How Obama Lied About Obamacare
By Eric Zuesse
Global Research
January 10, 2015
When U.S. Senator Barack Obama was campaigning for the Presidency in 2007 and 2008, he promised that on healthcare, his plan would be “making health insurance universal.”
This means he was promising that 100% of Americans would have health-insurance, once Obamacare (the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act”) is up and running.
The first open enrollment period under Obamacare lasted from October 1, 2013 to March 31, 2014; and, so, there have now been a full 15 months, during which period, it’s been up and running: Americans have been buying health insurance under the Act for 15 months now.
Did it meet that basic promise he made? Is it even coming close? If it hasn’t come close, is it likely ever to get there?
The answers to all of these questions are uniformly and unequivocally no, and Obama knew that this would be the case, even back when he was running for the Presidency. All of this will be documented here.
Since 2008, while he was campaigning for the White House, the Gallup Poll has been tracking the percentage-rate at which Americans lacked health insurance. It started out at 14.6%, and on January 7th Gallup reported that it’s now 12.9%. So: whereas around 85% of Americans had health insurance when Obama was campaigning that he would be “making health insurance universal,” the comparable figure is around 87% today, after his plan was in force for 15 months. He had promised that it would instead be 100%. Was this promise, which he repeatedly made while campaigning for the Presidency, ever even realistic? Perhaps some people would say no, and that Obama’s campaign-promise was just unrealistic (perhaps as a result of his “inexperience” or “naiveté”), not an outright lie — but they’d be clearly and unequivocally wrong in saying that.
First of all, the goal of universal care is certainly realistic, because it’s already achieved in the other industrialized nations. This is a major reason why, when the Commonwealth Fund issued on 16 June 2014 their study, “How the U.S. Health Care System Compares Internationally,” they reported that:
“The United States health care system is the most expensive in the world, but this report and prior editions consistently show the U.S. underperforms relative to other countries on most dimensions of performance. Among the 11 nations studied in this report—Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States—the U.S. ranks last, as it did in the 2010, 2007, 2006, and 2004 editions.”
They especially pointed to the fact that:
“The most notable way the U.S. differs from other industrialized countries is the absence of universal health insurance coverage.5 Other nations ensure the accessibility of care through universal health systems.”
The Rest…HERE
