Parents and lawmakers speak out against Obama's speech to students

[UGAalum94]

Originally Posted by MysticCat

I see what you're saying, but I've never heard the comments the way you seem to be hearing them. The way I've heard it from Day 1 (by which I mean the way I have interpreted what has been said) is simply that you shouldn't worry if you like your current plan, because the law is not going to require you to switch to a different plan. That's all. I've never interpreted any statement as an implied promise that nothing about your coverage will ever change.

I interpreted the message the same way you did because there's no way that it ever really could have meant what he said, but the exact message delivered has varied a little bit:

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpu...e-promise.html

Sometimes he clarifies; others he doesn't. I tend to think that you and I have a pretty good handle on what government can actually do for people. Sadly, I don't have the same faith in the general health care debate audience*, and I think the repetition of this point is kind of deceitful. It reassures people of something that, in good conscience, he probably shouldn't be reassuring them of.

Even if the reform doesn't change the nature of the coverage required in such a way to knock people's plans out of the market entirely, which honestly I think was and could still be on the table, it's just not something that ever should have been expressed the way Obama expressed it some of the time. What he apparently really meant was "at present, we do not intend to pass a bill that will require you to buy an entirely different government approved insurance plan."

* Please take a moment to think about how plausible you considered Palin's death panel comments and then to consider the number of people who apparently took them very literally. Personally, I think if we ever end up with government run single payer, we will ration care, so I don't think Palin's comment was 100% deranged. But to suggest that was a likely outcome anytime soon from Obama's reform was manipulative, and apparently successfully so.