So Obama lied. Now What?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I could come up with hundreds of links like this one, the Washington Post's 4 Pinocchio rating for Obama and friends' claims that "if you like your health\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/10\/so-obama-lied-now-what.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"So Obama lied. 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{"id":760,"date":"2013-10-31T08:47:00","date_gmt":"2013-10-31T08:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/10\/so-obama-lied-now-what.html"},"modified":"2013-10-31T08:47:00","modified_gmt":"2013-10-31T08:47:00","slug":"so-obama-lied-now-what","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/10\/so-obama-lied-now-what.html","title":{"rendered":"So Obama lied. Now What?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I could come up with hundreds of links like this one, the Washington Post\u2019s 4 Pinocchio rating<\/a> for Obama and friends\u2019 claims that \u201cif you like your health plan, you can keep it.\u201d\u00a0 But the reality is, anyone who followed the law knew this was a lie.\u00a0 It was clear that the requirements were being upped, including identical coverage\/pricing for men and women, full coverage of the \u201c10 essential benefits,\u201d a laundry-list of preventative care, and other\u00a0plan design requirements\u00a0which substantially increase the cost, beyond the cost\/pricing issues of limiting age differentiation and requiring that the healthy subsidize the already-sick.\u00a0 It was also clear that the grandfathering built into the law was so limited as to be nonexistent.\u00a0 Perhaps\u00a0pundits and policymakers\u00a0hadn\u2019t recognized that insurers would try to hold down costs by creating limited networks, obliging people to leave doctors with whom they\u2019d already established relationships, but the basic facts were well known.<\/p>\n

So it\u2019s been clear for a long time that Obama has been lying.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Maybe<\/em> he really was supremely ignorant of the mechanics of the health care, in the same way as he didn\u2019t know that Merkel was being spied upon, and didn\u2019t know that Benghazi was at risk, and the like.\u00a0 But I find that highly improbable \u2014 and I\u2019d really rather believe our president is a liar than stunningly ignorant of major issues.\u00a0 (* Also \u2014 remember when Obama \u201cevolved\u201d on gay marriage, and everyone knew that he supported gay marriage all along, and his supporters were perfectly A-OK with the fact that he was lying before, out of political expediency? And there was, and is, a significant\u00a0undercurrent of acknowledgement by ACA supporters that lying was politically expedient, and therefore a worthy thing to do.)<\/p>\n

So why is the media only waking up to this now?\u00a0 Probably because, had they called Obama on this when he first made the claim, it would have imperiled the law.\u00a0 Now it\u2019s too late, and maybe a bit safer to report on this without it impacting their policy preferences.<\/p>\n

And what do we, and what should Republicans,\u00a0do about it?\u00a0 <\/p>\n

To a certain extent, there\u2019s nothing to be done.\u00a0 Yes, it can be milked as much as possible to try to get the American public to understand that the Republican\u2019s political opponents are liars, both now and at election time, but\u00a0don\u2019t you think that we\u2019re all conditioned to believe that politicians are lying, anyway?\u00a0 <\/p>\n

What\u2019s more disheartening is the extent to which it impacts other issues which require trust.\u00a0 \u201cGive illegals amnesty now, and we promise we\u2019ll enforce the border\/workplace restrictions later\u201d should be out the window \u2014 but Drudge, at least, keeps linking to House leaders talking about \u201cimmigration reform\u201d as a short-term agenda item, which I have to admit, moves them further into the \u201cuntrustworthy\u201d column (and I so<\/em> liked Paul Ryan in the past!).\u00a0 \u201cWe need to raise taxes, but trust us<\/em>, we\u2019ll only use the proceeds for good and worthy reasons like reducing the deficit.\u201d\u00a0 Plenty of other situations in which moving forward on needed legislation requires trust \u2014 and if Republicans trust Obama and the Democrats at this point, they\u2019re either fools or they actually share the Dems\u2019 objectives and are not trustworthy themselves.<\/p>\n

Which is deeply unfortunate.\u00a0 Our political system is broken, and just getting brokener.<\/p>\n

(Up next on the to-do list:\u00a0 are the Illinois Republicans showing any signs of getting their act together?\u00a0 Or are we going to be living in Madiganistan for another four years?)<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"