Why do Conservatives say Obama lied about his health care promise that 'If you like your plan, keep it. If you like your doctor, keep it.'?
They say it because it was provided as an anti-”Obamacare” talking point.But in one sense it WAS true: junk insurance plans that cost a pittance, featured high deductibles and copays, and paid virtually nothing were no longer permitted. As a result, many Americans who’d opposed Obama from the beginning suddenly decided that those plans were highly desirable, and that Obama had no right to keep them from having such plans if that’s what they wanted.This conviction was helped along by several misconceptions that have been circulating for a while. First, the notion that health insurance isn’t strictly necessary, since getting sick is a “choice,” and they were “choosing” to get exercise and “eat right.” So why should they be “forced” to have insurance if they didn’t intend to have medical problems?Second, the notion that if, despite their efforts, they got sick, they could just pay for it out of pocket. (Never mind the fact that many doctors can’t and won’t take cash for an office visit——the vast majority of Americans could NOT afford even an uncomplicated laparascopic surgery, let alone a more complicated illness or procedure.)And, third—-and this is the most ridiculous one of all—-that the emergency room makes a dandy substitute for every form of health care, and it’s free of charge to boot!I always tell these people, “Obama told the truth. If you like your doctor, you can keep him/her….but it might cost you extra. That’s because the ACA was designed primarily to ensure affordable health care for more Americans, not to provide bargains for people who already have insurance.”
Why couldn't people on Obamacare keep their doctor?
First you have to realize that no matter whether you are looking at ACA plans or plans that existed before the ACA, if you were enrolled in a health insurance plan, there was a network and providers may or may not be “in-network” with the plan you are on.There are mainly three types of coverage plans, PPO’s, EPO’s and HMO’s - PPOs have reduced benefits for out of network coverage where EPOs and HMO’s typically offer no out of network coverage.As the ACA got rolling, the individual marketplace plans started to lose money. Carriers had to adhere to Essential Benefits and the different metal level coverage actuarial levels - but could mitigate those losses by restricting their offering to those plans that only provide access to those doctors that they have the best negotiated discounts with. The prevalence of plans on the marketplace are HMO and EPO plans as carriers can manage costs more effectively under those plans.As a result of that network belt tightening, many doctors were pushed out of network. Group plans, especially large group plans still offer PPO arrangements and based on loss ratios and plan costs may have been able to maintain the broadest networks. As costs climb and employers look for savings restricting the network to the most cost effective options is always a possibility.So it's not that the ACA directly caused people to lose access to their providers but that in efforts to contain costs, plans limited access to higher cost providers through newer plan types and network arrangements.
When Obama claimed that if you liked your healthcare plan, you could keep it, was he lying about getting to keep the plan, or was he lying about how complicated healthcare is, or both?
He was not lying. He did not say a thing he knew to not be true. He believed that was true when he said it.The bill was still evolving. At the time, pre-existing healthcare plans were going to be grandfathered into the ACA, even if they didn’t meet the ACA requirements. That was not really a problem, because terrible plans would either plummet in cost compared to ACA-approved plans, or they’d die out as folks left for plans that actually offered… I dunno, say, actual healthcare.One problem was the long rollout of the ACA. Plans that existed before March 23, 2010 were grandfathered in… but there was no requirement in the final ACA for insurance companies to maintain them. Many of these insurance companies scrambled to deliver plans that were kind of in limbo — based on then-legal rules but created after the grandfathering cut-off, in an attempt to game the system.And of course, some Republicans actively worked to sabotage the ACA with amendments that weakened it. Some were not approved, some were.What President Obama said was said in good faith, from what he believed at the time to be true. It proved to not be true, and had he been a bit more cynical about the depths to which insurance companies would sink to make a quick buck, and how many Republicans were not simply trying to add in “conservative” ideas but actually sabotage the ACA, he probably would not have made that statement.
Uninsured health care statistics?
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2009/06/26/how_to_lie_with_statistics_--_again_97189.html 46 million (it becomes 50 million when senators really get keyed up) Americans don't have health insurance. It is true that the 46 million figure is based on unreliable Census Bureau data But even the less unreliable Congressional Budget Office puts the number at about 31 million. For one reason, the uninsured figure counts all Americans (and illegal immigrants) who have been uninsured for any amount of time during a year 45 percent of the uninsured are uninsured for four months or less another portion of uninsured Americans already qualify for existing government health insurance programs Turns out that 8.4 million uninsured Americans are making $50,000 to $74,999, and 9.1 million more are making more than $75,000 Just curious as to your take on these stats..........
83% of Americans oppose illegal aliens from getting health care subsidies?
I am so sick right now I should be in the hospital I cannot afford it. The illegals comes here kicks out dozens of kids and they get free medical, food stamps etc. For those of you that deny this screw you, I live in the middle of a bunch of them, they have nice cars, but are on welfare. This is because the female of the bunch sleeps with her legs open not marrying the male, the male is out doing God knows what its obvious because of the car most are driving. 12% of the town is out of work, but they are driving BMWs, Cadillac SUVs...etc....doesn't take much to figure this out. And again pay attention to the part I said for those of you that deny this....screw you.
Why are conservatives lying about how much Obama spent?
There is just SO MUCH disinformation among some of your responders! The Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care (PPACA, or "Obamacare") is paid for and even REDUCES THE DEFICIT over time, according to CBO figures. In his very first week, President Obama ADDED WAR COSTS into the budget figures to end the Bush/Cheney practice of keeping those costs hidden and off the books! The first NINE MONTHS of 2009 after President Obama was sworn in were the Bush/Cheney $1.09 TRILLION budget that ended on September 30, 2009! President Obama's FIRST BUDGET (according to Bloomberg News and Reuters) was for $.09 TRILLION LESS than that last Bush/Cheney budget---he CUT SPENDING by $90 BILLION! Prior to that first budget, he CUT SPENDING by $62 BILLION from the Bush/Cheney FY budget by canceling the Bush-ordered presidential helicopter fleet, and then cut even more by canceling the Cheney-ordered pork-barrel fleet of F-22 planes @ $365 MILLION PER PLANE! These cancellations sent more than $130 BILLION back to Treasury for a DEBT PAYDOWN! As to the Bush VETO: He did not veto ONCE when GOP was in totalitarian control from 2001 through to January 2007---his first VETO was for Democrat-proposed legislations trying to undo some of the GOP's damages.
On June 15, 2009, Obama said on national TV, "If you like your healthcare plan, you’ll be able to keep your healthcare plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.” why did Obama lie to the American people?
The Affordable Care Act was neither intended to be affordable or about care. It was the culmination of the the desires of left-leaning policy wonks in Obama’s team who wanted to bring about disruptive innovation in Health Care, leading to a Government-run system. This plan was doomed to fail from the start as it assumed that healthy young people would want to subsidize others. The people who wrote this were brilliant and they had to know such subsidization would never happen. They might as well have relied on the Tooth Fairy to finance it. This is the reason that legislators were denied the opportunity to study it before voting on it. An informed legislator of character, on either side of the aisle, would never have voted for this abomination unless their devotion to big government was greater than their devotion to their constituents. The attitude that this bill represents, that liberals are smarter than “the deplorables”, is what made possible the rise of Donald Trump. There were good, decent, candidates in the Republican field but the voters just couldn’t risk more things like the ACA jammed down their throat. They wanted change, and boy did they get it! As someone on the inside of healthcare for 40 years, I can tell you that Obama’s health care policies have created far more problems than they have solved. Companies and individuals can no longer afford the policies they used to have. Now they carry large co-payments and often unaffordable deductibles. People are delaying, even skipping, preventative care. In the future we will see a return to patients presenting with very advanced disease because they were hesitant to seek care when symptoms first arose. While we encourage peple with any degree of chest pain to go to the Emergency Room to rule out a heart aattack, their insurance.policies often saddle them with a 400 dollar or more co-pay for each visit. I suspect that the genie will never go back in the pre-ACA bottle and we will end up with government-run health care. The question is whether it will be a voluntary safety-net like in England or a coercive mandatory system like in Canada. Ted Kennedy favored the latter one, until he had a brain tumor of his own. All of a sudden, physician and hospital choice seemed like a very good idea to him, even though it was too late to save him.