Obama is not as strong a communicator as I would have liked, not because he isn't good at breaking things down, but because he appears rather unthoughtful when it comes to rhetoric. He's at his best when he's in 'teacher mode,' explaining something complicated in comprehensible terms; but conservatives hate this, and attack him for it. Conservatives don't like being 'lectured' and 'pointed at,' transforming miraculously into liberal, politically-correct, cultural studies pedagogy experts when they feel Obama is playing too much sage-on-the-stage rather than guide-on-the-side. So Obama's communication style is fraught, to say the least; and not all of his own doing.
Among his communication blunders is the 'if you like your health care plan, you can keep your plan' thing. Of course we know now that the ACA will prompt insurance companies to modify their services, which means they might cancel or revamp certain plans. And of course Obama and his administration knew this all along.
What I'd like to explain here, though, is the context of the 'you can keep your plan' claim, which our worthless political media simply aren't covering. This is a short post, because this is a simple explanation.
Conservatives primarily, but also plenty of establishment media liberals, are claiming that Obama willfully lied and misled the American public about the prospects of not being able to keep our health plans. It's not that simple. If you recall, when Obama was fighting to sell the ACA to the American public, and conservatives were fighting to tarnish and sabotage the ACA, conservatives were making up the lie that the ACA will result in 'government takeover' of your health insurance. The conservative line was that the ACA would force you from your private insurance plan onto a 'government-run' insurance plan; hence, 'government takeover.'
Obama's 'you can keep your plan' comments weren't just uttered in a vacuum; they were a response to the conservative lie about 'government takeover.' When Obama said 'you can keep your plan,' he meant 'you can keep your private insurance; the government will not force you onto government insurance.' Putting aside the fact that, ridiculous as it is that I have to point this out, THE ACA PROVIDES NO ADDITIONAL GOVERNMENT INSURANCE, outside of Medicare and Medicaid, which long since existed, Obama's comments about 'keeping your plan' were meant to ease anxiety that was nefariously cultivated by conservative talking points about 'government-run healthcare.'
The difference here is subtle but crucial: 'you can keep your private insurance' versus 'you can keep the same specific insurance plan your private insurer has always offered' are actually very different claims. What matters especially is that the ACA itself--Obama's signature law--is not the thing that takes away certain specific private insurance plans. There's nothing in the law that says insurance companies must change their offerings. Instead, it's insurance companies who decided to change their offerings in reaction to the law. They might have done this to send a political message, that they'd make it difficult on anyone who tries to regulate them; or they might have done this simply to adjust costs and revenues and offer plans that are more commercially viable for themselves. In either case, the not-at-all-insignificant point is that with or without the ACA, insurance companies have always reserved the right to change and manipulate their offerings. They might be using the ACA as an excuse, but changing plans--and what their plans cover--on customers is old news for insurance companies; they do it practically every year, as anyone knows who bothers reading that big packet of information they send every year.
I do think that Obama should have been more clear about what he meant when he said the 'you can keep your plan' stuff. He should have preempted the insurance companies maneuver and explained to the American people that private insurers will use the ACA as an excuse to modify their offerings, but the exchanges will provide enough of a market that those whose plans are cancelled by private insurers or modified or re-priced will nevertheless be able to find a different plan at the same price point offering the same coverage. Instead of 'you can keep your plan,' it should have been 'a more competitive insurance market means you can keep your value and your price point, even if your insurance company tries to modify your plan.'
Still, it's important to recognize that Obama didn't simply lie to the American public to get the ACA passed and the American people on board. He responded to a conservative lie that was meant to sabotage support for the ACA. Ironically, anyone who thought that 'you can keep your plan' meant not simply 'the government won't take over your private plan,' but 'I guarantee your insurance company won't change your plan' would have to believe that Obama is actually as draconian as conservatives claim he is: that he presumed to exercise direct control over what specific insurance products private companies would offer. Considering it's largely conservatives (and a few beltway liberals) who are trying to paint this thing as a colossal lie, perhaps it's not as ironic as I suggested.
