Those Republicans who failed to keep their promise to repeal Obamacare, a promise that they repeatedly made over a span of some seven years, will get their comeuppance.
Given their failure, as well as the obscene moral posturing in which Democrats are engaging at present, now is as good a time as any for Americans to remind themselves of the castle of lies on the basis of which Obamacare was originally sold by its namesake and his ilk.
Courtesy of the laborious efforts of some, we can see that these lies are as egregious as they are legion.
In 2008, Obama said that if what would become known as Obamacare ever became the law of the land, then Americans are “going to be able to buy the same kind of insurance that Senator McCain and I enjoy as federal employees.”
This was a lie. Members of Congress are exempt from having to purchase Obamacare. At any rate, no member of Congress uses Obamacare.
Moreover, Obama, as President, had access to the finest healthcare in the world. As was confirmed by the New York Times, an Obama-friendly publication, there isn’t a patient anywhere that “gets closer medical attention than the president of the United States.”
While on the campaign trail back in 2007-2008, Obama assured the public that under his watch as POTUS, he would see to it that, via CSPAN, the process by which healthcare reform is achieved would be entirely transparent.
He reneged on this.
Instead, Nancy Pelosi infamously told Americans that before they could know what was in the thousands of pages of the Obamacare bill, Democrats would first have to pass it into law.
“If you like your healthcare plan, you’ll be able to keep your healthcare plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.” This is the promise that Obama made as he was trying to sell his signature domestic policy. He had also said: “Here is a guarantee that I’ve made. If you have insurance that you like, then you will be able to keep that insurance.”
These proved to be epic lies.
Following the passage of Obamacare, though, the Congressional Budget Office reported that as many as seven million people would lose their healthcare coverage.
Indeed, from California, New Jersey, Florida, Virginia, and Maryland, to Michigan, Washington D.C., Colorado, and Washington state; from Wegmans, Target, and Home Depot, to Trader Joe’s, IBM, and Universal Orlando, scores of Americans from around the country and employees of various corporations had lost their insurance by early 2014. More have lost it over the last three years.
Another Obama-friendly network, NBC News, noted that in 2014, anywhere between 50%-75% of the 14 million people who purchased individual health insurance could anticipate losing their plans. In 2013, NBC News also reported that three years earlier, in 2010—exactly the same time at which Obama was busy swearing to Americans that if they liked their healthcare plans, they’d be able to keep their healthcare plans—Obama and those in his administration knew that more than 40%-67% of those people in the individual market would likely lose their plans.
Obama swore that Obamacare would not add a single “dime to our deficits—either now or in the future.” Upon repeating this pledge, he added:
“And to prove that I’m serious, there will be a provision in this plan that requires us to come forward with more spending cuts if the savings we promised don’t materialize.”
This was before the so-called Affordable Health Care Act was passed. Before the ink had dried, however, it was revealed that Obamacare wouldn’t be very affordable after all. The Washington Post—hardly a media outlet that has been unfriendly to Obama—disclosed that over the following decade, Obamacare would add $340 billion to our national deficits.
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported that between 2012 and 2022, the cost of Obamacare would be twice as expensive as the $900 billion price tag that Obama placed upon it.
Obama promised that premiums would diminish in price under Obamacare. Just the opposite occurred. In all 50 states and the District of Columbia, premiums increased. In 42 states, premiums increased by triple-digit percentages for the lowest priced coverage. For example, pre-Obamacare, the monthly cost for healthcare that a 30 year-old nonsmoking woman paid was $79.49. In the era of Obamacare, in stark contrast, this same person was required to pay $188.72 per month—a 153% increase.
In 2017, 33 of the 50 states, there are fewer healthcare insurers than existed the year before. There has been an exodus of insurers from the Obamacare exchanges.
Most tragic, and outrageous, of all is that people who would otherwise be alive today lost their lives because of Obamacare, people like Frank Alfisi. As the Daily Signal summarizes his fate, the 73 year-old died in 2014 when he “was refused dialysis in the emergency room because of a new Medicare regulation put in place via Obamacare.” Jeffrey Lord, of The American Spectator, relays the blunt statement that the physician made to Alfisi’s daughter: “You can thank Mr. Obama for this.”
This wasn’t the only casualty of Obamacare. One woman died while waiting for Obamacare to kick in after her private insurance was cancelled. So too did another in Nevada after Obamacare “delayed” her “life-saving cancer treatment.”
Very recently, on the eve of the Senate’s decision not to repeal Obamacare, a couple committed suicide, leaving two children behind. Their suicide notes stated that, among other things, they could no longer afford the astronomical rate of health insurance.
Yet costs are as high as they are because of the law of the land: Obamacare, a monstrosity born of a tsunami of lies.