At last night’s news conference, President Obama demonstrated a remarkable ability to talk for 60 minutes without showing emotion or saying anything new. The only change to his rhetoric was the shift from “healthcare reform” to “health insurance reform,” which is, at best, a weak attempt to create Luntz-ian language.
Obama needed a game-changer, but it seemed he was just going through the motions, resigned to the fact that Congress can’t finish by August. Recess will be the proving grounds for reform, and the legislation’s fate will be determined while lawmakers are home in their districts.
One odd moment last night came when Obama, possibly unwittingly, made a reference to a scene in the Matrix as a puzzling illustration of cost control:
“If there’s a blue pill and a red pill, and the blue pill is half the price of the red pill and works just as well, why not pay half price for the thing that’s going to make you well?”
In the film’s red pill/blue pill scene, Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) gives Neo (Keanu Reeves) a choice between two pills. If Neo takes the blue pill, he can return to the reality he believes. If he takes the red pill, he can “stay in Wonderland.”
That is, ironically, exactly what Obama peddled to the American people last night: a trip to Wonderland. The Associated Press offered a fact check on Obama’s healthcare rhetoric and found he continues stretching the truth.
OBAMA: “We already have rough agreement” on some aspects of what a health care overhaul should involve, and one is: “It will keep government out of health care decisions, giving you the option to keep your insurance if you’re happy with it.”
THE FACTS: In House legislation, a commission appointed by the government would determine what is and isn’t covered by insurance plans offered in a new purchasing pool, including a plan sponsored by the government. The bill also holds out the possibility that, over time, those standards could be imposed on all private insurance plans, not just the ones in the pool. … It’s true that people would not be forced to give up a private plan and go with a public one. The question is whether all of those private plans would still be in place if the government entered the marketplace in a bigger way.
OBAMA: “I have also pledged that health insurance reform will not add to our deficit over the next decade, and I mean it.”
THE FACTS: … White House Budget Director Peter Orszag told reporters this week that the promise does not apply to proposed spending of about $245 billion over the next decade to increase fees for doctors serving Medicare patients. … Beyond that, budget experts have warned about various accounting gimmicks that can mask true burdens on the deficit. The bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget lists a variety of them, including back-loading the heaviest costs at the end of the 10-year period and beyond.
OBAMA: “You haven’t seen me out there blaming the Republicans.”
THE FACTS: Obama did so in his opening statement.
As Morpheus would say, we probably all “feel a bit like Alice, tumbling down the rabbit hole.” Obama cannot back up his claims with any real facts, but he assumes voters will take him at his word. That is, after all, how he got elected in the first place. This “is the wool that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.”