Obama’s new story on government health care

I’m going to hit Obamacare again tonight.  Apologies to those looking for something lighter, but I’m spun up, and something important happened today.

So tomorrow we’ll see what Tonya Harding’s up to or something.  For now, check out these two quotes, eight days apart:

“No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people:  If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.” – Barack Obama, June 15, 2009

“When I say if you have your plan and you like it,…or you have a doctor and you like your doctor, that you don’t have to change plans, what I’m saying is the government is not going to make you change plans under health reform.” – Barack Obama, June 23, 2009

Relevant ABC News blog post here.

Notice the shift?  It appears Obama would like us to believe that there is a meaningful distinction between the government directly forcing you out of your current health care coverage, and the government financially incentivizing your employer to force you out of your current health care coverage.

I’d say it’s about as meaningful as whether the guy who wants you dead or a hit man he hires pulls the trigger.

As James C. Capretta pointed out today, Obama couldn’t say this out loud during the campaign, of course.  The comforting sound bite, which went a lot like the June 15 quote above, was far too valuable.  Might have made him unelectable to tell you his plans directly.  Best you concentrate on “change you can believe in,” ladies and gentlemen.

Check out this Lewin Group report of its testimony before the Ways and Means Committee in April, too.  It estimates that as many as 119 million people who currently have job-based health insurance would be forced into the government program (or go uninsured) with any “pay or play” system of the sort our esteemed president and his allied thugs want.

But, shucks, it wouldn’t be the government’s doing.  No way.  The government has no idea how your horse’s head got in your bed.

Folks, it’s not just that Obama’s a sleaze.  It’s that he’s a radical hard-left sleaze who always intended to increase and concentrate federal power, as rapidly and as thoroughly as he could.  (Hey, let me tell you a knee-slapper about “going through the federal budget line by line”!  About your taxes not going up “one dime”!)  Obama utterly rejects the success of the individual as the primary force for progress.  It is only through nanny-state socialism that the individual can be properly controlled happy.

He’s running hard with this ball right now, and if he succeeds, I fear it will be essentially impossible to undo.

Back to Capretta, from the above link:

Then there’s the issue of the president’s credibility. The straightforward commitment that “you can keep what you have” was stated over and over again. In fact, it helped the president get elected in the first place. If his clarification today was what he meant all along, why didn’t he just so say sooner? That question seems likely to cross a few people’s minds.

Let it cross yours.

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