Lie: Government Option Originator, Jacob Hacker, Claims His Statements About Government Option Being Trojan Horse for Single-Payer Are Taken Out of Context

There are three kinds of lies: Lies, damnable lies, and claims that words have been "taken out of context."

A liberal Yale scholar, widely regarded as the originator of the “public option” idea of creating a government run insurance provider to compete with private-sector insurance companies, told CNSNews.com that he does not see the public option as a "Trojan Horse" that could lead the United States to single-payer, government-run health insurance.

“I do not see my ‘Health Care for America’ proposal as a route to single payer,” Jacob S. Hacker told CNSNews.com in an email.

Hacker said that he hopes the public option, if adopted, would eventually lead to a government-managed system--but it wouldn't happen overnight.

In a 2008 video obtained and aired by Fox News Channel, Hacker not only suggested that his plan would lead to a single-payer system, but said it would do so openly, in a gradual way, he admitted.

“Someone once said to me, ‘Well, this is a Trojan horse for single payer.’ I said, ‘Well, it’s not a Trojan horse, right? It’s just right there! I’m telling you!’” Hacker said in the video, which was filmed at a July 2008 forum sponsored by the liberal Tides Foundation,.

“We’re going to get there (to a government-run system)--over time, slowly, but we’ll move away from reliance on employment-based health insurance, as we should.

“But we’ll do it in a way that we’re not going to frighten people into thinking they’re going to lose their private insurance. We’re going to give them a choice of public and private insurance when they’re in the pool, and we’re going to let them keep their private employment-based insurance if their employer continues to provide it.”

Hacker told CNSNews.com in an e-mail that his 2008 statement was being misconstrued because he meant only to say that the public plan itself would not be disguised--or a hidden “Trojan horse.”

“It is not: The public plan is right out in the open, as it should be, since most Americans say they want the choice of a new public plan.” Hacker added.

That's a lie. It is clear from his remarks -- as you can see above, he states that the government option will lead to single-payer, over time, but not in a way that will "frighten" voters -- that the government option is intended to slip single-payer in through the back door. Again, his quote:

“We’re going to get there (to a government-run system)--over time, slowly, but we’ll move away from reliance on employment-based health insurance, as we should.

“But we’ll do it in a way that we’re not going to frighten people into thinking they’re going to lose their private insurance. We’re going to give them a choice of public and private insurance when they’re in the pool, and we’re going to let them keep their private employment-based insurance if their employer continues to provide it.”

Of course, over time, employers will stop providing private insurance, which is the entire idea.

Verum Serum continues making rent by posting Hacker admitting this.

Below, a different quote, with Hacker again apparently being "taken out of context."

A questioner asks if Hacker's plan is not intended to "squeeze out" private insurance altogether (and employer-provided service as well) over time. Such that within a generation or two, everyone would be in the government's "quasi-Medicare" system.

His answer comes in the last five seconds.

And here is Hacker, Obama, and Frank all misseaking and/or being taken out of context.

Correction/Back-Pedal: Quote that was here was deleted. See below for the quote and an a correction.

Again, taken out of context! How does this keep happening to this poor man?!?!

Like Sonia Sotomayor, this guy seems to misspeak and be taken out of context and awful lot. And he always seems to be saying the exact same thing.

Odd. If he were saying something other than what it appears he's saying, you'd think he'd state his thoughts correctly at least once or twice.

But no, he always misspeaks and seems to say that the government option is an out-in-the-open brazen Trojan Horse designed to displace private insurance. But of course he doesn't mean that; he always says so. Or, at least, he says so now that this mountain of misstatements and out-of-context misquotes has been discovered.

Sad. He apparently suffers from some sort of hitherto-unknown public-policy Tourettes Syndrome.

By the Way: He sold his plan (which he originated) to liberal Congressmen. He pitched it to them, sold it to them, explained it to them.

So when you hear Barney Frank and Jan Shackowsky proclaiming this will "put the private insurance industry out of business," that's not merely their erroneous interpretation. That's precisely how the plan's originator sold it to them and explained it to them.

These drooling imbeciles and non-expert tax-lice didn't come up with that on their own.

No, the Harvard trained Yale professor boy genius who created the plan told them that.

Correction: To keep this fair -- and I don't see why I should, as these guys are lying their asses off -- I have reconsidered a quote I pulled out of the second video. I think maybe it was taken slightly out of context.

The quote I seized on:

""This would eliminate, I think, the small-group market insurance industry. It's premised on doing so."

Here's why this is I think taken slightly out of context: The "small-group market insurance industry" refers to, well, small groups seeking insurance. They don't have much bargaining power, being small.

Now, pretty much everyone, including conservative Republicans, want some kind of encouragement to get these small groups to band together into big groups, groups of groups, to increase their leverage so they can buy insurance for their employees more affordably.

In this one instance, I think maybe the line is taken out of context, because, at least in the initial stages of the government option take over, the "small group insurance" would be eliminated in favor of "small groups grouping together to form bigger groups with more leverage" insurance.

Of course -- there is another option. Their employers could just put them into the government option, which is Hacker's ultimate goal. But initially, some small groups might band together in the private market, while others (most) would go to the government option.

This is kind of a technical correction because, whatever Hacker expects to happen to "small groups" in the near term, it is quite clear, based on all of his statements, that in the mid- to long-term he expects all groups, large and small, individual and corporate, rich and poor, to eventually be on the government option.

I feel like a dick even offering this correction in the interest of strict honesty because the entire point of Hacker's plan is to deceive the public into accepting in small, inevitable pieces what they would reject outright if it were offered to them honestly and and all-at-once.

The whole point of this charade is to lie their way around the public's rejection of government-run socialized medicine by creating a dishonest fiction that private insurance will endure, when in fact the entire point is to change the rules of the game such that private insurance withers and dies, and they only option left is the government option.

It's Hacker's and Obama's version of "let me put it in for a second just to see how it feels." No one who's ever said that has ever had any intention to withdraw after the promised "second."

Zactly: huerfano writes:

Taken out of context = Did I really say that out loud?

With a side order of "Wait, I only wanted my liberal correligionists to hear that, I have an entirely different and contradictory message to sell to the moderates."

posted by Ace at 12:40 PM

| Access Comments