Obama 'Misspoke' (Lied) on Lots More than Keeping Your Plan

Today on NRO

THE EDITORS: Obama knew his claims were untrue at the time he was making them. If I Like It, You Can Keep It.

CHARLES C. W. COOKE: Thousands of enrollees is impressive, and millions of cancelled plans is a rounding error. Obama's Numbers Racket.

JAMES V. DE LONG: A free-for-all of special interests is having catastrophic results. Obamacare and Cronyism.

JIM GERAGHTY: Ken Cuccinelli's rough ride may have lessons big and small for the GOP. Hard Lessons in Virginia.

RACHEL CAMPOS-DUFFY:Donna Brazile says Republicans' proposed food-stamp cuts are "cruel," but who's really heartless? Food-Stamps Folly.

SLIDESHOW: Future Soldiers.

Morning Jolt
. . . with Jim Geraghty

November 5, 2013

Let's Face It; It's a Rebuilding Year for Election-Day Drama

Happy Election Day.

Virginians, Ken Cuccinelli could use your help today. E. W. Jackson and Mark Obenshain, too. The outlook for Cuccinelli is not great, of course, and today on NRO I point out a hard lesson of his difficult campaign: Give up your day job. Seriously, running for statewide office is a full time job -- there just aren't enough hours in the day to be a state attorney general and run for office against an extremely well-funded opponent.

Voters pick their representatives in Virginia's House of Delegates today, too.

Chris Christie doesn't need your help, but he'll take it anyway. Voters will be picking their representatives in New Jersey's State Senate and General Assembly today as well; indications of Christie coat-tails appear pretty sparse so far, even though Christie's made a point of campaigning with certain state Republicans.

If you live in New York City, vote for Republican Joe Lhota, and then prepare to move out of the city, as every indication is that Bill de Blasio is going to reenact the worst of the David Dinkins years, on steroids. In some parts of New York, voters will pick judges.

In Colorado, voters will consider, "Amendment 66, which guarantees that, 'at a minimum,' 43 percent of general tax revenues would go to the existing education fund. In other words, if the legislature wants to raise revenue for something other than schools, it needs to tithe the education fund 43 cents for every 57 cents of new revenue for other purposes."

In Colorado, Magellan Strategies notices that 267,442 returned ballots, or 31 percent, are from registered Democrats, and 344,057 returned ballots, or 40 percent, are from Republicans. Another 233,409, or 28 percent, are from unaffiliated or other voters.

Obama 'Misspoke' (Lied) on Lots More than Keeping Your Plan

Just for fun, let's turn the wayback machine to September 26, 2013, and take a look at how President Obama was touting the imminent debut of Healthcare.gov:

Now, five days from now -- five days from now -- on October 1st, millions of Americans who don't have health insurance because they've been priced out of the market or because they've been denied access because of a preexisting condition, they will finally be able to buy quality, affordable health insurance. (Applause.) In five days.

Eh, not so much: "The survey, conducted by nonprofit research foundation The Commonwealth Fund, found that 21 percent of adults who visited the health-insurance marketplaces said they enrolled. Of those who visited but did not enroll, 48 percent said they weren't sure they could afford a plan, 46 said they were still deciding on a plan, and 37 said they had technical difficulties with the website."

Back to Obama:

About 85 percent of Americans already have health insurance -– either through their job, or through Medicare, or through the individual market. So if you're one of these folks, it's reasonable that you might worry whether health care reform is going to create changes that are a problem for you -- especially when you're bombarded with all sorts of fear-mongering.

So the first thing you need to know is this: If you already have health care, you don't have to do anything…

The so-called fear-mongers were right: "At least 3.5 million Americans have been issued cancellations, but the exact number is unclear. Associated Press checks find that data is unavailable in half the states."

Starting on Tuesday, every American can visit HealthCare.gov to find out what's called the insurance marketplace for your state. Here in Maryland, I actually think it's called MarylandHealthConnection.gov. (Applause.) MarylandHealthConnection.gov. But if you go to HealthCare.gov, you can look and they'll tell you where to go. They'll link to your state.

An update from Maryland, October 29: "On the same day that a top Obama administration official apologized for the troubled federal health care website, the head of Maryland's system said some state residents are still unable to complete their enrollments online."

Now, this is real simple. It's a website where you can compare and purchase affordable health insurance plans, side-by-side, the same way you shop for a plane ticket on Kayak -- (laughter) -- same way you shop for a TV on Amazon. You just go on and you start looking, and here are all the options.

Er . . . no. "Both Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., said on CBS' "Face the Nation" that the HealthCare.gov website should go offline until it is fully functional."

So you enter in some basic information about yourself, what level of coverage you're looking for. After that, you'll be presented with a list of quality, affordable plans that are available in your area. It will say clearly what each plan covers, what each plan costs. The price will be right there. It will be fully transparent.

Before this law, only a handful of states required insurance companies to offer you instant price quotes, but because of this law, insurers in all 50 states will have to offer you instant price quotes. And so if you've ever tried to buy insurance on your own, I promise you this is a lot easier. It's like booking a hotel or a plane ticket . . .

Er . . . no: "Andrew Slavitt of Optum, whose company stands to make up to $85 million for its work . . . blamed a decision by CMS within two weeks of the launch to require users to fully register in order to browse for health insurance products, instead of being able to get information anonymously, as originally planned ."

Premiums are going to be different in different parts of the country, depending on how much coverage you buy. But 95 percent of uninsured Americans will see their premiums cost less than was expected…

Er . . . no: "Today, the Manhattan Institute released the most comprehensive analysis yet conducted of premiums under Obamacare for people who shop for coverage on their own. Here's what we learned. In the average state, Obamacare will increase underlying premiums by 41 percent."

The insurance companies are saying these marketplaces, this law, will work. They're putting money on the line because they think it will work. Competition, choice, transparency -- all these things are keeping costs down.

Knowing you can offer your family the security of health care -- that's priceless. Now you can do it for the cost of your cable bill. Probably less than your cellphone bill. (Laughter and applause.) Think about that. Good health insurance for the price of your cellphone bill, or less.

Eh. . . a lot of the uninsured are not interested yet: "About 17 percent of people who don't have health insurance actually tried to buy some on the new marketplaces in October, a new survey published Monday indicates… Health officials have made clear the frustrations will not be completely over for anyone, even by the end of the month. The troubled website crashed again Monday, its third complete outage in just over a week. But this time, technicians were able to get it up and running again after 90 minutes."

In other Obamacare news, down in North Carolina: "Blue Cross Blue Shield has more than 3.7 million customers in our state, but internal emails obtained by WNCN show that as of last Friday, only one person had enrolled for health insurance through the Exchange and that person hasn't paid… According to those emails, less than 1,000 people even filled out applications as of Oct. 25."

Today's Undercard Fight: More Stonewalling of Congress

Today Marilyn Tavenner, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, will testify before the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions Committee and probably not provide many useful answers. Expect Senator Lamar Alexander (R., Tenn.) to ask about the latest enrollment numbers; he's pushed for legislation to require HHS to provide weekly updates on insurance enrollment through HealthCare.gov. Also expect Tavenner to offer the same demonstrably false claim that she doesn't have that information.

Sebelius appears before the Senate Finance Committee Wednesday.

ADDENDA: Let's close with Kurt Schlicter's "caring" message to America's young voters:

I have been told that being hard on you Millennials will turn you against conservatism, that I should offer you a positive, hopeful message that avoids the touchy problem of your manifest stupidity.

No. There's no sugar-coating it – your votes for Democrats have ensured that you are the first generation in American history that will fail to exceed what their parents attained. Embracing liberalism was a stupid thing to do, done for the stupidest of reasons, and I will now let you subsidize my affluent lifestyle without a shred of guilt.

I'm a 48 year old trial lawyer living on the coast in California – I should have "Hope and Change" tattooed on my glutes. I'd have an excuse to be lib-curious, but you Millennials? Why do you support an ideology that pillages you to pay-off Democrat constituencies? Your time in the indoctrination factories of academia trained you in a form of "critical thinking" that is neither. Somehow, you came to embrace the bizarre notion that conservatives are psychotic Jesus freaks who want to Footloosisze America into a land of mandatory Sunday school and no dancing.

But liberals, in contrast, are nice. Obama is cool. You chose petty fascism with a smile. Not a lot of thought went into it. Facts, evidence -- these were mere distractions from the feelings-based validation that came from rejecting us wicked conservatives.

What did you get? The chance to be forced to buy health insurance you don't want at inflated rates so my rates can be lower. You get to pay more out of your monthly barista take -- liberalism ensured that the tanked job market foreclosed a real career -- so that I get to pay less out of my lawyer checks. Thanks, suckers.

I'll be out from Thursday through Monday of next week. I may leave some non-political quasi-evergreen Jolt material in my absence.

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