Leftwing Hack Site PolitiFact Bends to Reality and Declares "If You Like Your Plan, You Can Keep Your Plan" as the Lie of the Year

PolitiFact has flacked for Obamacare for three years. In 2010, I believe, they declared the statement that Obamacare represented a national takeover of health insurance their Lie of the Year.

Lie of the Year, they said. While today we witness, every single day, new edicts issued from the Pontiff of the State about what insurers may not or must do. Not based on law, even. Just based on Obama's political needs in any particular day.

After previously declaring Obama's statement that "if you like your plan, you can keep your plan" to be True (they said "half true," but only because the insurance companies were not required to keep the promise that Obama made; Obama's promise was good, they reasoned, but he had no power to compel insurers to abide by it), they finally now reverse themselves.

Sort of.

For four of the past five years, PolitiFact’s Lie of the Year has revolved around the health care law, which has been subject to more erroneous attacks than any other piece of legislation PolitiFact has fact-checked.

Yes, PolitiFact has deemed most criticisms of Obamacare to be lies. Including the criticism that "if you like your plan, you can keep your plan" was a dishonest promise. They claimed that you could keep your plan under Obamacare.

And yet here we are, now calling that the Lie of the Year.

Obama’s ideas on health care were first offered as general outlines then grew into specific legislation over the course of his presidency. Yet Obama never adjusted his rhetoric to give people a more accurate sense of the law’s real-world repercussions, even as fact-checkers flagged his statements as exaggerated at best.

Um, no. PolitiFact said Obamacare guaranteed people could keep their policies. The only wiggle room was that insurers did not have to continue offering those policies. But if they were offered, PolitiFact assured us that Obamacare guaranteed people could keep them.

PolitiFact never bothered to check if Obamacare actually permitted them to be continued to be offered. In fact, Obamacare, and especially the regulations promulgated in furtherance of it, made many (most) such policies illegal.

This was the deliberate choice of Obama. He runs the HHS. He is Sebelius' boss. He chose to do this, and PolitiFact is still representing it as "something that just happened, and Obama just didn't adjust his rhetoric to changing events."

Obama, as the Chief Executive, is ultimately the author of HHS regulations. To this very day, he could instruct HHS to write new regulations permitting all the old policies to be be offered.

He won't. Because he always intended to screw current insurance-holders over. That's what you do when you redistribute wealth.

He did build this. He did made that happen.

Now, back to PolitiFact, making excuses for why Obama lied:

Instead, he fought back against inaccurate attacks with his own oversimplifications, which he repeated even as it became clear his promise was too sweeping.

The debate about the health care law rages on, but friends and foes of Obamacare have found one slice of common ground: The president’s "you can keep it" claim has been a real hit to his credibility.

It's also been a real hit to PolitiFact's credibility. What a fucking joke.

Tidbit: When I write posts, I look for something pithy to use as the link-language. Like if I'm writing that Obama's a douche, I'll write:

How big of a douche is Obama?

This big.

So "This big" is the linking language.

Anyway, when I was writing this post, I began writing it, as is my wont, without reading it. I only saw the headline that PolitiFact's Lie of the Year was IYLYPYCKP. (I'm tired of writing out "If you like your plan...").

I need some link language for linking the post. I wrote something like "PolitiFact now declares IYLYPYCKYP Lie of the Year," and needed some link language for the link.

So I wrote "Sort of."

Why? Because I guessed they only sort of admitted this was the lie of the year, based on all their previous shilling for Obamacare, and based upon their claiming IYLYPYCKYP was True, and never retracting that rating.

But I didn't yet know if they had done a "sort of" job. I figured if I was wrong, I'd rewrite it as "Even PolitiFact, which usually shills so hard for Obama...."

Of course I didn't have to. Within one minute of reading their tendentious "analysis" -- analysis that claims that Republicans lodged false attacks on Obamacare, such as you not being able to keep your policy, which forced Obama to guarantee you would keep your policy, even though, actually, you couldn't keep your policy at all so these weren't false attacks -- I saw they had in fact done a "sort of" admission that Obama had lied.

Or at least that his promise was "wrong," as PolitiFact writes.

You know, a "wrong promise." That's completely normal English right there. It's not as if PolitiFact is writing in non-standard English to avoid using the typical words we use to describe a "wrong promise."

Update [JohnE.]:

Flashback, PolitiFact October 7th, 2008 (via @verumserum):

"No. 1, let me just repeat, if you've got a health care plan that you like, you can keep it," Obama said. "All I'm going to do is help you to lower the premiums on it. You'll still have choice of doctor."

...

It remains to be seen whether Obama's plan will actually be able to achieve the cost savings it promises for the health care system. But people who want to keep their current insurance should be able to do that under Obama's plan. His description of his plan is accurate, and we rate his statement True.

posted by Ace at 06:02 PM

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