President Obama Says He Kept Even More Important Promise On Obamacare
President Obama has been widely criticized for breaking a clear promise regarding Obamacare – namely when he promised “if you like your healthcare plan you can keep it.” As it turns out, many of the pre-Obamacare plans can not be kept under the new system. This is not altogether a bad thing as, in theory, new healthcare insurance plans will be created that provide better options for consumers. Nonetheless, breaking a promise, especially one so famous, is causing the president some political problems.
So yesterday at an Organizing for Action event Obama attempted to explain himself and claimed that his promise had had a caveat or rather a different context than seemingly everyone understood. Obama claimed “What we said was you can keep it if it hasn’t changed since the law passed.”
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Now, if you have or had one of these plans before the Affordable Care Act came into law and you really liked that plan, what we said was you can keep it if it hasn’t changed since the law passed. So we wrote into the Affordable Care Act, you’re grandfathered in on that plan. But if the insurance company changes it, then what we’re saying is they’ve got to change it to a higher standard. They’ve got to make it better, they’ve got to improve the quality of the plan they are selling. That’s part of the promise that we made too. That’s why we went out of our way to make sure that the law allowed for grandfathering.
No. That’s not what you said.
But then Obama went on to essentially say that even if he broke that promise he kept an even more important promise on Obamacare.
PRESIDENT OBAMA [CONT.]: If we had allowed these old plans to be downgraded, or sold to new enrollees once the law had already passed, then we would have broken an even more important promise — making sure Americans gain access to health care that doesn’t leave them one illness away from financial ruin. The bottom line is that we are making the insurance market better for everybody and that’s the right thing to do.
OK. So you did break a promise but did so in the service of a more important promise?
For many in DC this is trivia. Who cares if he lied to everyone to get his way? He got it done. Whether you think the promise of Obamacare is great or not, was not the even more important promise made by President Obama that he would change the way Washington works and restore trust in government?
Because with dishonest communication strategies like this, that promise remains broken.
President Obama Says He Kept Even More Important Promise On Obamacare
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President Obama has been widely criticized for breaking a clear promise regarding Obamacare – namely when he promised “if you like your healthcare plan you can keep it.” As it turns out, many of the pre-Obamacare plans can not be kept under the new system. This is not altogether a bad thing as, in theory, new healthcare insurance plans will be created that provide better options for consumers. Nonetheless, breaking a promise, especially one so famous, is causing the president some political problems.
So yesterday at an Organizing for Action event Obama attempted to explain himself and claimed that his promise had had a caveat or rather a different context than seemingly everyone understood. Obama claimed “What we said was you can keep it if it hasn’t changed since the law passed.”
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Now, if you have or had one of these plans before the Affordable Care Act came into law and you really liked that plan, what we said was you can keep it if it hasn’t changed since the law passed. So we wrote into the Affordable Care Act, you’re grandfathered in on that plan. But if the insurance company changes it, then what we’re saying is they’ve got to change it to a higher standard. They’ve got to make it better, they’ve got to improve the quality of the plan they are selling. That’s part of the promise that we made too. That’s why we went out of our way to make sure that the law allowed for grandfathering.
No. That’s not what you said.
But then Obama went on to essentially say that even if he broke that promise he kept an even more important promise on Obamacare.
PRESIDENT OBAMA [CONT.]: If we had allowed these old plans to be downgraded, or sold to new enrollees once the law had already passed, then we would have broken an even more important promise — making sure Americans gain access to health care that doesn’t leave them one illness away from financial ruin. The bottom line is that we are making the insurance market better for everybody and that’s the right thing to do.
OK. So you did break a promise but did so in the service of a more important promise?
For many in DC this is trivia. Who cares if he lied to everyone to get his way? He got it done. Whether you think the promise of Obamacare is great or not, was not the even more important promise made by President Obama that he would change the way Washington works and restore trust in government?
Because with dishonest communication strategies like this, that promise remains broken.
