Thursday, November 17, 2011

Obamacare’s Bait and Switch

The article in yesterday’s New York Times regarding the Obama Administration’s “evolution” on the individual mandate contained several paragraphs trying to explain how and why President Obama grew to embrace a mandate that candidate Obama opposed.  The piece claims that internal models within the Administration proved that without a mandate, any “reform” effort would cover many fewer individuals – and that these data prompted Obama to switch his position on the mandate.  (One related and worthwhile question very few have asked:  If 15-20 million individuals will obtain coverage only if they’re FORCED to by the federal government, is the uninsured problem really as large as Democrats claim?)

But that anecdote presents far from a complete – and some would argue inaccurate – picture.  After all, then-Senator Clinton made all the arguments for a mandate that candidate Obama rejected, and President Obama later accepted: namely, that you can’t cover all Americans unless tens of millions of them are forced by the federal government to buy coverage: “Clinton’s camp often cites experts who say Obama’s plan would leave out 15 million people of the 47 million who are uninsured.”  So why did Obama REALLY change positions on the mandate?

A better context can be found in all of candidate Obama’s other commitments related to health care.  Among other pledges, Obama promised that:

  • You will not have to change plans.  For those who have insurance now, nothing will change under the Obama plan – except that you will pay less.”
  • “We’re going to work with you to lower your premiums by $2,500 per family per year.  And we will not wait 20 years from now to do it or 10 years from now to do it.  We will do it by the end of my first term as President.”
  • “I can make a firm pledge.  Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase.  Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.” 
  • “The Obama plan will cost $50-65 billion a year when fully phased in.” 
  • “Senator McCain would pay for his plan, in part, by taxing your health care benefits for the first time in history.  And this tax would come out of your paycheck.” 
  • We’ll have the negotiations televised, on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies.”

The American people were promised a health care plan that would be negotiated on C-SPAN, in which all Americans would be covered, premiums would go down by $2,500 a year even after covering all the newly insured, no one would have to give up their existing coverage, and only “the rich” would pay for all this new government munificence. (For some reason, the Obama campaign didn’t promise to buy everyone a pony for good measure.)  In other words, at every single opportunity during his campaign, Obama took the easy way out – he ducked the hard choices, and said implementing a universal health care plan would be an entirely pain-free exercise.  And whenever his opponents implied some hard choices might actually be required – when Sen. Clinton suggested a mandate would be necessary to achieve universal coverage, and when Sen. McCain proposed a new (and surprisingly progressive) tax policy change to cover more Americans – Obama mercilessly attacked them for each.

Of course, all of candidate Obama’s pledges and commitments cited above have since been violated, in fairly obvious fashion.  But even though campaign plans evolve over time as they’re implemented into legislative form, many of the Obama promises were viewed as unrealistic even during the campaign itself.  Few people at the time thought Obama could implement a truly universal health care plan (his stated goal) for his stated price tag of $50-65 billion.  But that didn’t stop the Obama campaign from trumpeting that cost estimate, or the $2,500 in premium savings few thought his campaign could achieve.  (News flash: They haven’t.)

Yesterday’s Los Angeles Times profiled a lawsuit against Anthem Blue Cross for alleged “bait and switch” tactics.  But given the list above, some may wonder what legal action the American people should take for the Obama Administration’s “bait and switch” on health care.