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OPINION

Obamacare Big Lie Came from “Fact Checker” PolitiFact Talking Point

The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of Townhall.com.
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The Nobel, er, Pulitzer prize winning publication PolitiFact, which is part of the vast Left-Wing conspiracy against free speech in this country, has named Pulitzer, er, Nobel prize winning president Barack Obama the liar of the year.

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“PolitiFact has named ‘If you like your health care plan, you can keep it,’ the Lie of the Year for 2013,” said the online site. “Readers in a separate online poll overwhelmingly agreed with the choice.”

Truly.

The site cited 37 times that Obama made the “you can keep it” pledge unambiguously and without “caveats”.

And in doing so the fact checker has all but admitted that they themselves are the liars of the century.

You’d think that with so many noble, left-wing prizes amongst them that either PolitiFact or Obama would generally get something right.

But alas, no.

Not only did Obama sell the lie that we can keep our insurance, he was aided and abetted in the lie by none other than PolitiFact.

Talk about irony.

Even PolitiFact admits of this, although they do so in the “half-true,” weasely way that they reserve for something that they support policy-wise, but know is being touted through lies.

At the time Obama was touting Obamacare as something that wouldn’t change the health insurance industry or the healthcare industry, Politifact rated the claims as either “half-true” or “true”.

And they did so, in part, by using one of the Big Lies the administration later tried to use to cover his gaffe.

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You know why the administration tried to foist the blame for cancelled policies not on the law itself, but rather on the insurance companies?

Because they got the talking point directly from Politifact in 2009.

“We concluded that nothing in Obama’s proposal proactively forced such changes, and the bills clearly intended to leave much of the current health care system in place,” said PolitiFact in response to Obama’s claims in September 2009 that employer plans wouldn’t have to change as a result of Obamacare proposals.

Said Obama at the time: "If you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance through your job, or Medicare, or Medicaid, or the VA, nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have."

No caveats on that. PolitiFact rated that claim as “true.”

So it comes as no surprise that later Valerie Jarrett, Special White House Liar, repeated the talking point, even as cancellations came in directly related to Obamacare’s legislative provisions:

"FACT,” she said, “Nothing in #Obamacare forces people out of their health plans.

Of course she expanded on the PolitiFact claim of unchanged coverage. PolitiFact only included insurance obtained through employers, Medicare, or Medicaid, or the VA, to remain unchanged.

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Jarrett expanded it to include ALL insurance policies. Still

Here’s the part that really worries me though: Both Obama and PolitiFact have gotten so sloppy, so disingenuous, and so out of touch that they admit that they are lying even when they are trying to cover something as only a “half-truth.”

Frankly, I think that they think that we won’t notice. Or even care.

PolitiFact, while now admitting that Obama lied, cited the case of one woman who was highlighted on PBS.

The case clearly outs all of the lies told about Obamacare, from Obama to PolitiFact on down:

One example: PBS Newshour interviewed a woman from Washington, D.C., who was a supporter of the health care law and found her policy canceled. New policies had significantly higher rates. She told Newshour that the only thing the new policy covered that her old one didn’t was maternity care and pediatric services. And she was 58.

"The chance of me having a child at this age is zero. So, you know, I ask the president, why do I have to pay an additional $5,000 a year for maternity coverage that I will never, ever need?" asked Deborah Persico.

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Uh, duh. Because when you mandate healthcare coverage for everyone, someone has to pay for it the expansion.

That is the crux of the lie that Obama and PolitiFact sought to foist on a too trusting American public.

You can’t add “free” healthcare, either in numbers of services or in numbers of people, without someone else paying for it.

Whatever else Obama and PolitiFact got their prizes for it wasn’t simple math.

So, congratulations Ms. Perisco.

You get to pay for it, because liberals can’t do addition and long division.

But the politicians and the newspapers, they take the prize.

This one however isn’t so noble.

This prize is because they really don’t care.

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