First, NBC’s Nightly News anchor Brian Williams reported that the “website for the president’s new health care law is back up tonight after yet another technical problem over the weekend that prevented people from signing up for health insurance . . . yet again.” Then he went on, bemoaning, “For many middle-class Americans who buy their own health insurance, there could be another frustration and that is ‘sticker shock’ — after some learned they must buy new policies that cover more, but cost more as well.”
Couldn’t be. In pushing the Affordable Care Act (ACA), President Barack Obama had promised, “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan.”
And presumably “afford” your plan, too. (Well, there are good old-fashioned government subsidies!)
Williams then turned to correspondent Peter Alexander, who announced that the absolute catastrophe of the healthcare.gov website “is masking what is the real issue here, how much these plans will actually cost.”
At Forbes weeks ago, the headline to Avik Roy’s column suggested a connection: “Obamacare’s Website Is Crashing Because It Doesn’t Want You To Know How Costly Its Plans Are.”
A website that crashes to hide the cost of insurance the law demands you purchase seems far-fetched. Next they’ll claim the Administration somehow knew so many folks would lose their insurance policies.
Er, well, “That millions will lose or have to change their individual policies is not a surprise to the administration” noted Alexander.
Say, what?
NBC News found “buried in the 2010 Obamacare regulations language predicting that ‘A reasonable range for the percentage of individual policies that would terminate . . . is 40 percent to 67 percent.’”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.