Over the weekend, the New York Times once against proved why it's having major financial problems. Writing in an op-ed, the NYT editorial board tried to sell another lie to the American people: President Obama simply misspoke when talking about millions of Americans keeping their health insurance, he didn't lie. The title of the op-ed, Insurance Polices Not Worth Keeping, says it all.
Congressional Republicans have stoked consumer fears and confusion with charges that the health care reform law is causing insurers to cancel existing policies and will force many people to pay substantially higher premiums next year for coverage they don’t want. That, they say, violates President Obama’s pledge that if you like the insurance you have, you can keep it.
Mr. Obama clearly misspoke when he said that. By law, insurers cannot continue to sell policies that don’t provide the minimum benefits and consumer protections required as of next year. So they’ve sent cancellation notices to hundreds of thousands of people who hold these substandard policies.
Who says those plans aren't worth keeping? The elitist editors of the New York Times living in New York City? The government? Anybody but the millions of people who liked those plans before Obamacare forced them to be canceled?
Adding insult to injury after essentially calling Americans stupid and incapable of knowing whether their plan was worth having, the NYT called the loss of insurance plans an "overblown controversy."
This overblown controversy has also obscured the crux of what health care reform is trying to do, which is to guarantee that everyone can buy insurance without being turned away or charged exorbitant rates for pre-existing conditions and that everyone can receive benefits that really protect them against financial or medical disaster, not illusory benefits that prove inadequate when a crisis strikes.
Tell that to Natalie Willis, a young woman who has lost her insurance plan.
Let me be clear. Obama lied. Guaranteed. Period. Over and over again. He lied because he knew if he told millions of people Obamacare would cause them to lose insurance plans they liked in order to be replaced with more expensive and government mandated plans, the legislation would have never passed.
At the same time Democrats, President Obama and media outlets like the New York Times are defending Obamacare because it ensures "the days of getting kicked off of your insurance plan are over," millions are losing their insurance plans.