Don’t look now, but as Obamacare’s critics are focusing incessantly on the abortive rollout of the law’s health-care exchanges,the Left is moving the goalposts in the broader debate—and rather spectacularly, too.
[snip]
New York’s Jonathan Chait,meanwhile, chimed in with the rather amazing claim that “it is true—and nobody has ever denied this—that the hypothetical 25-year-old male will pay higher insurance premiums under Obamacare,” and then proceeded to explain that this was a net positive because,over the course of one’s life, the benefits one would reap from the system would outweigh the losses. Chait is,of course, entirely within his rights to argue this. But,again he is making a argument that is dramatically at odds with the one that Obama used to sell the law. Unless we are to conclude that words mean nothing in contemporary politics,this is a disaster.
Some alert and enterprising types have noticed that what was promised has not in fact come to pass. Republican House whip,Kevin McCarthy,has taken to reminding audiences that “when we started this health-care debate, the president led with a very big promise to the American people: If you like the health care that you have, that you currently have,you can keep it.” The Associated Press, coming better late than never to the world of fact-checking, observed in September:“McCarthy is correct,Obama said exactly that. It was an empty promise,made repeatedly.”
[snip]
At the beginning of his big health-care speech in Maryland yesterday, the president told the crowd that,as regards the “reforms that we are making to our health-care system,” “there’s been a lot of things said,a lot of misinformation, a lot of confusion.” He is right, of course. The debate has been mired in dishonesty and casuistry from the very start. And nobody has contributed to this with more enthusiasm and with a louder megaphone than Barack Obama himself.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
