The Audacity of Hype

In his Saturday radio/Internet address President Obama said:

I welcome a good debate. I welcome the chance to defend our proposals and to test our ideas in the fires of this democracy.

But what I will not abide are those who would bend the truth – or break it – to score political points and stop our progress as a country.

After hearing this a Yiddish word comes to mind:

chutzpah: unbelievable gall; insolence; shameless audacity.

For months now the President has been bending, indeed torturing, the truth. The bending starts with countless speeches asserting that specific features are part of his “reform” as if final, unchangeable legislation had been written.  But, as he knows, the final legislation has not been written and nobody yet knows what it will look like.

In this same Saturday address Obama said:

Over the better part of the past year, a great debate has taken place in Washington and across America, about how to reform our health care system to provide security for people with insurance, coverage for those without insurance, and lower costs for everyone.

In fact, under all the versions currently being considered in Congress millions of people will see an increase in their costs either through taxation or insurance premiums. It’s mathematically impossible for costs to be lower for everyone, when the goals are to mandate new coverages not now included in most policies, and to “insure” people who are already sick and will immediately cost insurance companies thousands of times more than they pay in premiums.  The requirement to ensure people with pre-existing conditions is called “guaranteed issue.”

More from the President’s Saturday address

Just this week, the Senate Finance Committee approved a reform proposal that has both Democratic and Republican support.

As with much of the communication from the White House, this assertion was designed to mislead those who don’t have time to keep up with the political intrigue and maneuvering in D.C.  In fact, one of the ten Republicans on the Finance Committee voted yes on preliminary, conceptual language – not an actual bill in legislative language.  Even she expressed doubts about voting for the final legislation.

…the insurance industry is rolling out the big guns and breaking open their massive war chest – to marshal their forces for one last fight to save the status quo. They’re filling the airwaves with deceptive and dishonest ads… And they’re funding studies designed to mislead the American people…They’ll claim that premiums will go up under reform

Earlier this year Obama and the Democrats promised the insurance companies that the additional cost of guaranteed issue would be covered by  forcing millions of young, healthy people to buy insurance for the first time, with stiff fines for non-compliance.  But the latest incarnation of ObamaCare, the Senate Finance Committee bill Obama referred to above, made those fines too small.  Those millions of young, healthy folks won’t be coerced into buying insurance.

The insurance industry did indeed fund a study based on the assumption that the costs of guaranteed issue would not be offset with revenue from millions of new customers.  The conclusions were blindingly obvious.  Premiums will have to be increased on everyone who does have insurance, motivating many of them to drop their insurance, driving premiums even higher.

President Obama’s own words in this same Saturday address “bend the truth” far more than any of his adversaries as they respond to Administration propaganda.