Dakota War College claims that President Obama lied about the Affordable Care Act and the ability to keep one's current health insurance.
No, President Obama did not lie:
At issue is the President’s claim when selling health care reform that if you like your current health plan, you can keep it. That point in turn was based on the provision that grandfathered existing plans in the individual market (neither employer-based or government provided) by granting exemptions from various standards and consumer protections that came into effect when the law was signed in 2010.
However, as clearly stated at the time, if such a plan were to significantly change in ways that are inconsistent with consumer protections under the ACA, it would lose its grandfathered status.
Like I said, this has been known since the law was written. In fact, go here to see a 2010 publication by my CBPP colleague Sarah Lueck that lists the ways plans can lose its grandfathered status, like eliminating benefits to treat certain conditions or significantly raising co-pays beyond what’s implied by the rate of medical price inflation.
...So, did the President misspeak? In a way, sure. He should have said: “If you like your plan and it doesn’t get significantly worse such that it’s out of sync with what we’re trying to do here, you can keep it.”
And, in fact, such nuances were clear at the time and not buried in the weeds but discussed in the open. Not much to see here folks…move along [Jared Bernstein, "The Latest ACA Dust-Up Should Not Be a Dust-Up," On the Economy, 2013.10.29].
President Obama's greatest error was adopting a mostly Republican (Nixon, Gingrich, Romney) plan instead of a cheaper, simpler, and more popular plan: the public option!
Republicans must be nervous about people figuring out the merits of the public option. Even with their man Marion Michael Rounds pounding Democratic challenger Rick Weiland in fundraising, they're peddling attacks on Weiland for his support of a public option. Weiland is undaunted; he gleefully challenges "Greedycare" to compete with Medicare for Everyone:
We know Medicare works for seniors. We know the Greedycare system of overpriced, intentionally complex private insurance for non-seniors does not work. Why not ask big money private insurers to compete with Medicare and let the American people decide what works best.
Obamacare is faltering because it does not give every American a choice between Medicare and the private insurers.
We do not need to postpone universal health care, or go back to the ugly Greedycare system that existed before the Affordable Care Act. We need to offer every American the opportunity to buy into Medicare, and we need to offer them that opportunity right now.
The private profiteers who control health care have no competition. They built a website that cost taxpayers hundreds of millions and doesn't work so we could choose which big money insurance company we want to have rip us off. My suggestion is that they add just one new thing to their website, the option for every American to buy their way into a system we all know works, Medicare. Even they ought to be able to figure that one out. Let us choose between their thousand buttons and one button marked Medicare and see how they like a little honest competition for a change [Rick Weiland, press release, 2013.10.28].
Rip off the band-aid; let's try the public option!