Barney Frank: Obamacare Was A Lie

Former Congressman Barney Frank claims that President Obama lied about Obamacare.

A liberal Democrat and big Obama cheerleader who represented Massachusetts’ 4th Congressional District from 1981 to 2013, Frank of course voted for the Affordable Care Act, which narrowly passed both federal chambers and only at that on a straight party-line vote.

In an interview with The Huffington Post, Frank specifically referenced the “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan” promise that even the left-leaning Politifact deemed the lie of the year. The ex-lawmaker also registered disapproval over the botched Obamcare HealthCare.gov website implementation.

Said Frank about Obamacare:

“The rollout was so bad, and I was appalled — I don’t understand how the president could have sat there and not been checking on that on a weekly basis. But frankly, he should never have said as much as he did, that if you like your current health care plan, you can keep it. That wasn’t true. And you shouldn’t lie to people. And they just lied to people. He should have said, ‘Look, in some cases the health care plans that you’ve got are really inadequate, and in your own interests, we’re going to change them.’ But that’s not what he said.”

Millions of Americans happy (or reasonably satisfied) with their existing coverage who saw their plans cancelled would disagree with Frank that their plans were inadequate. Those affected individuals and families have been forced into new plans and required by government edict to pay extra for coverage they neither want or need based on their age or gender. Along with that have come higher co-pays and deductibles and limited provider networks. When the postponed employer mandate kicks in, millions of workers with job-based coverage will face the same premium-hike-related challenges as will the companies that provide the coverage. With that in mind, the Washington Examiner warns that “As insurance companies begin to propose premiums for 2015, it’s time for Americans to brace themselves for the next round of rate shock in the wake of President Obama’s health care law.”

Obamacare was supposed to lower family health insurance premiums by up to $2,500 a year, according to an additional, unfulfilled promise made by its advocates.

Separately, even those consumers who qualify for taxpayer-funded health insurance subsidies (or think they do in good faith or who in the alternative may be gaming the system) could be hit with a huge IRS bill down the road. Reported the Washington Post, “The government may be paying incorrect subsidies to more than 1 million Americans for their health plans in the new federal insurance marketplace and has been unable so far to fix the errors… The problem means that potentially hundreds of thousands of people are receiving bigger subsidies than they deserve.”

Continued Frank:

“Any smart political adviser would have said, ‘Don’t lie to people, because you’re gonna get caught up in it and it’s gonna have this tsunami that you now have.’ My political motto, very simple. I have always told the truth, and nothing but the truth. But I don’t volunteer the whole truth in every situation.”

According to a new poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 53 percent of the American public have an unfavorable view of Obamcare, which is an eight-percent-increase in disapproval from June 2014.

A Heritage Foundation study suggests that, despite all the hoopla, the increase in those previously uninsured who now have private health insurance has totaled only about 500,000 as of March 31 “because almost all the gains in individual coverage through the Obamacare exchanges were offset by reduced enrollment in employer-sponsored group coverage.“

HealthCare.gov, the federal Obamacare website, has cost about $840 million (including $150 million in cost overruns) so far according to the Government Accountability Office. Notwithstanding the huge price tag on the portal, federal officials have warned that there could be more technical problems, i.e., a “bumpy process,” during the next open enrollment period that begins November 15.

Self-declared truth teller Barney Frank asserts that American consumers were lied to about Obamacare. Do you agree or disagree?

[image credit: U.S. Department of Agriculture]