-By Warner Todd Huston
Keith Hennessey did some great analysis work on President Obama’s claims made during his Portsmouth, New Hampshire townhall event on August 11. Hennessey has identified 20 different claims that the president made that don’t seem to be in the least bit true.
Hennessey’s work confirms that the President doesn’t seem to really understand what he is selling. Either that or he simply doesn’t care if his claims are accurate, but that they sound good is good enough if it helps win him passage of his healthcare policies.
Starting off by debunking Obama’s constant claim that we can “keep our health plans if we like them,” moving on to Obama’s absurd claim that he doesn’t want to put “government in charge of your health insurance,” Hennessey does yeoman’s work exposing Obama’s false claims.
Here, for instance, is Hennessey’s reply to Obama’sclaim that we can keep our plans “if we like them.”
According to CBO, the President’s statement is incorrect for a portion of these 6 million people who as a result of the House bill would lose employment-based coverage they would otherwise have under current law. Some of those 6 million people would lose the opportunity to get employment-based coverage, while others would “represent the dropping of existing coverage.” CBO reached similar conclusions. Here is a more detailed explanation of this problem that I wrote for an earlier draft of the Kennedy-Dodd bill, under which 10 million people would not have lost the health plan they would otherwise have under current law. CBO dialed this number down to 3 million for a later draft of Kennedy-Dodd.
This is an inevitable consequence of moving away from a system that is so heavily biased toward higher subsidies for employment-based coverage. My preferred plan would have a similar effect. Nonetheless, the President is overpromising, at least relative to CBO’s view of the House bill.
Please do go on over to Hennessey’s post and read all his excellent comments on Obama’s wild claims.
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as NewsBusters.org, RightWingNews.com, StoptheACLU.com, TheRealityCheck.org, RedState.com, Human Events Magazine, AmericanDailyReview.com, and the New Media Journal, among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events and is currently the co-host of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Conservatism” heard on BlogTalkRadio. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of PubliusForum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston
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