and the actions of the insurance companies in dumping their old customers is not his responsibility.
The thing I really hate about all this is a) its a pointless distraction, like Jim Treacher having a melt down trying to force “Obama eats dogs” into the public discourse. B) It illuminates the fact that a certain type of American prefers to believe obvious lies about their own experience than admit that Obamacare is filling a huge gap in our national health care nightmare. It is not, in fact, the case that people are “happy with their health insurance”–they are not happy with what they pay, they are not happy when they have to access it and they discover how terrible the coverage is, they are not happy going bankrupt with it, they are not happy when their employers shift plans every year in order to save a few bucks and cause everyone in the plan to lose their relationship with their prior doctor. This is really what people experience. Every year the plan changes subtly, or your needs change and the plan doesn’t, the costs go up, the deductible goes up and you have ZERO recourse. Thats always been the case. These people reporting that they are “despondent” and upset because they have received a letter from their insurance company explaining that the policy has been cancelled? They have all received letters like this in the past and could have received this letter in the future–and probably would over time–or they would have been forced out of their insurance plan the old fashioned way by trying to use it and being recissioned to death, or trying to use it and finding out it doesn’t cover, or being canceled for some other reason.
And on some level they know it because this is a totally common experience. But like the people fred clark talks about over at slacktivist, the people who bear false witness against their neighbors every damned day by lying for Jesus about gays or unions or whatever they prefer to lie than to face the scary truth: the Republican plan for sick people was, indeed, die faster and pay all your money to the insurance company before you do. At least Obama and the democrats tried to put in a plan that would cover everyone, end the war on people with pre-existing conditions, end false capping of coverage, subsidize the poor, and maintain medicare. What the fucking fuck? You have to be a bitter, angry, lying, and even delusional asshole to fixate the way TG does on one line in one speech when you have the whole fucking ACA to to study and all the personal stories of grateful people finally signing up right in front of you.
pseudonymous in nc
Normal churn in the individual market was apparently around 50% pre-ACA. People dropped coverage because they got jobs with (proper) group insurance, lost coverage because they got sick, had premiums raised on them beyond affordability to reclaim the previous year’s medical costs, and so on.
Focusing on the individual market — which was an absolute cesspit pre-ACA — is stupid. But American politics is stupid.
TG Chicago
@Kay: Then why is Jay Carney saying this?
Hill Dweller
@TG Chicago:
No he didn’t. If someone bought a plan after 2010, it can’t be grandfathered in, and has to comply with minimum coverage standards mandated by the ACA. This was covered fairly extensively in 2010.
TAPX486
@Tomolitics: thank you for the link. The quokka eating a snack answered all of my questions!!!!!!!!!.
Matt McIrvin
Confession: I did not even know until today that Obamacare even had a grandfather clause, and that these “cancelled” crap plans are in fact crap plans that were grandfathered in but had major changes made after 2010, when the law containing all these regulations was passed.
I knew the story was bullshit, but I didn’t realize it was that bullshit.
TG Chicago
@piratedan:
I do not think that would be wise.
What would be wise is to not hand political slam-dunks to the opposition.
Matt McIrvin
…Also, it occurs to me that much of this semantic grief comes from the time lag between the passage of the law in 2010 and some of the regulations coming down now.
And, of course, the law’s opponents keep clamoring for more of this.
TG Chicago
@Mnemosyne:
No, I’m in favor of the president (any president) being honest. And to accountability when he or she is not.
A Humble Lurker
@TG Chicago:
So you’re going to stop talking now?
TG Chicago
@Mnemosyne: MattR gave the quote from the AMA speech at post #77.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
That’s what’s amazing about the NBC story. We had the incredibly boring “grandfathered plans” discussion in 2010.
“Obama KNEW” Knew what? About grandfathered plans? No shit.
They could have played it straight and it would have been a perfectly fine news story. “After 3 years the private policies are changing, and are no longer grandfathered”.
But they HAD to do the “What did he know and when did he know it?!” routine. It’s not that it’s unimportant. It’s that they’re incapable of just straight reporting, a recitation of facts. That’s not juicy enough, so they have to release it as “NEW!”
piratedan
@Kay: it’s just like Gitmo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
rikyrah
Sybrina Fulton is a better person than me, cause I woulda cursed this mofo out
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
The grandfather provision was supposed to give them time to comply. My son’s new employer-provided policy says “a qualified health insurance plan under the PPACA” presumably because previously it was not compliant or “qualified”.
Mnemosyne
@TG Chicago:
Still waiting for you to find the rest of that speech for us and prove that Obama did not, in fact, address any of the issues you’re claiming he “lied” about.
catclub
@TG Chicago: “he’s paying a political price for it”
Probably kills his chances for re-election. AND hopes for helpful votes from Teabagger House members.
He is heartbroken.
Mnemosyne
@TG Chicago:
The AMA speech was in 2009. NBC says their quote is from 2010. So, sorry, no one did your homework for you, and your excuse that the dog ate it isn’t holding up.
The Thin Black Duke
ODS is terrible, ain’t it? It actually compels you into believing that the insurance companies are on your side.
Kay
@piratedan:
Again, I don’t think it’s a small thing. It’s upsetting to people. It’s news.
BUT, the NBC report sucked, because the broader picture is the private plans ALWAYS changed. This time when they changed the fell out of the grandfather provision, but Obamacare didn’t CAUSE the change, the insurer did.
Cassidy
So much concern I need some waders.
TG Chicago
@Tomolitics: Thank you for this. It backs up everything I’ve said.
“Since the health-care law required insurance companies to change their plans, this is a direct result of the Affordable Care Act.”
“President Obama has repeatedly said, since the health law passed, that if people like their insurance they could keep it. Which is a weird promise to make when one of the key goals of the health-care law is to change individual market insurance coverage.”
“There are lots of insurance policies, especially on the individual market, that are really bare bones. Some argue they shouldn’t even be called insurance coverage, because their coverage is too sparse to insure against financial ruin. One report from the Obama administration, issued in 2011, found that 62 percent of individual market plans don’t offer maternity care. Eighteen percent do not cover mental health benefits and 9 percent do not pay for prescription drugs.”
“The health-care law requires insurance plans to cover all of those things, and then some.”
“This includes spending at least 80 percent of subscriber premiums on medical care (leaving 20 percent for administration and profits), covering 10 benefit categories and providing preventive care without any co-payment.”
“That means insurance companies cannot, under the Affordable Care Act, keep selling the plans that they used to sell — the ones that don’t cover prescription drugs and maternity care. And that means that some people who liked purchasing coverage without maternity care and prescription drugs won’t be able to keep those plans.”
“The cancellation notices are a feature of the Affordable Care Act, not a bug. The idea was to make insurance coverage more robust — and that means cancelling policies that offer less thorough coverage.”
Cacti
That does it. I’m not voting for Obama in 2016.
piratedan
@Kay: I know Kay, I know, they’re just a complete void where context is needed. Like those absolutists spouting off about well regulated militias… I can’t remember which government agency is responsible for militia regulation but I’m pretty sure if Obama created one there might be a few twisted testicles about it….
MattR
@Mnemosyne: I think TG is right that Obama made similar references in 2010 without all the proper caveats, but I don’t care enough to try and find them. I understand why Obama wanted to reassure the vast majority of Americans that this would not affect them, but I do think he made a mistake in not always being clear that there would be some who had to change policies (perhaps while pointing out that this is a normal occurrence pre-ACA). However, I also think it is rather pointless to try and use this as a gotcha instead of providing the context to explain what it means, who is affected and what their options are.
Mnemosyne
@The Thin Black Duke:
We all know that insurance companies always tell the truth and only want the best for their customers, so if they say that Obamacare is forcing them to put people on a much more expensive plan and those customers don’t have any choice in the matter (like, say, buying insurance from a different company), it must be true.
What? Why are you laughing?
(Actually, though, I think this may be part of the problem — people in the individual insurance market are so accustomed to having to accept any bad treatment dished out by the insurance company that they don’t quite realize yet that they can leave their current insurance company and get the same or better insurance from a different company. For years, the attitude of insurance companies was basically, Hey, where you gonna go instead? Now the answer is, To one of your competitors, but insurance companies don’t want people to know that.)
(Edited for clarity.)
Hill Dweller
@TG Chicago: For the 100th f’n time, it forced changes to policies sold after 2010. If insurance companies were selling junk insurance after 2010, it is their fault the policies have to be changed.
Mnemosyne
@TG Chicago:
Just accidentally left this part out, didja?
So the fact that the insurance companies voluntarily and of their own accord changed plans that would otherwise have been grandfathered in proves that Obama lied. Poor ittle insurance companies, strong-armed into doing what they would have done anyway by mean ol’ Obama.
The Thin Black Duke
@Hill Dweller: Forget it, Jake. It’s TG Chicago.
FlipYrWhig
But I LIKED spending money every month for nothing! Why can’t I keep that? And I LIKED my incandescent bulbs and my phosphate detergents and my lead paint. Stupid Obama, passing laws that protect me from getting screwed. It’s the most action I get!
TG Chicago
@Mnemosyne: It’s a different quote that says the same thing. Don’t be ridiculous. If your best defense of Obama is that he didn’t lie in 2010, merely in 2009, then you’re grasping at straws.
fuckwit
OMG MY SHIT SANDWICH HAS LESS SHIT AND MORE BREAD THIS IS AN OUTRAGE!
muddy
@TG Chicago: Remember at the restaurant where the menu said “Atkin’s friendly” and then you pitched a shit fit because they serve rice automatically if you don’t say no. They were LIARS.
FlipYrWhig
@MattR: I think what all of those statements by Obama are referring to is that “Obamacare” is not a plan that forces everyone to participate. All the “you can” and “you don’t have to” lines are in that context. They mean “we are not taking things away from you.” They do not mean “no one will ever take these things away from you.”
If I were Obama I’d want to say, “Hey, shit for brains, I just did you a favor. I got you out of a plan that was sucking money from your pocket while giving you precious nothing. Trust me, you’ll thank me when you get sick or hurt. And, from the looks of y’all, it’ll probably be from slipping on a mustard packet outside a Walmart snack bar.”
TG Chicago
@Mnemosyne: I included the parts that proved Obama lied, such as:
You don’t seem interested in responding to that.
Cassidy
@Cacti: Not only I’m not voting for him again, I’m building a statue of Greenwald and Snowden touching fingers like the Sistine Chapel.
muddy
@fuckwit: OMG you ate with him too?
Omnes Omnibus
@FlipYrWhig:
I think Cole probably has decent healthcare already.
Mnemosyne
@TG Chicago:
Actually, as I said in #127, my defense of Obama is that he’s not responsible for the voluntary actions of the insurance companies that they decided to take after 2010. Contrary to the right-wing pundits you read, Obama is not actually a dictator and did not instruct those insurance companies to make changes to policies that would otherwise have been grandfathered in. The insurance companies made that decision themselves.
But, hey, the story has multiple quotes from insurance company employees who put the blame on Obama, so it must be true! Insurance companies wouldn’t lie to us to cover their own asses!
SiubhanDuinne
I don’t even know WTF that’s even supposed to mean.
ETA: never mind, just started reading comments from the top. I may not be FRIST! but I am ONEHUNNERT’N’THIRTYFOURTH!
Cassidy
@TG Chicago: You are very invested in the “Obama lied” meme. You should stay away from Facebook for a while.
Mnemosyne
@TG Chicago:
I did respond — the insurance companies voluntarily and of their own accord decided to make changes to policies that would otherwise have been grandfathered in, and now they’re trying to blame Obama for their own decisions. But you just couldn’t wait to find some way to say Obama lied! so you swallowed their bullshit whole without even stopping to check the facts, because insurance companies are always honest and upfront, amirite?
TG Chicago
Okay, let’s step back. Here’s the promise Obama made:
Then the ACA made some bare-bones plans illegal. We don’t even have to get into the grandfathered thing. As Ezra says:
It’s clear that Obama broke the promise he made in 2009.
Yatsuno
@TG Chicago: Okay. The President was wrong. Now what? He’s not running for re-election. Nothing in this will keep him from enacting any further points of his agenda. What the fuck difference does it make, to crudely quote a great woman?
Josie
@TG Chicago: Actually, I don’t think Obama lied. He probably paid the American public the compliment of thinking that they would not want to keep a crappy insurance policy when they could go on the exchanges and get a better one for a similar price. It just never occurred to him that they would rather pay more for less. Silly him – underestimating the intelligence of the general public and the msm.
Mnemosyne
@TG Chicago:
Still waiting for you to bring us the actual 2010 quote that NBC used rather than pretending that a different quote is the one you were complaining about. Talk about lying …
Omnes Omnibus
@TG Chicago: If my parents promised to give me their old Volvo when I graduated from college* and instead gave me a new Audi**, should I be upset?
*Didn’t happen, but that’s not the point.
**Sure as hell didn’t happen, but that’s not the point either.
@Josie:
This is probably true.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: I know that my own employee insurance plan had some changes made to bring it into compliance back in 2011 or so.
Felanius Kootea
@TG Chicago: Yeah, we should have made Obama a dictator in 2009. Then he could force doctors to live and work forever and insurance companies to never change their plans and TG Chicago would be able to say that he kept his word. My mother would still have the doctor she had in 2009 because that doctor would be forced to cancel her retirement and return to work in order to make sure that Obama’s statements held true at all times.
Meanwhile in the real world, millions of people have access to health insurance options that they never did before. Clearly that is of less importance than beating on this one dead horse because we know in the history books, 200 years from now, TGChicago will be mentioned as the great hero that sniffed out Obama’s lying ways on health insurance. And that is all that will be remembered about Obamacare.
Yatsuno
@Omnes Omnibus:
Bitterness does not become thee. Plus methinks this would have interfered with your life-long love affair with other (unfortunately extinct, but hopefully only temporarily) Swedish vehicles.
Gian
wow, it takes a determined troll to get one of theses threads into a comment fest.
TG Chicago
@Yatsuno: The difference it makes is public acceptance of the ACA. People are going to feel like they were lied to. They’re going to be less inclined to sign up, particularly “young invincibles”.
Mnemosyne
@TG Chicago:
Uh, those bare-bones plans were the ones that were grandfathered in. You can’t pretend that they’re two different things, because they’re one and the same.
Josie
@Josie:
ETA: I used the wrong word. That should be overestimating the intelligence of the general public and msm.
Kay
@FlipYrWhig:
It was never going to be a sure-fire political winner. Never.
We started this fake-debate with people believing some employed people got “free” insurance and other people did not. It was never free. It was ALL paid for by the employee, as part of their pay.
One of my son’s friends, who is self-employed so has to buy insurance under Obamacare said “why does he get FREE insurance (my son, thru his employer) and I have to pay?”
I actually think this was deliberate, this silliness, where parts of our compensation are characterized as “gifts” from our employers. I think it was to make us grateful to our employers, Where did it come from? It’s crazy. They don’t give us GIFTS, our employers.
Obama should have started with this: “we’re all paying for our health insurance, and now some of us will pay on an exchange” He needed to back way up to the beginning.
Mnemosyne
@TG Chicago:
You mean that the insurance company and right-wing propaganda that you’re pushing will make people feel like they were lied to? Well, they’ll be right about being lied to, but they’ll be wrong about who was lying to them.
TG Chicago
@Mnemosyne: Wait, I just was assuming you knew what you were talking about. I just checked, and I learned you have no idea:
So the 2009 quote is from the AMA speech and the 2012 quote is from here:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/06/28/remarks-president-supreme-court-ruling-affordable-care-act
Yatsuno
@TG Chicago: You really think someone who is either desperate or knowledgable for health insurance is gonna give two fucks about this? THAT is the whole fucking basis for this massive concern troll? Wow. That’s either really funny or really sad. You of course have statistics showing this effect non?
Hill Dweller
@TG Chicago: The ’09 quote says ‘health plan’, while the ’12 quote says ‘health insurance’. How is that inaccurate?
Mnemosyne
@TG Chicago:
So Obama only made a single speech about ACA in 2009, so of course that must be the one NBC quoted with no reference what the actual speech was. Still waiting for your proofs.
And this absolves you of not knowing that the bare-bones plans are the grandfathered ones being referred to how, again?
Felanius Kootea
@TG Chicago: Why don’t we wait till March 2014 to see what happens with “young invincibles” signing up instead of wringing our hands in defeat in October 2013? Thanks much.
Anya
@Baud: This exact thing happened to my husband. His family doctor retired last year so he should totally blame Obama.
Mike in NC
He will remain a problem until he stops stealing oxygen from more deserving people.
Mnemosyne
@Yatsuno:
I think this massive concern trolling will lead people to accept the “new” plan their insurance companies are offering because they’ll think they can’t get a better deal on the Exchanges because “Obamacare.” But TG Chicago doesn’t seem to have any problem with allowing insurers to dishonestly increase their profits as long as he can bleat Obama lied, my health insurance died! in chorus with Michelle Malkin.
Maybe she’ll loan him some pom-poms so they can turn it into a whole routine.
Felanius Kootea
@TG Chicago: Oh and I notice you’re not that bothered by GOP-affiliate-sponsored lies targeting “young invincibles”.
Cassidy
@Yatsuno: Purity will not be denied!
pseudonymous in nc
OBUMMER LIED, MY NO-COVERAGE HEALTH POLICY DIED.
TG Chicago’s concern is noted.
Patrick
@TG Chicago:
Baloney. He is paying a price for trying to give everyone the right to health insurance. There is an amazing number of people in this country who seem to be against that.
BTW – Can you imagine the outcry if Obama did what you seem to want him to do, ie force the insurance companies not to change their plans?
ETA – It is funny to watch the outrage people like you and the GOP are having about this non-issue. Wouldn’t it have been nice if people like you and the GOP had been equally outraged that the insurance companies actually had the right to refuse insurance to people with pre-existing conditions before the ACA?
Omnes Omnibus
I have decided to make an Ex cathedra pronouncement: I find Obama’s statement to be mostly true in the Politifact sense.
There. We’re done.
TG Chicago
@Yatsuno: Statistics to show that people don’t like being lied to?
pseudonymous in nc
“Dishonesty”, per TG Chicago:
Willingness to believe that people wouldn’t become attached to dogshit insurance coverage just because the ACA is doing away with it.
Because this is the root of the political problem: Obama assumed that people liked good health insurance, and didn’t like dogshit health insurance. Turns out that people like dogshit health insurance if they never have to claim on it, and even if they’ve eaten the dogshit and cursed it to the skies, wingnuts suddenly treat it like caviar because Obama is taking it away.
Yatsuno
@TG Chicago: You cited a specific effect from the cause of Obama lying. Therefore you must have some evidence this is occuring. Are young invincibles refusing to sign up based upon this? You asserted this. You prove it.
TG Chicago
@Yatsuno: I stand corrected. If the reaction around here is any indication, some people do, in fact, enjoy being lied to.
Omnes Omnibus
@TG Chicago: No, people don’t really give much of a shit about a less than precise statement that really isn’t that important.
Tomolitics
@TG Chicago:
That is a mega dumb premise. Maybe on your list of talking points for sock puppets? Money talks and bullshit walks for the non-pures, FYI.
Also too: Presidents often overpromise to get shit done and there is no Santa Claus. Sorry.
Yatsuno
@TG Chicago: Or maybe, JUST MAYBE, we don’t get all huffy over a one-time statement from a politician. Maybe we are capable of analysing a policy and its consequences independent of throwaway slogans from a politician. And MAYBE, we have faith that other people are also making that analysis. Your concern over this is…interesting. Or maybe you think everyone is just that dumb.
FlipYrWhig
@TG Chicago: why would that group have any stake in any of this? The people complaining about being wronged are… people who already had some kind of insurance. If you have no insurance, why the fuck do you care about that? That makes no sense. Just a switch goes off for anything that isn’t what they were told, and now they hate all of it? Is this a thought process that human beings you know actually have?
Cassidy
Glenn Greenwald is an asshole and Edward Snowden should rot in a gulag.
TG Chicago
As far as I can tell, the most charitable reading is this:
Obama made an ironclad promise that nobody would be kicked off a plan they liked.
The ACA made some plans that some people liked illegal.
BUT the ACA allows those plans to be grandfathered in as long as they don’t get changed.
However, these plans have a business model that depends on yearly changes and high turnover. But the ACA says they can’t change their plans and can’t enroll new people. So they have no choice but to cancel the plans.
But that doesn’t mean Obama said anything deceitful! Even though it was widely known that tons of plans would be canceled because of this, and Obama kept saying that nobody would lose their plan. Because it’s all due to insurance company changes, even though their business model was based around changes.
So the ACA didn’t make it illegal for them to keep offering the old plans, they just made it economically impossible.
FlipYrWhig
@TG Chicago: economically impossible to rip people off with a terrible product, yes. Boo fucking hoo. Oh, the poor insurance companies, how will they survive this calamity?
Omnes Omnibus
@TG Chicago: Okay, you win. Let’s impeach him. Aux barricades!
David Koch
What the emo-progs will never understand:
Obama is smarter than you. And perhaps more importantly, he’s luckier than you. Whatever you think is supposed to happen, the exact, reverse opposite of that is going to happen.
I would link to all the emo-losers who said Obama would never win the nomination, let alone the election, but so many hyperlinks would break the intertubes.
TG Chicago
@David Koch: So it’s cool for a person to lie as long as they’re smarter than you. Got it.
Glad the authoritarians are all over on the right side of the aisle.
TG Chicago
@FlipYrWhig: Not saying you should cry for the insurance companies. But if the idea was to stop the companies from being able to sell crappy stuff (that some people liked, possibly out of ignorance), then couldn’t Obama have said that rather than make up something which wasn’t true?
I’m reminded of a saying I saw here recently. Something like “Good policies don’t need to be sold with lies”.
Omnes Omnibus
@TG Chicago: Dude. First, you can’t prove that it is a lie. Maybe that it is imprecise. Maybe that it is untrue. Neither of these automatically equal a lie. Second, 95% of people with insurance will be able to keep it, so the statement isn’t WRONG. Third, does a minor rhetorical flourish matter so much to you? Why?
FlipYrWhig
@TG Chicago: I don’t think the point has ever been to carefully discuss every ramification that indirectly stems from the bill or law. The speeches are clarifying that Obamacare is not something that everyone is going to be forced to sign up for, which is true. I don’t know if you need to build your speech around the idea that people who have shit for insurance and like it anyway might be miffed not to have it anymore, so you’d better rephrase to spare them the traumatic discovery. But, you know, whatever, he’ll take the heat and come through fine.
Dexter's new approach
My understanding always was the President said that if you get your plan through your employer (or government plans), you could keep it.
Here’s his speech to the joint session of Congress laying it out to the public:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eePUhLg4eQw
That’s exactly what he said. I’m not going to review every speech to see if he parsed it so exactly every time, but that ‘s how he sold it. He left out individual plans from that promise.
Politically he should have made a greater effort to grandfather in old plans so not to have this distraction. The average duration of an individual plan is pretty short, so it would not have a big impact on the ACA in the long-term.
As anyone paying attention knows, if your rates are going up, it’s probably because your plan is bogus. And everyone knew the healthy would pay more in some instances with the understanding that most of this group will become unhealthy or injured with HC high costs at some point (and the rest should consider themselves fortunate to “overpay” into the pool just like I have for 20 years for my HC -where I’ve hugely “overpaid” – or car or home insurance where I’ve made no claims.)
I don’t have time to get in to the gritty details of health insurance in the country. Just understand that healthcare companies, especially the shitty ones that lurk in the individual plan market, have (had) no incentive to pay for the preventive care. They know the average the policy holder will leave before they see a payoff in that because the individual holder eventually will get a job with a big employer with a (tax subsidized) plan, or the person with a plan with a job will change jobs and be lost, or if they have healthcare problems, can just be (effectively) dropped. Many company plans are great, but that happens only when the company demands a good plan to attract and keep workers. And that is becoming less common because turnover is more common, young people don’t care about HC and old people suck and need to be purged.
The current cost risers in the ACA are long-term cost-saving provisions. Time will tell if they work in the current fucking nutty system we have. But I suspect they will work well in enough smart states to move the ball forward.
David Koch
@TG Chicago: Nobody has lied to you, you loser.
You’re just desperately trying to manufacture outrage like Fixxed News cuz you’re butthurt over Obama kicking your ass every time.
Just when you think tax-evading, stock-puppet joke, failed corporate attorney, klan lawyer, hair-fetish pornographer, who can’t hold a job Griftwald has cornered President Blackula, he wins – yet again. It must really get under your skin losing over and over and over to an “inadequate black man”.
Go back to your fevered swamp, you piece of shit.
TG Chicago
@Dexter’s new approach:
Your understanding is flawed. Back at #77, MattR linked to this quote from Obama:
“If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what.”
TG Chicago
@Omnes Omnibus: Because I don’t like it when presidents lie. I think most people don’t like that.
Dexter's new approach
@TG Chicago:
I just gave you the speech to the public on prime time national TV and congress OK? I don’t trust a small transcript that may have (probably) left out other statements that contradict the driving point. A speech to the AMA is meaningless compared to a nationally shown speech to the public, no?
And the fact that because I know way more about healthcare than you do and understood way better than you did so that I had the correct assumption does not allow you to correct me when I was right with my understanding. DId you watch the nationally televised speech or the AMA talk that had a fee to attend to get to your understanding?
You find an important speech to the public that people actually heard (in whole) and post it showing your point is correct that he didn’t exclude individual plans you have a little something to feel better about here. But you still miss the fucking point and so I care little on what you say on the matter. Or if you want to continue, I’ll just tear you up. I actually know what I’m talking about.
AxelFoley
@pseudonymous in nc:
It seems TG Chicago does, too.
Don’t know why folks continued to argue with this dishonest fucker.
Patricia Kayden
@David Koch: “President Blackula”. Sounds like a really cool dude.
Reading the comments here has been so educational. It’s good to see that so many of you understand the minutia of the ACA and can address claims that President Obama “lied” or other such nonsense. I live in such a blue state/liberal bubble that I haven’t paid much attention to the ACA beyond the website problems. I just wonder once the ACA starts working out fine, what the next GOP attack against Obama will be. I guess Repubs will fall back on Benghazi-gate.
Matt McIrvin
@Dexter’s new approach:
Well, no, because that’s exactly what the ACA did do, and it doesn’t seem to have helped: when the plans go away and aren’t replaced by something similar, that’s framed as “Obama taking it away.” The only sufficiently strong way to grandfather in old plans would be to never have any restrictions on new plans at all.
Matt McIrvin
@Patricia Kayden:
I still think they’ll just keep stating that the ACA is a failure, and hope that a sufficient number of people believe it. People who are on employer plans mostly won’t know the difference.
keestadoll
@Mnemosyne: Wouldn’t a simpler solution have been to leave ALL current policies untouched, then, if the ins. co changed them, the consumer would be left to decide whether or not to cancel said policy in favor of shopping the exchanges? I see in some comments the notion that being cancelled is a gift in disguise. It would be wholly dishonest not to realize that for most, the “gift” sucks as a first impression, and that impression has some real staying power.
Cassidy
@AxelFoley: paid troll get paid
Mnemosyne
@keestadoll:
In other words, not implementing PPACA at all? Yes, I suppose it would have been simpler to not do anything and let things continue on the way they were.
TG Chicago
@Dexter’s new approach:
So it’s okay to lie in a speech as long as it’s not a speech to the joint session of Congress?
Here’s the full transcript of the AMA speech, straight from the White House site. If there is context that changes Obama’s ironclad guaranteed, please point it out to me.
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-annual-conference-american-medical-association
TG Chicago
And if for some reason it’s cool to lie to the AMA, is it cool to lie in a weekly address to the American people?
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Weekly-Address-President-Obama-Calls-Health-Insurance-Reform-Key-to-Stronger-Economy-and-Improvement-on-Status-Quo/
“Under the reforms we seek, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.”
He didn’t add “…although we will make it effectively impossible for your insurance company to afford to keep offering you that plan”.
Mnemosyne
@TG Chicago:
I’m amazed that you are more upset about a “lie” than about insurance companies ripping people off with inadequate health plans. If people go bankrupt because they wrongly thought they had insurance coverage, that’s no problem, but if Obama doesn’t specifically tell people with crap plans that those plans may go away OMG OBAMA LIED MY HEALTH PLAN DIED!1!!ELEVENTY!
TG Chicago
@Mnemosyne: You’ve many times claimed that I support insurance company practices, when I’ve never said anything of the sort.
My entire point is that Obama was, in fact, dishonest. I voted for the guy, so I don’t like him lying to me. You can keep muddying the waters, but that’s the entire point.