OPINION:
There’s just no way around this: President Obama looked America in the eye and lied. The president was so hellbent on “fundamentally transforming” the country with his health care takeover that he intentionally deceived you — he lied — not once or twice, but over and over again.
In 2010, the year Obamacare was signed into law, I wrote “Obamacare’s Unkeepable Promises” in The Washington Times. These false promises were easily predictable and are finally now being exposed. It’s starts with nine words that are unmaking an American presidency.
“If you like your plan, you can keep it.” — Barack Obama, June 2010
Already, 5 million Americans have lost their health insurance plans directly because of the president’s law. By next year, as Obamacare starts tearing through employer-based insurance plans, that number will rise to between 50 million and 100 million Americans.
However, this was just one of Mr. Obama’s egregious Obamacare lies. The list goes on.
“If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period.” — Barack Obama, June 2010
How can you keep your doctor, though, if your doctor cannot keep his practice? As health insurance companies buckle under the weight of Obamacare, they are narrowing their provider networks in hopes of controlling costs. This, of course, means that your doctor may no longer be allowed to participate in your plan. Other doctors are dropping or limiting Medicare and Medicaid, and some are even dropping out of all private insurance as well. Still others are leaving the practice of medicine altogether. You won’t be able to keep them.
“I will not sign a [health care] plan that adds one dime to our deficits.” — Barack Obama, September 2009
The president originally claimed Obamacare would reduce the deficit by $100 billion in the first decade. Aiding and abetting this lie was Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who buried her own report that showed Obamacare would cost $400 billion more than promised in the first decade. It gets worse. The Government Accountability Office’s long-term projection reveals Obamacare raises the deficit over $1 trillion.
“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.” — Barack Obama, September 2008
Mr. Obama is now a Supreme Court-certified tax-raiser, which means his outright dishonesty has been validated by the high court as well. Despite the president’s public assurances to the contrary, his administration argued and five Supreme Court justices agreed that the individual-mandate penalty — the linchpin of Obamacare — is not actually a penalty, but is in fact a tax. What’s more, Obamacare contains 20 new or higher taxes on everything from pharmaceuticals and MRI scanners to tanning salons and the sale of your home.
“But what we will do is, we’ll have the [Obamacare] negotiations televised on C-SPAN … .” — Barack Obama, August 2008
Mr. Obama promised the most transparent administration in American history. He proclaimed that by airing the Obamacare negotiations, Americans would see who’s really on their side. Indeed. Perhaps that’s why Mr. Obama never intended to air these in the first place. C-SPAN founder and CEO Brian Lamb later explained that his television network would have broadcast the negotiations, but “He never asked us .”
Perhaps the most disturbing of all: “I will never forget my own mother, as she fought cancer in her final months, having to worry about whether her insurance would refuse to pay for her treatment.” — Barack Obama, August 2009
The depths of the president’s dishonesty are fully revealed by his willingness to dishonor his own departed mother when he falsely claimed that her health insurance company attempted to cancel her policy. In actuality, Ann Dunham’s employer-based policy not only paid for her hospital bills and cancer treatment in full, they afforded her care at prestigious institutions like Memorial Sloan Kettering and the Straub Clinic.
The deceit is breathtaking.
Obamacare is the most disastrous law of our lifetimes, one that was forced upon us in the most dishonest of ways in order to fundamentally transform America from the Land of the Free into a nation of dependents. The Obamacare days of reckoning have barely begun, and our only salvation now is to repeal this train wreck in its entirety and to be honest with Americans about what measures actually work: patient-centered, market-driven reforms.
Dr. Milton R. Wolf is a radiologist and a contributor to The Washington Times.
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