Real-life trade-offs belie ‘If you like your plan’ claim

It may not be long before Democrats look back on the time Americans simply couldn’t log on to Obamacare’s online exchange as the good ol’ days.

As more people “find out what is in” the law, to recall Nancy Pelosi’s infamous remark, the technical problems are gradually being overshadowed by the law’s other failings. Anecdotes about people getting cancellation notices for their existing policies, or steep premium hikes for the new versions of their plans, are suddenly turning into harder numbers.

NBC News reported this week the Obama administration knew more than three years ago that Obamacare regulations meant 40 percent to 67 percent of the people in the individual insurance market would have to change plans. And yet the president continued through last year’s election to keep promising those who liked their current plans would be able to keep them. Now it’s believed that proportion could even hit 80 percent, NBC reported.

In Georgia, the state insurance agency says about 400,000 people have individual comprehensive insurance plans. Officials expect “a majority” of those people to be forced to change plans, though they say they can’t be more specific than that.

The 40 percent to 67 percent range, applied to Georgia’s market, comes to roughly 160,000 to 260,000 people. At 80 percent, we’re talking about 320,000 folks for whom “If you like your health plan, you will keep your health plan” looks like a false promise.

Maybe the president meant to say, “If you [and Kathleen Sebelius and I] like your health plan, you will keep your health plan.”

Or maybe: “If you like your health plan, and if the insurance company doesn’t increase your premiums or deductibles or tweak your benefits after a particular date my health and human services secretary makes up out of thin air, and if my administration decides that completely unaltered plan is good enough for us — er, you — well, then by golly, you will keep your health plan!”

It’s not just that he on many occasions made a promise he knew to be untrue. Or that he’s now justifying this by more or less telling people their old plans were crap anyway, and they’ll thank him later.

Nor is it only that, without such false promises — and others, such as deficit savings that require one to ignore double-counting and other gimmicks — Obamacare might not have gained even enough Democratic support to become law. Public backlash doomed the party's previous attempts at health reform, such as the 1990s Hillarycare proposal, in large part because they were too intrusive for those who didn't need Washington's, ahem, help.

No, what may be most pertinent is that the shushing of concerns about forced plan changes was the administration’s way of avoiding talk about real-life trade-offs.

When the law was being sold simply as a way to cover more people, without bothering those who had coverage, it was easier for proponents to cast the opposition as cold-hearted bean counters. Now, it’s becoming clear that Obamacare makes some people winners and other people losers — real people, and not only the oft-demonized “rich.”

That picking of winners and losers, with the government distantly and arbitrarily deciding to boost some people’s fortunes at the expense of others, makes for a far less morally clear argument than the president and his supporters have been making.