And if that's the case, then this just becomes one more option. If it's not the case, then I think that that's something that the American people should know.

TAPPER: I'm sorry, but what about keeping your promise to the American people that they won't have to change plans even if employers...

(CROSSTALK)

MR. OBAMA: Well, all right -- when I say if you have your plan and you like it, and your doctor has a plan -- or you have a doctor and you like your doctor, that you don't have to change plans, what I'm saying is the government is not going to make you change plans under health reform.

Now, are there going to be employers right now, assuming we don't do anything -- let's say that we take the advice of some folks who are out there and say, "Oh, this is not the time to do health care. We can't afford it. It's too complicated. Let's take our time," et cetera.

So let's assume that nothing happened. I can guarantee you that there's the possibility for a whole lot of Americans out there that they're not going to end up having the same health care they have. Because what's going to happen is, as costs keep on going up, employers are going to start making decisions. We've got to raise premiums on our employees. In some cases, we can't provide health insurance at all.

And so there are going to be a whole set of changes out there. That's exactly why health reform is so important.

Margaret from McClatchy? Where's Margaret? There you go.

Note that the president cut Tapper off when Tapper got down to the core issue, then the president dissembled, and then the president called on someone else.

Tapper was trying to raise the most obvious question of all: The president has promised the American people over and over again that they can keep their health insurance if they like it, but it is quite simply enormously and purposely deceptive of him to do so.

The president has to change the subject, has to dissemble and deflect, because the truth, if understood by Americans, will doom the centerpiece of his takeover of American medicine.

Tapper pointed out that employers provide insurance to most Americans, and if the federal government offers employers a cheaper way to provide health insurance, vast numbers of those employers will dump their employees into that government system.

The government won’t force the employers to switch, but employers will switch, and the president’s promise will be as bogus as a three dollar bill. When this massive disruption occurs, President Obama will stand back and say he had nothing to do with it –that employers made the switch.

Even if Americans then see through this giant bait-and-switch and blame the president, it will be too late. Once leveled the health insurance industry will be too crippled to reconstitute itself as a competitor to the government option/public plan. Millions of Americans and their premiums will have been transferred by their employers to the government rolls, including millions of Americans in the public sector whose local governments will not be able to resist the lure of the savings that comes from off-loading the teachers, cops and firefighters onto the federal plan.

This is not what federal employees and Congress have right now, by the way –another practiced bit of deceptive rhetoric regularly rolled out by the president. What they have is the FEHB –the Federal Employees Health Benefits system, which is a very nice fringe benefit but which is definitely not a government insurance plan but rather a collective of hundreds of private sector plans from which federal employees can chose. This crucial distinction is apparently lost on the MSM which never questions this sleight of hand either.

As many times as the president repeats these deceptions, members of the press corps should press him on it.

When he dodges, they ought to double down as Tapper did today.

When he cuts them off, the next reporter should not facilitate the deception but should continue the line of questioning until the president is forced to explain how the he can back a radical plan that will force millions of Americans to lose their current health plan and see it replaced with an inferior plan and yet not admit to what he is pushing.

The American people will not support this plan if they understand it. The MSM’s job is to bring attention to this deception. The fact that the president is doing the best he can to avoid answering the question would have been an irresistible cue to White House press corps of old.

Sadly for Americans in danger of getting head-faked out of their existing health insurance plans which they value, this new president has thus far charmed or intimidated almost all of the media into acquiescing in the enormous whopper which is his description of the government option/public plan. We have to hope that Jake Tapper’s push-back was the first of many and from many sources.