No Hypocrisy Left Behind

Okay, I figure some people might be getting tired of all the recent ObamaCare posts, which I get--on the other hand, it's such a day-to-day train wreck you almost don't want the coverage to end, you want to make another bowl of popcorn. Besides, there's a specific point I want to harp on here.

A lot of the fun we're having with this clusterf**k comes from the fact that the Democrats' earlier words can be so easily used against them. Case in point: "If you like your plan, you can keep your plan"--words I suspect Obama now deeply regrets ever uttering. (Can't be sure, though. He might be so dense he really believes he spoke the truth.) But I'm actually thinking of a different lie--or rather, a different manipulation.

As you know, the overwhelming majority of Americans had health insurance, of one form or another, long before Obama took office. I had it, my family had it, practically everyone I knew in my hick town had it, and so on. And as Andrew helpfully explained during the passing of 404Care, the people who didn't have it, in most cases didn't have it for very good reasons. All good reasons for a reality check, or at least for some perspective. After all, you shouldn't risk screwing over the 80 or 90 percent of people with health care, just for the 10 or 20 percent without it.

But no. Obama and his buddies pounded, from day one, on the fact that millions of people were without health insurance, and that this was a great injustice that must not be. From obamacarefacts.com: "About 15% of Americans are uninsured, which is a little less than 50 million men, women and children." (Of course, right below that, they mention that the mandate and the health care marketplace will only affect uninsured people, but still, let's assume they're right about the 15 percent thing.) Back in June 2009, the White House's Council of Economic Advisers included in a report the breathless soundbite "Perhaps the most visible sign of the need for health care reform is the 46 million Americans currently without health insurance," and a month after that, Obama himself doubled down by saying "This is not just about the 47 million Americans who have no health insurance...," blah blah blah.

So, you get it. Despite making up 15% of the population or less, these uninsured Americans are such a huge problem there needed to be a major overhaul of the health care system, etc. We've heard all this before. So ACA was passed, its provisions have started kicking in, and, well...hell, handbasket, some assembly required.

And if you've followed closely, among all the stories of sites crashing and enrollment taking longer than the Big Dig, you've started hearing about all the people who have gotten royally screwed by the reform plan itself. People who had quite affordable and quite functional health-care plans already, but now don't. Like these guys. Or these. Or these. Now, by their own admission, many of these people voted for Obama--some twice--so I for one am having a little bit of lowbrow "Serves you right, idiots!" glee from their misfortune. But I'm immature and vindictive and all that; surely the empathetic liberals who want to take care of everybody will be upset by this failure, right?

Okay, of course not. Apparently the people whose plans are getting canceled don't matter. Last week, when Jay Poindexter Carney was pressed about them, he complained that reporters were acting like these made up a majority of Americans, when it's really only "5 percent of the population." Well, in a country as big as ours, "5 percent" is still a lot of people. Some conservative pundits have had good fun with this; an NRO columnist pointed out that "5 percent of the population is 15 million people — or the collective population of Alaska, Delaware, Montana, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maine, Hawaii, Idaho, West Virginia, Nebraska, New Mexico, and both the Dakotas."

15 million is, of course, less than 46/47/50 million; I'll give the White House that. And I don't expect Obama to up and cancel the whole reform plan. But for 15 million people? I would expect him to be holding round-the-clock powwows, have people working on the problems 24/7, or at least calling Sebelius and others on the carpet for their incompetence. Instead, we get his spokesman wondering why people are making mountains out of molehills, while TOTUS himself goes around thumping his chest about how awesome his achievement is.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised. And given the overall incompetence we've seen from the White House, I'm not nearly as surprised as I might be. But you would think that if liberals really believed what they say they believe in, they would be truly bothered by all the people losing their health care and be trying to fix it. Apparently no double standard is too shameless, as long as it helps them stay in power.

To close, here's Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood singing about ObamaCare at the CMA Awards Wednesday night. Enjoy.