The lies and deceit used to sell Obamacare

Mona Charen:

Remember Obama’s mother? Though the airwaves currently echo with the vow, “If you like your plan . . . ,” I keep remembering Obama’s account of his mother being denied coverage by her insurance company as she lay dying of cancer.

The moving and infuriating story was a staple on the 2008 campaign trail. His mother had insurance, he explained, but when she came down with cancer, her insurance company claimed that her disease was a “preexisting” condition and refused to pay for her treatment. In a debate with John McCain, Obama said:

For my mother to die of cancer at the age of 53 and have to spend the last months of her life in the hospital room arguing with insurance companies because they’re saying that this may be a preexisting condition and they don’t have to pay her treatment, there’s something fundamentally wrong about that.

There would be, if it had been true. But when New York Times reporter Janny Scott researched the issue for her biography of the president’s mother, she discovered letters proving beyond a doubt that CIGNA never denied Dunham coverage for her disease. The dispute was over a disability plan that would have paid some of Dunham’s other expenses.

The White House did not deny Scott’s account, but shrugged it off as something that had happened long ago. Not so long that it couldn’t be milked one last time, though, for a 2012 campaign film. In The Road We’ve Traveled, the message remained unchanged — a greedy insurance company had cut off Stanley Ann Dunham at her moment of maximum vulnerability and cost her her life.

If someone comes to you and asks for financial aid to cope with a family member who is gravely ill, and you comply, how are you going to feel when you learn that there is no sick relative? It’s different in politics, explained Michael Cohen, in the New York Daily News. The American people want too many contradictory things. “Seemingly the only path to change is telling voters what they want to hear.”

Doubtless that’s what Mr. Obama tells himself to justify his deceptions. It’s a form of “lying for justice.” If your goals are noble enough, truth is an acceptable casualty.

Mr. Obama’s propensity to lie is finally widely acknowledged, but that acknowledgment hasn’t gone far enough. It isn’t just that the pledge about keeping your plan was a noble lie — the whole law is based upon lies.
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She gives examples of more lies told in service of this bad law.   Fraud and deceit seem to be Obama's stock and trade.  He is now trying to repackage the cancellations caused by Obamacare as "renewals" with enhancements.  Hopefully that will be a hard sell for someone who has lost all credibility on the issue.