On Sunday, the New York Times editorial board defended President Obama’s rhetoric surrounding the American people’s ability to keep their health insurance policies under Obamacare. According to the Times, the President simply “misspoke,” but Glenn is not letting him off the hook quite so easily.
“I want to first go to decoding what this President has said. Here's the conspiracy,” Glenn said on radio this morning. “The conspiracy is the President knew 100 million people are going to lose their health insurance. They have it in their own documentation, all their own studies, but they keep it quiet.”
Not only did the Administration keep that little tidbit under wraps, they actually allowed President Obama to go out in front of the American people and make this promise:
That’s a pretty declarative pledge: If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep your healthcare plan. But yesterday, during a speech in front of about 200 supporters, the President finally began to walk back those infamous words – adding a very important caveat to the promise.
“There's an ‘if’… He's about to explain that he had an ‘if’ in there,” Glenn said. “Here's the president yesterday.”
“We pointed out [from the beginning], if there is one change to your plan, you lose it… We told you that. We told you over and over again. That's what was in the bill from the very beginning,” Glenn explained. “The reason why [the President] started that is because we were making traction… That's when he said, ‘Look, there are people running around telling you all kind of lies. I'm telling you now, if you have one, you will keep it.’ The man lied to you. He lied to the American people. There are no ifs, ands, or buts.”
“As much as I'm not a fan of this guy, I was actually embarrassed watching him try to walk that back yesterday,” Stu added. “It was a shame for the country, watching our President try to say, ‘You want your insurance you can keep it, if these 14 conditions I never told you about are true.’”
This whole situation circles back to the fact that the Administration had no choice but to lie about the effects of Obamacare on private insurance because the bill would not have passed otherwise. With something like 80% of Americans having reported they were happy with their health insurance before Obamacare, the President needed to tell people those plans they were happy with wouldn’t be impacted… except he knew they would be.
“It would not have passed. 80% of Americans were happy with their healthcare. You are going to lose your health care. We have been telling you that from the very beginning,” Glenn said. “And they are still telling you there are not going to be death panels or doctor shortages… When the doctor shortages come, then the death panels that will come as well. Death panels only come when there's a shortage of things. That's the last line. If you don't want to believe it, then go see and read about what they are doing in the Netherlands. In the Netherlands right now, they have just passed legislation that will allow them to kill children – but compassionately kill them because they have no quality of life. The biggest conspiracy that is out right now is the cover up of the truth.”
Front page image courtesy of the AP