I’m pretty sure that had President Obama said something like “If you’ve got an employer-provided health plan then you can keep it” he’d have been off the hook for all this foofaraw we’ve been hearing about insurance companies cancelling plans. The trouble is, everyone who was in the individual market took his “if you like it you can keep it” message to heart. Had they paid attention to the first half of that sentence they might have said “you know, I really don’t like this policy. The only good thing about it is that it’s fairly inexpensive. So let me see what new plans are available and how much they cost before I screech.”
I blame the insurance companies some too, since they didn’t bother to explain to their policyholders that the cancellations were a) the normal way of doing business and b) only the ACA’s fault in that the cancelled plans didn’t meet the minimum health care requirements of the Act.
Obama is too fond of the absolute statement that makes a good sound bite. This is the same thing that happened to him with the “line in the sand” on Syrian chemical weapons. The good thing about him is that, when challenged on these idiot remarks, he tries to make good. The bad thing is that he makes them without thinking them through….
I agree with Hedera.
On the other hand, I think even if he’d said, “If you’ve got an employer-provided health plan…” Then they’d pounce big time on people who lose their insurance after losing their jobs… And we’d just be talking about how they would’ve lost their insurance before the ACA when losing their jobs… etc etc.
What Dean Baker said about the idea of people being able to “keep their doctors”… where what did people think, their doctors would be barred from retiring or dying?
I like that one because my spouse’s GP just retired from his practice this year, and he had to start seeing a new doctor that took over the practice. If my spouse had insurance, he would have the luxury of shopping for a new doctor, but since we’re uninsured, he has to be just satisfied that this doctor taking over the practice is willing to keep seeing someone uninsured.
(I don’t know what it’s like elsewhere – but being uninsured, even if you’re willing to pay cash, seriously limits the doctors, and especially specialists, that are willing to see you. They sometimes won’t tell you that outright, they’ll just tell you they have no room in the schedule for a “new patient appointment” for the next 10 months.)
But the point is, no matter what Obama said about whatever, there would be some hitch. Because that’s how our government works, with a ton of strings attached to everything, a million hitches, so that there is no straight-forward way to make any type of promise, or even propose anything in particular, singularly. Everything is always in convoluted flux to cater to the corporate interests.
They should all just really say:
“Read my lips… I can’t give you a straight answer about anything, so stop expecting it.”
Well, had single-payer been an option, or Medicare for all . . .
That goes without saying.
But that won’t happen until after the campaign finance problem is ever fixed. (Like many things.)