Good Article: Published: Oct. 31, 2013 Updated: 5:07 p.m. Charles Krauthammer: Obamacare finally laid bare By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER / Syndicated columnist WASHINGTON – Every disaster has its the moment of clarity. Physicist Richard Feynman dunks an O-ring into ice water and everyone understands instantly why the shuttle Challenger exploded. This week, the Obamacare O-ring froze for all the world to see: Hundreds of thousands of cancelation letters went out to people who had been assured a dozen times by the president that “If you like your health care plan, youll be able to keep your health care plan. Period.” The cancellations lay bare two pillars of Obamacare: (a) mendacity and (b) paternalism. 50 to 75% Amount of the 14 million Americans who purchase health insurance that can expect to receive a cancellation letter. Source: NBC (a) Those letters are irrefutable evidence that Obamas repeated you-keep-your-coverage claim was false. Why were they sent out? Because Obamacare renders illegal (with exceedingly narrow “grandfathered” exceptions) the continuation of any insurance plan deemed by Washington regulators not to meet their arbitrary standards for adequacy. Example: No maternity care? You are terminated. So a law designed to cover the uninsured is now throwing far more people off their insurance than it can possibly be signing up on the nonfunctioning insurance exchanges. Indeed, most of the 19 million people with individual insurance will have to find new and likely more expensive coverage. And that doesnt even include the additional millions who are sure to lose their employer-provided coverage. Thats a lot of people. Thats a pretty big lie. But perhaps Obama didnt know. Maybe the bystander president was as surprised by this as he claims to have been by the IRS scandal, the Associated Press and James Rosen phone logs, the failure of the Obamacare website, the premeditation of the Benghazi attacks, the tapping of Angela Merkels phone – i.e., the workings of the federal government of which he is the nominal head. Im skeptical. Its not as if the Obamacare plan-dropping is an obscure regulation Still, how could he imagine getting away with a false claim? The same way he maintained for two weeks that false narrative about Benghazi. He figured hed get away with it. And he did. Simple formula: Delay, stonewall and wait for a supine and protective press to turn spectacularly incurious. Look at how the New York Times covered his “keep your plan” whopper – buried on page 17 with a headline calling the cancellations a “prime target.” As if this is a partisan issue and not a brazen falsehood clear to any outside observer – say, Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler, who gave the presidents claim four Pinocchios. Noses dont come any longer. (b) Beyond mendacity, there is liberal paternalism, of which these forced cancellations are a classic case. We canceled your plan, explained Jay Carney, because it was substandard. We have a better idea. Translation: Sure, you freely chose the policy, paid for the policy, renewed the policy, liked the policy. But youre too primitive to know what you need. We do. Your policy is hereby canceled. Because what you really need is what our experts have determined must be in every plan. So a couple in their 60s must buy maternity care. A teetotaler must buy substance abuse treatment. And a healthy 28-year-old with perfectly appropriate catastrophic insurance must pay for bells and whistles for which he has no use. Its Halloween. There is a knock at your door. You hear: “Were the government and were here to help.” You hide.
Posted on: Fri, 01 Nov 2013 08:11:23 +0000
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