It’s not what you were sold.

You were told that, if you liked your doctor, you could keep your doctor. But hospitals are laying off people by the thousands.

You were told that, if you liked your health plan, you could keep your health plan. But the Affordable Care Act has, written into the bill in 2010, estimates of how many people would lose it anyway. You were lied to.

And supporters of ObamaCare are now waking up to the realization that, indeed, there is no such thing as a free lunch. Turns out we do have a single-payer system. It’s just that the single payer is us. How is it that conservatives saw this but liberals didn’t? Hmmm.

Mentioned links:

 [FLASHBACK] Obama: If you like your health care plan you can keep your health care plan

Obama Promises To Lower Health Insurance Premiums by $2,500 Per Year

NEARLY 1.5 MILLION LOSE HEALTH INSURANCE DUE TO OBAMACARE

Ben Shapiro’s tweet

Death Panels in Action: Hospitals Suffer Massive Layoffs Thanks to Obamacare

THE KOS KIDS LEARN ABOUT OBAMACARE

Obamacare shock: $12,600 deductible, 40 percent co-pay, zero competition

Obama admin. knew millions could not keep their health insurance

NBC Buries Own Reporter To Hide Obama Lie

A Plan For Replacement

You can listen to “Consider This!†on the Blubrry Network if you like. You can find podcasts and save them to your MyCast list, and come back anytime and listen to the latest episodes.

Similarly, Player.fm allows you to subscribe to podcasts and play all the latest episodes from your browser.

The Stitcher Network is another possibility. Again, you can find podcasts, add them to your favorites, and then either listen to them on the web site, stream them to your smart phone, or to some snazzy GM, Ford, and BMW car. If you do download Stitcher to your phone, please use the promo code “ConsiderThis†to let them know where you heard about it.

Of course, you can always subscribe via iTunes as well. And please leave a comment letting them know how you like it. I really appreciate listener ratings on iTunes, which can also lead to having more listeners, and more ratings! Keep the ball rollin’!

And if you have some other podcatcher or RSS reader, click here to get the direct feed and paste it wherever you need it.

I would love it if you would spread the word about the podcast! Click the Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Digg or LinkedIn icons below (or all of them!) to recommend “Consider This!” to your social media audience.

Show transcript

Yeah, I know I’ve been harping on ObamaCare for quite a while now, but there’s just so much wrong with it. And I’m not speaking of the website. All I’ll say about that is that the oversight that was given to putting that together is the same oversight you’re likely to see on the program itself. How does that make you feel?

No, the big deal is the fact that what you were sold is not what you’re getting. You were given some promises about this that were repeated over and over.

[Audio: ObamaCare keep your doctor, plan]

Well of course no one was saying you’d lose your coverage. Obama couldn’t have sold this particular bill of goods if he’d been honest about it. What we’re getting are millions of Americans whose insurance companies had to—had to—cancel their policies because they didn’t meet ObamaCare’s standards. Yes, you can keep your plan, as long as the government says you can. And then you can’t. Ben Shapiro tweeted, “PolitiFact rated Obama’s ‘If you like your plan, you can keep it’ as ‘half true.’ Which half? ‘If you like it’?â€

Oh, and you can keep your doctor, as long as he doesn’t leave the practice, or get laid off from the hospital. There are links in the show notes to stories about how the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is, for many Americans, not being very protective in this regard.

And the “affordable†part? Not so much, either. First there was the promise.

[Audio: ObamaCare, lower premiums]

And now comes the reality. Supporters of ObamaCare, most notably, are getting acute cases of “sticker shock†as they find out how much their premiums will go up. A writer at the left-wing Daily Kos website was floored that his rates were doubling.

I never felt too good about how this was passed and what it entailed, but I figured if it saved Americans money, I could go along with it.

I don’t know what to think now. This appears, in my experience, to not be a reform for the people.

What am I missing?

Well for starters, you’re missing the reality of basic economics. And, as mentioned in the last episode, Dave Ramsey says that you’re missing basic math skills. What happening is that non-subsidized premiums are skyrocketing, but even if you get the subsidies, the deductibles are huge, reaching 10-12 thousand dollars. Sure the insurance may be affordable, but the health care is not.

But it’s not even so much the broken promises, so much as it is the fact that they knew, from the start of this awful bill, that they couldn’t keep it. Regulations within the bill itself give an estimate that 40 to 67 percent of customers who bought their own insurance will not be able to keep their policy. That’s an estimate right in the bill.

But Obama kept parroting that promise, and the media kept dutifully reporting it. From the “Now They Tell Us†Department, NBC News now reports this rather important bit of information, now that the bill has passed the Congress and the Supreme Court, and has started signing people up. And this startling revelation was worth a whopping 21 seconds on the NBC Nightly News.

Yeah, you can report on how the administration lied to us, but what about the journalistic malpractice in not doing this digging years ago? I’m looking at all of you, including CBS, ABC, CNN, MSNBC and Fox.

Why is it that conservatives saws this coming but liberals didn’t? And why were conservatives who pointed this out called “racists†(and still are)? The truth would have benefited conservatives, liberals and independents. But blind partisanship won the day, and we’ve all been dragged into the same pit.

Indeed, dealing with the pre-existing conditions issue and lowering the cost of insurance are admirable goals. But the ObamaCare way of dealing with this is, overall, not the way to do it. The Republicans have had their proposal up on the web for all to see for years; a plan to fix the specific problems without upending the entire industry and forcing government’s choice on the individual.

Related posts:

1. 
   
2. Episode 50: ObamaCare Proponents Want Exemptions, Capitalism Saving Detroit, and Judge Mandates Same-Sex Marriage in Ohio
   
3. Episode 5: A Closer Look at ObamaCare and the Supreme Court Ruling
   
4. Episode 4: ObamaCare Stands, First Look