Eric Zuesse<\/p>\n
When U.S. Senator Barack Obama was campaigning for the Presidency in 2007<\/a> and 2008, he promised that on healthcare, his plan would be\u00a0“making health insurance universal.”<\/a><\/p>\n This means he was promising that 100%<\/a> of Americans would have health-insurance, once Obamacare (the \u201cPatient Protection and Affordable Care Act\u201d) is up and running.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s been up and running: Americans have been buying health insurance under the Act for 15 months now.<\/p>\n Did it meet that basic promise he made? Is it even coming close? If it hasn\u2019t come close, is it likely ever to get there?<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019s now 12.9%<\/a>. So: whereas around 85% of Americans had health insurance when Obama was campaigning that he would be \u201cmaking health insurance universal,\u201d 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\u2019s campaign-promise was just unrealistic (perhaps as a result of his \u201cinexperience\u201d or \u201cnaivet\u00c3\u00a9\u201d), not an outright lie \u2013 but they\u2019d be clearly and unequivocally wrong in saying that.<\/p>\n First of all, the goal of universal care is certainly realistic, because it\u2019s already achieved in the other industrialized nations. This is a major reason why, when the Commonwealth Fund issued on 16 June 2014 their study, \u201cHow the U.S. Health Care System Compares Internationally,\u201d<\/a> they reported that: \u201cThe 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\u2013Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States\u2013the U.S. ranks last, as it did in the 2010, 2007, 2006, and 2004 editions.\u201d They especially pointed to the fact that: \u201cThe 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.\u201d They noted that this fact increases per-person medical expenses in the U.S. relative to other countries, because \u201cAmericans were the most likely to say they had access problems related to cost. Patients in the U.S. have rapid access to specialized health care services [which are the costliest type of health care services]; however, they are less likely to report rapid access to primary care [which is the type that\u2019s far less costly and that\u2019s long-term far more effective at producing a healthier population, and is thus a double-whammy better solution] than people in leading countries in the study.\u201d Consequently, this study found (p. 13) that \u201chealth expenditures per capita, 2011\u201d (which was the latest year) were $8,508 for the U.S., and ranged between $3,182 and $5,669 among all of the other ten \u2013 all of the countries that had universal insurance. They all had universal health insurance, and also healthcare costs that were about half of America\u2019s. Was their healthcare inferior to America\u2019s? No; it was, to the exact contrary, uniformly superior. This same analysis found (p. 12) that the \u201cOverall Ranking\u201d on \u201cQuality Care\u201d positioned the United States dead-last.<\/p>\n In terms of the well-being of the general population, universal healthcare \u2013 healthcare as a right not a privilege \u2013 is unquestionably superior to the U.S. system (which system is healthcare as a privilege, not as a right). However, in terms of the well-being of the insurance-company CEOs, who are the people that control political-campaign funding (especially after the Republican Party\u2019s 2010 Supreme Court Citizens United<\/em> decision, which gives a corporation\u2019s CEO untrammeled access to the corporate treasury to buy the politicians and policies he wants, irrespective of whether even the stockholders want those \u2013 it empowers CEOs, not stockholders), universal healthcare is toxic to their pay.<\/p>\n So: the promise was realistic in the sense of its being not only achievable, but also of its being actually achieved by the other ten countries.<\/p>\n However, the promise was totally impossible of being fulfilled by the health insurance plan that Obama was proposing and ended up installing. After all, his plan was never designed as a program in which every citizen receives health care as a right, and not as a privilege that depends upon the patient\u2019s ability-to-pay. It just wasn\u2019t anything like that \u2013 and Obama and his aides obviously knew this, but the U.S. \u2018news\u2019 media never probed or seriously questioned this serious matter in it (nor in any of the other candidates\u2019 plans); so, the scam worked on voters: the press let the candidates fool voters. And Obama wasn\u2019t the only practitioner of this scam: Hillary Clinton and John Edwards were making virtually the same inflated claims for virtually identical plans. Given that America\u2019s \u2018news\u2019 media weren\u2019t challenging it, any political candidate who would have been describing such a plan honestly would have been rejected by the voters: how would voters even know that this person was telling the truth and the others (his or her competitors) were lying? The honest candidate would be attacking the standard proposal in a political environment where the press were basically just stenographers, not real<\/em> journalists in a real democracy.<\/p>\n But, what\u2019s more is that Obama never even intended<\/em> to deliver all of what he was promising to be a part of his plan; he especially wasn\u2019t intending to deliver on the \u201cpublic option\u201d part \u2013 the part that the insurance companies were the most concerned to prevent being included in a health-reform law.<\/p>\n Here is the way that Obama whittled down his proposal, from even the low real base that he was starting with:<\/p>\n At all periods throughout his campaign and subsequent Presidency, Obama was lying about the plan that he would propose to Congress, and about the plan that he would enact into law. Even his initial bargaining position with congressional Republicans, as the U.S. President, started without including some important things that he had been campaigning on as promises to the American people, such as universal coverage, and such as universal availability of a public insurance option in the healthcare exchanges. Furthermore, his language even in the earliest phases of his Presidency regarding the “public option” was cagily phrased so that it was essentially meaningless to anyone who examined it carefully.<\/p>\n On 9 September 2009<\/a>, in his speech to a joint session of Congress, he committed himself for the first time clearly to a self-contradictory position on this matter, and so he was now publicly pushing something that clearly is impossible; yet still none of the press pointed this crucial fact (a fact of logic) out to the public. He said then:<\/p>\n \u201cI have no interest in putting insurance companies out of business. They provide a legitimate service, and employ a lot of our friends and neighbors. I just want to hold them accountable. (Applause.) And the insurance reforms that I’ve already mentioned would do just that. But an additional step we can take to keep insurance companies honest is by making a not-for-profit public option available in the insurance exchange. (Applause.) Now, let me be clear. Let me be clear. It would only be an option for those who don’t have insurance.\u201d<\/p>\n So, already there, he was finally ruling out the availability of the public option to compete against the insurance companies for the business of the 85% of Americans who already had insurance \u2013 it just wouldn\u2019t be available to them. Consequently, it would in no way \u201ckeep insurance companies honest.\u201d Instead of competing against private insurers, it would be available as an option only for the 15% of Americans who were currently un<\/em>insured. Obama was actually protecting there the profit-margins of the insurance companies, on existing insurance. Did the American press call this to the public\u2019s attention? Everybody in the public-policy community, and even intelligent journalists, recognized it immediately. (I certainly did, at the time. From that moment on, I knew that he was a fraud.) Obama was urging Congress to produce something that would contradict itself. Either the public option would be available to everyone, or else it wouldn\u2019t \u201ckeep the insurance companies honest.\u201d Nor would it, in any way, then \u201chold them accountable.\u201d His statement was a lie as regards both its \u201ckeep insurance companies honest,\u201d and its \u201chold them accountable.\u201d It was a double-lie.<\/p>\n Therefore, not only was Obama not pushing for universal health-insurance, but he also wasn\u2019t really pushing for anything that would \u201ckeep insurance companies honest\u201d in the sense of inserting into a competitive marketplace \u201ca not-for-profit public option\u201d which would be one of the competitors for the public\u2019s health-insurance. This is how protective of insurance-executives\u2019 bonuses he actually was, and how little he actually cared about health-care consumers \u2013 the public: patients.<\/p>\n Regarding the public option, or inclusion of an option for each American to choose a government-run insurance plan, this lie from Obama was rather fully documented by an anonymous blogger who headlined on 22 December 2009,\u00a0“President Obama: ‘I Didn’t Campaign on the Public Option\u2019,”<\/a>\u00a0where that lie from Obama was soundly and repeatedly exposed as being nothing but a lie. That blog-post had been precipitated by an interview with Obama which had just been published in the Washington Post<\/em> headlining innocuously,\u00a0\u201cObama Rejects Criticism on Health-Care Reform Legislation,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0where the reporter wrote\u00a0\u201c\u2018I didn’t campaign on the\u00a0public option,\u2019 Obama said in the interview.\u201d If that report wasn’t itself a lie, then the President’s assertion certainly was.\u00a0While it\u2019s true that Obama never even tried to get John Boehner or other Republicans to allow into the law a public option that the private insurance industry didn\u2019t want to be included in the law, and that he accepted their opposition to that, right up front at the beginning of his \u201cnegotiations\u201d on the matter, instead of his using it even as just a bargaining chip with them; he had, actually, and repeatedly, campaigned on the public option; he simply and boldly lied about that there. The public option was something that was overwhelmingly popular among the American public (which is the reason why he had campaigned on it), but that he had no intention ever of actually delivering on. (Most polls<\/a>\u00a0showed support for the public option ranging from half to three-quarters of the American public who had an opinion on the matter. The health insurance companies didn’t want it to be included; so, he didn\u2019t want it, either. It\u2019s one of the main reasons why he chose the conservative Max Baucus, instead of the liberal Ted Kennedy, to draft Obamacare. This mortified Kennedy. And Baucus did Obama\u2019s bidding.)<\/p>\n One of the crucial unlinked-to sources in the lengthy blog-post\u00a0“President Obama: ‘I Didn’t Campaign on the Public Option\u2019,”<\/a>\u00a0was an Obama campaign document that (like virtually all of them) was soon removed from the Web because these promises by Obama were intended to be broken not fulfilled; and this document included the following statement, as copied here into a blog-post dated 30 May 2007<\/a>, from very early in Obama’s primary campaign against Hillary Clinton and John Edwards:<\/p>\n “Through the Exchange, any American will have the\u00a0opportunity to enroll in the new public plan or purchase an approved private plan.\u201d<\/p>\n Get that: \u201cany American.\u201d Not: \u201cLet me be clear. It would only be an option for those who don’t have insurance.\u201d<\/p>\n This blog-post from May 2007 opens by saying, “Senator Obama’s long-anticipated healthcare plan<\/a>\u00a0has finally been released.” The link provided there, to the then-Senator Obama’s just-released plan, produces only a blank now, presumably because Obama doesn’t want historians to have such an easy time tracking down the lies that he had made while he was running for office. Of course, if he should subsequently decide that he doesn’t any longer want to impede the ability of historians to nail down the frauds he made against the voting public, then one way for him to repent of them (if he even has a conscience at all) would be for him to place back up onto the Web the documents, such as that one, which expose his fraudulence. Unless the United States descends into total dictatorship such as in North Korea or other countries that never were democracies to begin with, historians will ultimately come to recognize, anyway, that Barack Obama lied about many things, some of which were crucial. Presumably, he is merely trying to delay \u2013 not to prevent \u2013 this historical recognition. Only time will tell whether or when that recognition will come.<\/p>\n ———-<\/p>\n Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/em><\/a>,<\/em> and of \u00a0CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Eric Zuesse When U.S. Senator Barack Obama was campaigning for the Presidency in 2007 and 2008, he promised that on healthcare, his plan would be\u00a0“making health insurance universal.” This means he was promising that 100% of Americans would have health-insurance, once Obamacare (the \u201cPatient Protection and Affordable Care Act\u201d) is up and running. The first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":141711,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[461,1622],"tags":[115,96,855,853,542,854,49,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-142954","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-editorials","8":"category-featured","9":"tag-barack-obama","10":"tag-cover-up","11":"tag-frauds","12":"tag-health-care","13":"tag-lies","14":"tag-obamacare","15":"tag-usa-news","16":"tag-white-house"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142954\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}