In law, it is a good policy to never plead what you need not, lest you oblige yourself to prove what you can not. –Abraham Lincoln
The above quote for me, describes one of the President’s challenges. In forever justifying himself and never admitting to a mistake, the President spends an awful lot of time clawing his way out of corners. But for this President, instead of an admission of mistake, or an evolved learning, today, 8/9/13, he took the stance of “surprised” by negative reactions to various problems in his Administration.
In the case of citizens being concerned about the NSA surveillance, the President came close to admitting he was wrong. But no, the moment was lost as he said that he had made assumptions that were…Wait for it…undermined. (From now on, when you make a mistake or many mistakes try that on for size, “My assumptions were undermined…” by facts, by consequences, by reality, whatever.)
But when it comes to Obamacare, the President has resorted to proving what he can not, and frequently what no one else can either by telling lies. Today, he waxed repetitive about the benefits of Obamacare, and inserted a “surprised” reaction to Republicans’ continued objections to Obamacare that in his words is simply designed to providing healthcare to “30 million people who don’t have health care.”
He cannot defend this lie. The relationship of health care to health insurance depends on assumptions that with health insurance Americans will be able to get health care. Of course, with the problems of the underinsured, which promise to grow under Obamacare, and with the promise of increased insurance company constraints on citizen choices in response to costs, there is no assurance that having health insurance will translate into getting health care.
Unless, the President has now changed the definition of health care to mean getting checkups that are included in your insurance premiums, without paying attention to whether you’ll be able to afford the health treatments necessary if your checkups require you to treat illness, claiming that 30 million people will get health CARE under Obamacare is untrue.
And if prevention and preventive screenings and checkups are the definition of healthcare, we can each accomplish that more affordably by paying the out-of-pocket costs for checkups instead of paying a year’s worth of premiums. And of course the PPACA does NOTHING to control the amount physicians can charge to patients outside the Medicare/Medicaid system, which makes all health care more unaffordable.
In response to some of the unanticipated and already seen consequences with Obamacare, the President compared them to problems with new cars, or the iPad, glitches.
Even if people get health insurance, it is obvious that being underinsured is about to become a problem of enormous proportions under Obamacare for people who actually need more than a checkup and require health care. If your health insurance does not provide you with sufficient options of providers, if your health insurance does not provide you with sufficient coverage of needed medical treatments and medications, if your health insurance does not provide you with access to quality medical treatment providers, it does not improve your health care.
My assumption is that the President knows that he was lying today when he said in his surprised tone that he couldn’t understand Republican objection to Obamacare designed to “making sure 30 million people have health care.”
So, why the surprise? I believe because the President has gone beyond pleading and trying to defend what he can not and has now resorted to lying, so that every problem with Obamacare that arises becomes unintended, a surprise if you will.
It is frustrating to listen to the lie, because we can’t fix a “glitch” if we fail to acknowledge it. Casualties of Obamacare will eventually surface, but they need not have suffered if the President had merely paid attention to the facts that “undermine” his assumptions about Obamacare.
