Of course you didn't. You couldn't help that the American people misunderstood when you said they could keep their insurance if they wanted. You couldn't help that the American people misunderstood when you said they could keep their doctor. You couldn't help that the American people misunderstood when you claimed that this law would make health care affordable to everyone. As it turns out, you did deceive a lot of people, and you're just continuing with the deception in the hopes that people will just forget about the past deceptions. For the record, Mr. Obama, I, and many others like me do not, and have never trusted you. And nearly every word that comes out of your mouth just gives me more reason to distrust you. I know you don't care. I'm a nobody, and likely always will be. I didn't vote for you, and even if I did, I'm absolutely convinced that my opinion means nothing to you.
So, what's this article all about, really? It's about how Mr. Obama is distancing himself from Jonathan Gruber, a man who was paid $400,000 to act as an adviser to the White House concerning the Affordable Care Act. I dunno, but it's kind of hard, after the fact, to distance yourself from someone whom you paid $400,000 to for their opinion, especially when you're attempting to distance yourself by saying that now you disagree with your adviser's opinion. So, if Mr. Gruber's opinion is so worthless, then what was that $400,000 for?
Anyway, I'm not so sure that "stupidity" is the right word, although I suspect that the alternatives like "ignorance" would be equally frowned on, but the unfortunate reality is that the passage of Obamacare really was dependent on the ignorance of the masses. Not many actually read the Act, and I doubt that many actually comprehended the implications of what they read. And now, to make matters worse, the language that is used to discuss the issue has become so muddled that nobody really knows what anyone is saying any more.
An example of the muddled language that's tossed around is the term "affordable." Affordable doesn't mean the same thing to everyone. What's affordable to me isn't necessarily affordable to everyone, even if our incomes are the same. Sometimes, even though I have 20 bucks, I don't feel like I can afford to go see a movie, even if I don't have something specific I need that $20 for. In that case, some people would find the movie affordable, but I wouldn't.
A second example of language muddling is how the terms "health care" and "health insurance" have become interchangeable. They aren't the same thing at all, but hardly anybody actually refers to insurance when talking about how the ACA will cut healthcare spending. The idea behind the ACA is that forcing healthy people to carry insurance will drive the cost of health insurance down, because healthy people will make fewer claims, and in theory, premiums for insurance would drop. That part of the law actually seems reasonable, but it's foolish to think that that effect will last for long. It actually doesn't address the real problem of rising health care costs, just the insurance part. In the end, the insurance cost will also need to rise as rising demand for health care pushes the cost of care ever higher. And the last I read, the average premium is already expected to rise about 10 percent this year over last year, so that effect was relatively short-lived. It appears the ACA didn't even accomplish the goal of lowering the cost of health insurance, except, perhaps, for some fortunate people, and even they will at some point start to feel the pinch as rising health CARE costs bring about sharply increasing INSURANCE premiums.
One other terminology issue I have with this whole discussion is the use of the term "preventive medicine." This includes things like regular checkups and tests. There is nothing preventive about these things at all. If I go to the doctor once a year for a checkup, it doesn't prevent me from being sick, and I wish the "experts" would quit calling it preventive. I either have cancer, or I don't. Getting a checkup doesn't prevent it. It does, perhaps, allow for the diagnosis and treatment before I am terminal, but it doesn't prevent anything. So, I get to be diagnosed for free, but then, if I really am sick, I have a substantial deductible expense that comes out of my pocket before the insurance pays. If the free services were genuinely preventive, it would be great, but I don't feel like there's much benefit to somebody telling me I have cancer for free, but then charging me to treat it, with no guarantees on the outcome. It seems to make more sense for them to charge me to tell me I'm sick, and then treat the illness for free. Then, I would be fine with the whole "no guarantees" thing.
So, here's the quote that got my ire in the linked article:
"The fact that some adviser who never worked on our staff expressed an opinion that I completely disagree with ... is no reflection on the actual process that was run."
So, that certainly clears things up. "Some adviser who never worked on our staff." He was paid $400,000 to NOT work on the staff, I guess. At any rate, Mr. Obama basically said that he has a different opinion, although he never actually said what his opinion was. And that two people having different opinions about the actual process that was run is somehow not a reflection on the actual process that was run. And apparently, we're supposed to buy that line of reasoning because, well, he's the President of the United States of America, and don't you forget it. His opinion matters. It even appears that Mr. Obama is pretending to not know who Mr. Gruber is, by referring to him as "some adviser."
The short version of this is that I'm tired of hearing lies. I'm tired of people talking about transparency while not really being transparent. I'm tired of this administration. Well, two more years. That's what I know.
