I was trash wallowing on Redstate.com, and I saw a link to CBS news claiming that hundreds of thousands of people were being dropped by their insurance companies, because of the Affordable Care Act. I muttered to myself (Hello mutter, hello fahter) that this can't be a link to a news piece. It surely must be an opinion piece by a member of the conservative commentariat. When I went to the link, it was indeed a "straight" news piece, with some extremely deceptive juxtaposition.
The piece is introduced with this line:
The Affordable Care Act was signed by President Obama in 2010 and since then he has repeated one reassuring phrase: "If you like your insurance plan you will keep it. No one will be able to take that away from you. It hasn't happened yet. It won't happen in the future
The introduction proceeds to tell us:
hundreds of thousands of Americans whose policies don't meet the new standards are being told that their health plans are being cancelled.
Then we are taken to Carter Evans warming us about horror stories of people whose policies have been cancelled and have been given options to purchase more expensive plans on the exchanges or be penalized. This is really frightening stuff. It summons up images of death panels and jack booted lizard commandos coming to send us to FEMA run detention camps.
The spin on this is that Obama is a liar when he says we can keep our insurance if we like it. If one actually looks at the whole piece very carefully, and pays attention to the details, it becomes obvious that the "coverage" people are losing is insurance in name only, due to the high deductibles. Medical professionals are interviewed later in the piece who point out that these people will now be getting real coverage. But how many viewers will only glean the first minute of the piece - the equivalent of headline skimming - and have a takeaway that hundreds of thousands of people are being tossed from perfectly good insurance plans.
It has been clear from the beginning that if we didn't have insurance, we would be required to purchase it - the consumer mandate - and if our incomes were low enough, we would get a subsidy to help pay for it. Sham insurance with stratospheric deductibles is much the same as having no insurance at all, but worse. It is nothing more than a corporate scheme to raid our pockets and give little back in return. When these "young invicibles" get bills that they can't pay and that their so called insurance doesn't cover, we all pay through higher taxes and higher premiums.
Thank you "liberal" media once again.