Monday, October 22, 2012

Does Obamacare Cover “Obamnesia?”

During a campaign speech on Friday, President Obama went on a riff about “Romnesia,” which according to the President is a disease symptomized by frequent reversals of position.  Of course, that diagnosis comes from someone particularly expert at switching positions when it comes to health care.  As the saying goes, let’s go to the videotape:

Barack Obama, February 5, 2008: “If a mandate was the solution, we could try that to solve homelessness by mandating everyone buy a house.”

Barack Obama, January 31, 2008: “I think that it is important for us to recognize that if in fact you’re going to mandate the purchase of insurance and it’s not affordable, then there’s going to have to be some enforcement mechanism that the government uses.   And they may charge people who already don’t have health care fines, or have to take it out of their paychecks.  And that I don’t think is helping those without health insurance.”

Barack Obama, September 20, 2009: “For us to say that you’ve got to take a responsibility to get health insurance is absolutely not a tax increase….The fact that you looked up Merriam’s Dictionary, the definition of tax increase, indicates to me that you’re stretching a little bit right now.”

Barack Obama, September 12, 2008: “I can make a firm pledge: Under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase.  Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.”

Obama 2008 campaign ad: “[Senator] McCain would make you pay income tax on your health insurance benefits – taxing health benefits for the first time ever….Taxing health care instead of fixing it?  We can’t afford John McCain.”

Barack Obama, September 3, 2007: “It’s a plan that will cover every American and cut the cost of a typical family’s premiums by $2,500 a year.”

Barack Obama, July 21, 2008: “What we will do is, we’ll have the [health care] negotiations televised on C-SPAN, so that people can see who is making arguments on behalf of their constituents, and who are making arguments on behalf of the drug companies or the insurance companies.”

Obama 2008 campaign ad: “And that tax credit?  [Senator] McCain’s own website says it would go straight to the insurance companies – not to you.”

The President claimed that Obamacare covers pre-existing conditions like “Romnesia.”  But before making those comments, the President first should have declared his own interest.  Because based on the above, it looks for all the world that President Obama wanted to ram through Obamacare so that his own “Obamnesia” would be covered.