Obama: "I Am Sorry" You're Losing Your Health Care Due To Claims I Made and Actions I Undertook

Exclusive to NBCNews-- of course.

Where else would Obama go to for a friendly hearing? Note Obama can't to but to a handful of journalists or outlets, because many would ask him very pointed questions.

But he can rely on good old NBC to let him get out his Poll Tested Message of the Day without too many other questions.

"I am sorry that they are finding themselves in this situation based on assurances they got from me," he told NBC News in an exclusive interview at the White House. "We've got to work hard to make sure that they know we hear them and we are going to do everything we can to deal with folks who find themselves in a tough position as a consequence of this. "

The rest of the NBC article is pro-Administration spin (this only affects 5% of the market; policies are being canceled due to normal churn in the markets, etc.) so don't bother clicking.

By the way, Glenn Kessler gave Obama three Pinnochios about his claim that insurance companies, rather than Obama, are causing these cancellations.

And his reason for this is New News, which I didn't know. I thought the main reason for the cancellations was HHS' bitchy clawback via regulations, making virtually all policies "changed" per the meaning of the law and hence not grandfathered.

And that is true.

But the biggest reason for the cancellation is super-simple.

Individual policies are sold short term -- six months, a year, two years. A long policy may be four years of coverage, but less than 5% of policies are sold like that.

So what did Obama do? He promised you could keep any plan that was in effect...

March 23, 2010.

2010.

But Obamacare didn't go into effect until 2013.

So any plan that was in effect March 23, 2010 and still in effect three and half years later, on October 1, 2013, might be grandfathered (unless other provisions un-grandfathered the policies).

But because of the six month, one year, two years, four years short-term nature of these policies, almost all of them would have already have expired and thus would be ineligible for any grandfathering at all.

Remember, only a policy in effect on March 23, 2010, and still in effect October 1, 2013 could even be considered for grandfathering.

75% to 95% of all policies would have expired by now.

For any longer-term policies that survived this clause... well, that's when the rest of HHS' regs kick in to disqualify all remaining policies.

So when he made this promise, he knew he was lying, and he knew the way he was defining the rules of the game -- as far as dates -- meant that people would assume they could keep a policy they bought in 2013 or so, but in fact the fine print said it had to be bought as of March 2010.

I'm Sorry You Were Not Expecting What Transpired In Your Mouth. Charles C.W. Cooke calls this a fake, sort-of apology.

He's right, of course. If Obama were actually sorry, he would just call HHS and tell them to change the date of grandfathering from March 23, 2010 -- when Obamacare passed -- to October 1, 2013 -- when it actually took effect.

And he could do that with a phone call.

But he won't.

Because he wants to terminate these policies.

posted by Ace at 06:02 PM

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