Tuesday, October 23, 2012

The Chart Barack Obama Doesn’t Want You to See

The flyer released by the Obama campaign this morning includes some soothing rhetoric on health care.  It starts out by noting that “Before President Obama took office, the average cost of health care premiums was growing three to four times faster than inflation.”  But the flyer doesn’t mention the rest of the story – the promise Barack Obama made repeatedly that his health plan would CUT premiums by an average of $2,500 per family.  The Obama campaign also promised that that those reductions would occur within Obama’s first term.  But as the below graph shows, while candidate Obama promised premiums would fall by $2,500 on average, premiums have risen by $3,065 since Barack Obama was elected PresidentEarlier this month, the New York Times noted that “in the 2008 campaign, Mr. Obama often told voters that he would lower premiums by $2,500 a year per family ‘by the end of my first term as president.’  It has not happened…”

When even the New York Times admits that the President’s key promise on health care “has not happened,” it’s a very clear sign that Obamacare has failed to deliver.  And not even the Obama campaign’s gauzy brochures can hide that fact.