President Refuses to Tell the Truth about Obamacare in SOTU Speech

During Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, President Obama conveniently ignored his Administration’s greatest failure of the past year: the catastrophic rollout of the Democrats’ health care law. Not once did he apologize. Not once did he explain how and why his Administration screwed up. Not once did he take responsibility.

Instead, the President engaged in another slick sign-up sales pitch, but refused to offer a detailed status report on the law’s implementation. Failure to provide a data-driven update on Obamacare’s implementation progress is essentially an admission that the most transparent Administration in history has something to hide and wants to avoid answering tough questions.

For example, the President claimed in his speech that “more than nine million Americans have signed up for private health insurance or Medicaid coverage.” He wanted the number to sound impressive, but what he didn’t say is how many people are newly insured. The Administration hasn’t clarified how many uninsured people gained coverage through the exchanges and Medicaid – or whether they simply renewed coverage, switched from one private plan to another, or would have qualified for Medicaid without Obamacare. One study showed that only 11 percent are newly insured and a new poll showed that nearly half of the uninsured look at the law unfavorably.

The President also did not take the opportunity on Tuesday to set the record straight on how his law is leading to so many people losing their doctors. President Obama and Washington Democrats first sold their health care law as the best way to reduce the cost of medical care. When it became clear that many people would see huge price increases for insurance, the Administration changed its sales pitch and said prices might not be lower, but the coverage would be better. As it turns out, the revised story was no more true than the original. Obamacare forced insurance companies to develop health plans with restricted provider networks. The law’s mandates and regulations left virtually no other options to hold down monthly premium costs.

• McKinsey and Co. Analysis. Last month McKinsey and Co. released a study showing 70 percent of the insurance plans sold in the Obamacare exchanges have hospital networks that are “either narrow or ultra-narrow.”

• New Hampshire. Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, the only commercial carrier offering insurance in the New Hampshire exchange, excluded 10 of the state’s 26 hospitals from health plans the company plans to sell.

• Top Hospitals Opt Out. U.S. News and World Report surveyed the nation’s premier hospitals. It found that many would be accepting insurance plans from just one or two companies in the exchanges.

When the President of the United States makes a promise to the American people, they should be able to trust him. They should not have to check back later for the fine print. They deserve better than that, but it is clear President Obama and Washington Democrats are convinced they can trick people with fancy speeches and slick sales pitches. Mr. President, the American people aren’t buying it.

Health Care Headlines

Kaiser Health News: “Health Law Is A Tough Sell To Uninsured” Uninsured Americans – the people that the Affordable Care Act was designed to most aid – are increasingly critical of the law as its key provisions kick in, a poll released Thursday finds.

Washington Free Beacon: “Tennesseans Losing Their Doctors Because of Obamacare” Tennessee residents are learning that President Obama did not follow through on one of his key promises about Obamacare – if Americans like their doctor, they will be able to keep them. Obamacare coverage has been available to its enrollees for just less than a month, but already, problems are rising and Americans are growing weary.

Forbes: “SURPRISE: Massachusetts is home to America’s worst-performing ObamaCare exchange” Massachusetts is struggling under ObamaCare. In the state that “inspired” the Affordable Care Act, with almost universal coverage and a functional exchange, most would assume the transition to the federal law would be largely cosmetic. Yet many Bay State insiders have been surprised by the number of brick walls the state has run into during early implementation and are privately expressing deep concerns about the road ahead.

Politico: “State of the Union 2014: Obama embraces Obamacare” President Barack Obama left no doubt Tuesday night what his Obamacare sales technique will be: loud voice, lots of confidence and no apologies. Don’t dwell on the scratches on the hood. Just tell the customer how good it will feel to rev the engine and drive the car off the lot. Obamacare didn’t show up in the State of the Union address until over halfway through, and it encompassed all of nine paragraphs in an hour-plus stemwinder. But this was very much a hard sell by the president for Americans to sign up for his signature health care law, the biggest sales pitch Obama has made in a State of the Union address since the law passed.

Washington Post: “Doctor’s cut from Medicare Advantage struggle with what to tell patients” Thousands of primary care doctors and specialists across the country have been terminated from privately run Medicare Advantage plans, sparking a battle between doctors who say patient care is being threatened and insurers that insist they have to reduce costs and streamline their operations. Medical associations, which describe the dismissals as the largest in the program's history, say the cuts are forcing some patients to leave their doctors in mid-treatment and creating gaps in the types of medical specialists covered in some areas.