Lies of Obamacare: The next generation

President Obama held a campaign-style rally at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building yesterday to support Obamacare. The White House has posted his remarks here. John Hinderaker commented on one thread of the remarks here and I commented on another here.

Playing the role of Sherlock Holmes, John identifies the dog that didn’t bark in Obama’s remarks: the first-generation, foundational lie of Obamacare that “if you like your health plan, you can keep your health plan. Period.” The cancelation of millions of health plans as a result of Obamacare went unmentioned even as Obama touted the “half a million people across the country are poised to gain health care coverage through marketplaces and Medicaid beginning on January 1st” (some translation required). That takes brass.

The heart of the speech represents the next generation of Obamacare lies. Here is the dog that did bark, woofing the theme: “The bottom line is this law is working and will work into the future.” Consistent with this theme, Obama asserted that “today, the [Healthcare.gov] website is working well for the vast majority of users.” The heart of Obama’s speech signals Obama’s approach to the current and future problems of implementation: the Jarrett jam down.

What we see in Obama’s rally yesterday is the intransigence and strong arm of senior Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett, on display most notably on the President Shamwow Rose Garden rally on October 21. James Ceaser captured the essence:

[S]ome of the president’s disagreeable qualities have become manifest. Instead of fessing up like an ordinary guy and taking responsibility, we are treated to the full set of our leader’s little pathologies. We learn that he is angry—Zeus is huffing and puffing—as if this is enough to satisfy the public (for many, alas, it is). Then follow the half admissions, the obvious and patent untruths, the blame on the Republicans, and the disheartening Obamacare infomercial. That last one had me thinking that our president looked less presidential than Fred Thompson selling reverse mortgages on late-nite television. Can you imagine George Washington, who worried about “enfeebling the public administration,” hawking an 800 number?

Can you imagine George Washington telling such a patent falsehood as “the website is working well for the vast majority of users”?

Problems with the the Healthcare.gov site are incidental to the enormous engine of destruction in Obamacare. Yet, Obama to the contrary notwithstanding, they persist. Among the many reported stories that make out the persistence of the site’s problems are Eilperin and Goldstein’s “Health-care enrollment on Web plagued by bugs” in the Washington Post and Stolberg and Shear’s “Inside the race to rescue a health care site, and Obama” in the New York Times. See also, for example, Philip Klein’s “Insurers still reporting ‘significant problems’ with Obamacare enrollment data” in the Washington Examiner and Devin Dwyer/Mary Bruce’s “New Obamacare headache: Is your enrollment real?” at ABC News. Thus Jennifer Rubin’s “Potemkincare” at the Washington Post.

When Obama declared the end the December 1 deadline for fixing the site, it was necessary if not predictable that the administration would declare success (however redefined) and apply the jam down to the continued implementation of Obamacare. Neither Obama nor other administration officials provide any verifiable metrics to support the claims of success presented at the White House yesterday. The absence of such verifiable data, among other things, indicates the cover-up and falsehoods behind the claim of success.

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