Thursday, September 14, 2017

Elizabeth Warren Promises to “Defend” Obamacare While Sponsoring a Bill to Repeal It

Note to Politifact: We’ve found your “Lie of the Year” for 2021. Or 2025. Or the next year Democrats take the levers of power in Washington. We submit a claim made Wednesday by one Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.): “We will not back down in our protection of the Affordable Care Act. We will defend it at every turn.”

She made that statement at a press conference announcing her support for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ single-payer health care bill—which, if one searches for “Affordable Care Act,” will uncover the following section:

SEC. 902. SUNSET OF PROVISIONS RELATED TO THE STATE EXCHANGES.

Effective on the date described in section 106, the Federal and State Exchanges established pursuant to title I of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Public Law 111–148) shall terminate, and any other provision of law that relies upon participation in or enrollment through such an Exchange, including such provisions of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, shall cease to have force or effect.

Oops.

If You Like Your Obamacare, Too Bad

Perhaps Warren should learn a lesson from Barack Obama, who in 2013 was forced to apologize for what Politifact then called the “Lie of the Year”: “if you like your plan, you can keep it.” Millions of people received cancellation notices that year, because their plans did not comply with Obamacare’s myriad new mandates and regulations on insurance.

Four years later, many people now on Obamacare can’t keep their plans—because, like me last year, they have seen their plans cancelled. But some—maybe not many, but some—Obamacare enrollees might actually like their current coverage.

Sanders’ bill tells each and every one of them, “If you like your Obamacare, too bad,” even as Warren claims she will “defend [the law] at every turn.” Somewhere, George “Those Who Cannot Remember the Past Are Condemned to Repeat It” Santayana is smiling.

Liberals Can’t Help Deceiving People

But perhaps it isn’t surprising to see Warren throw out such a whopper, claiming to defend Obamacare even as she signed on to a bill to destroy it. Suffice it to say the accuracy of her biography has undergone scrutiny over the years.

But more to the point, look at the way liberals sold Obamacare. Obama said if you like your plan, you can keep it. He also said that if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor. And that his plan would cut premiums by $2,500 per year for the average family. And that he wouldn’t raise taxes on the middle class—“not any of your taxes”—to pay for it. How did all of those promises work out?

In short, liberals can’t help themselves. To use liberals’ own vernacular about “repeal-and replace” efforts, they can’t just stop at taking away health care from 178.4 million people with employer-sponsored coverage. No, they want to take away health care from millions of people in the Obamacare exchanges too.

Some of them think Americans will want the “better” health care liberals will provide in their utopian socialist paradise—that the American people won’t mind giving up their current health plan, and don’t care about (or won’t even notice) people like Warren promising one thing and doing another.

Hey, Reporters…?

Given all the stories from reporters accusing Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price of lying about Republicans’ “repeal-and-replace” measure, I naturally assume that journalists have already beaten down Warren’s door asking her about her comments Wednesday. Did she not read the bill she just co-sponsored? How can she claim to “defend” a law when she just endorsed a bill that—by its own wording—will “terminate” one of its main sources of coverage? Isn’t that lying to the American people?

I also assume that, just as they did stories about the “faces of Obamacare” during the repeal debate, those same reporters will go back to individuals with coverage under the exchanges and ask how those people might feel about the prospect of having their plans taken away by Sanders’ bill.

At least one group can truly celebrate the Sanders plan: Politifact. Judging from Warren’s start, and given the number of whoppers used to sell the last health-care takeover, they and their fellow fact checkers will have their hands full for some time to come.

This post was originally published at The Federalist.