Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Obama’s Other Health-Care Lie

40 Comments

Of course he knew that the the site was having problems.

As Jonah notes:

As the article points out this all flies in the face of countless denials from the White House that the president had any idea implementation of Obamacare would be spotty. If that’s the case, what in the world did Obama and Sebelius discuss at those meetings? It seems to me the only options are: She was utterly clueless and misled the president by accident. She wasn’t clueless and knew there were problems but misled the president on purpose. She wasn’t clueless and told the president the truth. I leave it to others to determine which of these three reflects best on the White House and the president’s managerial skills.

There was never any reason to think that the president had any managerial skills, other than “hope and change.” And he doesn’t seem to have acquired any after five years on the job.

40 thoughts on “Obama’s Other Health-Care Lie”

  1. From certain items of … let’s just call it local information … I think it nontrivially likely that 1) Sebelius was/is indeed utterly clueless and 2) Obama deliberately minimized direct contact with her. And frankly, he has my sympathies in that, although to be sure, the fallout is simply consequences of politically-correct decisionmaking, including hiring.

    1. While I stand second to none in my low estimation of Sebelius’s intelligence and competence, it remains hard to believe that the topic didn’t come up in all those meetings.

      1. Unless the topic of the meetings were how they would use Obamacare to “euthanize” any Republican who walked into a doctor’s office.

      2. I was being discreet. It’s not a matter of intelligence or competence as such, but … psychological state. Don’t expect the media to dig into this anytime soon. As I said, Obama has my sympathies, or would if he hadn’t made the hiring decision in the first place.

  2. The biggest, most basic lie that cuts to the heart of the sham is the lie that this was created to provide insurance for those who could not get it.

    2. According to Gallup, since Obamacare rolled out the rate of uninsurance has fallen to a five year low, and the growth in the insured population is among people getting insurance as individuals or from Medicaid (i.e. the two sorts of insurance that Obamacare has increased access to). And that’s after only six weeks. The CBO continues to forecast that by 2018 there will be more than 20 million fewer Americans without insurance.

      1. That’s about what happened in Massachusetts w/ Romney Care.

        It’s not 100% and it’s had some bumps but it’s not like the world collapsed
        and the Hospitals of Massachusetts took all the patients and dumped them on the curb.

        That’s why it’s so funny. It was great fun watching Romney have little seizures when
        Pawlenty called it “Obamney-Care” and Romney try and come up with the backflips
        to explain how RomneyCare was good and ObamaCare was evil.

        Of Course Rand just skips all that and calls names.

        I think it would have been a lot simpler if Romney had stuck to calling people idiots too.

        1. Perhaps if you dont like name calling, you could start by getting Democats to stop with their endless attacks or is this another case were there is one standard Democrats hold others to and no standard for themselves?

        2. “That’s about what happened in Massachusetts w/ Romney Care.”

          What happened with Romney-care in Massachusetts is that rates went way up, health care costs have skyrocketed to be THE most expensive in the nation, waiting times went way up, doctor shortages are being felt, hospitals are closing, and event he web page which used to sort of work now fails because it has to conform to the failed Obamacare web site.

          So any use of Romney-care and the Massachustts experience to show how glorious Obamacare will be is doomed.

          1. That’s not what Forbes says

            http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2012/01/20/romney-care-massachusetts-healthcare-reform/

            or bloomberg

            http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-26/romneycare-s-98-success-rate-defies-gripes-on-obama-law.html

            or USNews

            http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2013/05/16/study-romneycare-lowered-uninsured-rate-didnt-increase-hospital-costs

            I’m sure some Cato or Heritage paper proves in excruciating detail how massachusetts actually disappeared last year due to the horrendous RomneyCare but, for those of us in the “Reality-Based Community”, it’s working okay. Not great, not awful but, it’s closed a major gap and giving tools to fix the remaining gaps.

  3. Why would anyone expect Obama and his HHS secretary to talk about Obamacare? That’s like expecting Obama and his IRS General Council talking about the Tea Party….

    1. “That’s like expecting Obama and his IRS General Council talking about the Tea Party….”

      Or like Obama talking to his Commander in Afghanistan.

  4. “Nearly 3.3 million (3,299,500) people selected Marketplace plans from Oct. 1, 2013, through Feb. 1, 2014, including 1.4 million in the State Based Marketplaces and 1.9 million in the Federally-facilitated Marketplace.”

    Well, someone is signing up.

    1. How many of those people didn’t have health insurance before, and how many have actually paid premiums? If the numbers were good, the Dems would be publicizing them. Remember Sherlock Holmes and the dog that didn’t bark?

        1. Yeah. Those HHS press releases are short in detail. So back to Ed’s question, what good are those numbers without understanding their breakdown? Plus those numbers don’t mention the millions of Americans who lost their insurance between October and December 2013 when Obama lie came home to roost. CBO also had estimates as high as 8 million in the exchanges for 2014, yet the number is only 3 million gross (because again, we don’t know how much of that number is made up of people who had insurance before and then lost it when Obama lied about the regulation he signed).

          Computers are good at crunching numbers. A $600 million website should be able to provide metrics that allow its managers to determine the success of a program. That HHS doesn’t have a website that can do so, and Obama and HHS met many times yet never discussed the value of having these metrics is an outrageous claim.

          2. Here’s Ed’s question again:

            “How many of those people didn’t have health insurance before, and how many have actually paid premiums?”

            Here’s the answer from the HHS report:

            “The cumulative number of individuals that have selected a Marketplace plan between 10-1-13 and 2-1-14 (including those who have paid a premium and those who have not yet paid a premium) is 3.3 million. ”

            DN-idiot, did you read the report at all? Are you capable of reading the report? Prove that you can read the report by answer the question.

        2. “Hate to break it to you but that’s an HHS press release.”

          Hate to break it to you but that press release is worthless. It leaves out all essential detail (see below).

          1. Hate to break it to you, but that Press Release includes a “Link” to
            a 53 page report. Now I realize many conservatives don’t understand
            what the “Internet” is other then it’s a series of “Tubes”, but, if you
            ask a young person, they can show you the 53 page report that’s included.

          2. The HHS data doesn’t say how many people actually paid, probably because they can’t process payments yet, rendering the “insurance” worthless. Patients have been finding that out the hard way.

            As for the HHS report itself, I’d prefer something more reliable, like a Brezhnev-era report on the glorious success of the Soviet potato harvest.

          3. “Hate to break it to you, but that Press Release includes a “Link” to
            a 53 page report. ”

            Hate to break it to you but nowhere in the 53 pages is it listed how many have paid. One of the key issues that has been mentioned here.

            And these days, administration reports are good only for toilet paper.

          4. Perhaps somewhere in that 53 page report you can find the number who were previously uninsured and the number who have paid premiums. If you find those, please supply the page numbers.

    2. This story has an interesting perspective on that claim:

      “They made a big deal about the age results,” said Laszewski after reviewing the HHS numbers. “But the greater challenge for them is the low number of people enrolling. There is no way you can get a good spread of risk with such a small percentage of the total eligible signing up.”

      […]

      Laszewski has a strikingly similar analysis and says HHS’s reported number of 3.3 million enrollees exaggerates the true picture. He says that to calculate a more accurate number, one must subtract about 20 percent of the enrollees because they haven’t paid (and so aren’t technically insured); as well as about two-thirds of the enrollees because they were already insured prior to signing up for Obamacare.

      “Looking at the total of 3.3 million, netting out the non-pays, and listening to the anecdotal carrier reports, it doesn’t look like we have more than a fraction–certainly something less than 10%– of the previously uninsured,” said Laszewski.

        1. “lets see what happens.”

          And what do you expect will happen?

          What do you want to happen?

          What will cause the young invincibles to sign up in droves?

          Do you now admit that the 3.3 million is a puffed up number from HHS? A number whose internals belie the impression HHS is trying to make?

          1. i figure lazsewski is as bad at logic and analysis as most conservatives.
            so i’m not real worried about his analysis.

          3. “i figure lazsewski is as bad at logic and analysis as most conservatives.
            so i’m not real worried about his analysis.”

            So your entire reply to my questions consists in….

            no answers.

            Typical content-free codswallop.

          4. i figure lazsewski is as bad at logic and analysis as most conservatives.

            Well, here’s what the Washington Post thinks about that:

            Pundit of the year: Bob Laszewski

            While the failed launch of HealthCare.gov was bad news for the Obama administration, it was great news for Bob Laszewski, a health industry consultant who turned up on the front page of most national newspapers. Laszewski was in a unique position: He was willing to tell reporters what he heard from insurers at a time when the health plans themselves, and the Obama administration, weren’t talking.

            Laszewski doesn’t hide his point of view; he’s no fan of the Affordable Care Act. And the information he shared was rarely good news for HealthCare.gov, but more a portrait of chaos behind the scenes. But it was also one of the most accurate and public accounts of how poorly things were going during the first few months of Obamacare.

            Also, dn-guy, did your shift keys go out?

    3. Mostly people kicked off their previous plans. The government won’t release those statistics, if they even have them.

      1. “did your shift keys go out”

        Sometimes i’m using my android to type, and i spend most of my attention fighting auto-spell.

    4. Nearly 3.3 million (3,299,500) people… lost their insurance and were forced to sign up with this disaster under threat of penalty.

  5. Howler of the Day: “Dn-guy (he of the always awe-inspiring intellect) writes: i figure lazsewski is as bad at logic and analysis as most conservatives.”

    Savor the irony.

  6. As I said, if the numbers were good then the Administration would be publishing them and giving them a high billing. Obama would be saying “2 million people who didn’t have insurance before have it today because of the Affordable Care Act” or something along those lines. He isn’t saying that. Why?

    Did you miss the Sherlock Holmes reference above? The absence of an expected clue is itself a clue. If a dog that would normally be barking at intruders isn’t barking, it doesn’t consider those people skulking about to be intruders. If you find an apparent gunshot suicide, but fail to find the expected blood pattern, that’s a clue it isn’t a suicide. And if the President or Sibelius aren’t giving the number of people who have insurance now but couldn’t before the ACA, then the numbers are bad. Very bad.

    Bear in mind that six hundred million dollars went into the implementation of this atrocious law – and that’s just for the website! Recall that they had two years to get it ready, and it was supposed to be ready four and a half months ago. And now that they finally have it limping along, they’re finding that the whole plan is a Charlie Foxtrot of the highest order. The insured are losing their insurance, the number of people actually helped by the law is embarrassingly small (or they would have told us a number), and the extra costs and time lost to regulation are forcing businesses to limit employment opportunities to remain below whatever magical threshold number of employees Sibelius conjures up next.

    I’m starting to think dn-guy isn’t really a lefty. He’s a rightwinger doing a Colbert-esque imitation of a leftist, sort of a performance art thing. Dammit, can’t we get any Left wingers in here able to put together intelligent, fallacy-free arguments?

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