Here’s something that could prove embarrassing for the White House: The Obama administration in a 2009 “fact check” video worked hard to refute specific claims that consumers could lose their private insurance due to Obamacare and said anyone saying so is “twisting” the president’s words.
Obviously, as news of millions of private health care insurance cancellations continues to grab headlines, the 2009 YouTube video would seem to add to the administration’s already damaged credibility on the issue.
In the “fact check” video, Linda Douglass — the communications director for the White House’s Health Reform Office — works hard to refute critics who said certain private health insurance plans would be cancelled, even saying they were were “twisting” the president’s word.
“(N)othing can be farther from the truth,” Douglass says, specifically pointing to a headline on the Drudge Report. “You know the people who always try to scare people whenever you try to bring them health insurance reform are at it again.”
This 2009 White House Video About Obamas Health Care Vow Might Make the President Pretty Uncomfortable Right Now
Image source screen grab.
“(T)hey’re taking sentences and phrases out of context, and they’re cobbling them together to leave a very false impression,” she said, adding that Obama’s critics have been “cherry-picking” his speeches.
The video then tries to reassure the public that any such elimination is untrue, even playing a July 28, 2009 video of Obama saying the following: “Here’s a guarantee that I made: If you have insurance that you like, then you will be able to keep that insurance. If you got a doctor that you like, you will be able to keep your doctor.”
But that’s not all!
An Aug. 4, 2009 post on the official White House blog stated: “For the record, the President has consistently said that if you like your insurance plan, your doctor, or both, you will be able to keep them.”
Contrary to these “fact checks,” millions are indeed being dropped from their private insurance plans, with Obamacare being cited as the main reason.
In fact, the cancellations — and the subsequent consumer outrage — has forced the president to add a disclaimer to his previous “you can keep it” claim.
“Now, if you have or had one of these plans before the Affordable Care Act came into law and you really liked that plan, what we said was you can keep it if it hasn’t changed since the law passed. So we wrote into the Affordable Care Act, you’re grandfathered in on that plan,” Obama said Monday at an Organizing for Action event. “The bottom line is that we are making the insurance market better for everybody and that’s the right thing to do.”
Still, despite the president’s attempt to amend earlier campaign promises, the 2009 “fact checks” may ultimately prove embarrassing for the Obama administration.
And if the above video of Linda Douglass looks familiar, it may be because it was lampooned by none other than Glenn Beck in 2009: