November 21, 2013

Pelosi: I Never Met ‘Anybody Who Liked His or Her Plan’

Asked whether she needed to apologize to the formerly insured who have lost their health insurance plans, former House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said, “Did I ever tell my constituents that if they liked their plan they could keep it? I would have if I’d ever met anybody who liked his or her plan. But that was not my experience.” Pelosi, whose net worth – combined with her husband’s – is estimated between $35 and $180 million, never “met anybody who liked his or her plan”? Her out-of-touch comment reminds one of then-New Yorker film critic, liberal Pauline Kael. In 1972, after Republican Richard Nixon crushed Democrat George McGovern, 49 states to one, a shell-shocked Kael said, “Nobody I know voted for Nixon.”

Asked whether she needed to apologize to the formerly insured who have lost their health insurance plans, former House Speaker Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said, “Did I ever tell my constituents that if they liked their plan they could keep it? I would have if I’d ever met anybody who liked his or her plan. But that was not my experience.”

Pelosi, whose net worth – combined with her husband’s – is estimated between $35 and $180 million, never “met anybody who liked his or her plan”? Her out-of-touch comment reminds one of then-New Yorker film critic, liberal Pauline Kael. In 1972, after Republican Richard Nixon crushed Democrat George McGovern, 49 states to one, a shell-shocked Kael said, “Nobody I know voted for Nixon.”

Pelosi’s world is that of rich people and government workers whose health care plans are better than those of their counterparts in the private sector. How would she know that, according to a pre-Obamacare ABC News-Kaiser Family Foundation-USA Today survey, “88 percent of the insured rate their coverage as excellent or good” and “89 percent are satisfied with the quality of care they receive”?

Ms. Pelosi, meet Kristen Powers, Fox News analyst and a Democratic strategist. After her policy was canceled and her premiums doubled, Powers said: “My blood pressure goes up every time they say that they’re protecting us from substandard health insurance plans, because there is nothing to support what they’re saying. … I am losing my health insurance. … If I want to keep the same health insurance, it’s going to cost twice as much. There’s nothing substandard about my plan.

"All of the things they say that are not in my plan are in my plan, all of the things they have listed. There’s no explanation for the doubling of my premiums other than the fact that it’s subsidizing other people. They need to be honest about that, that that’s the reason they don’t want to change it.

"It’s because they’re basically taking the people who are responsible enough to get health insurance in the individual market and asking them to subsidize other people. So they’re taking young healthy people and asking them to subsidize other people.” Well, “shared sacrifice” – that’s the whole point behind Obamacare, isn’t it?

Democrats flat-out despise insurance companies. They’ve been called “immoral villains” (Pelosi), “deceptive and dishonest” (President Barack Obama), “fly-by-night” (former Gov. and DNC chair Howard Dean), “rapacious” (Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va.) and “greedy” (Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev.).

Are health insurance companies any greedier than any other for-profit sector of the economy? In 2009, before Obamacare, profit margins for the network and communications equipment industry averaged 20.4 percent; Internet services and retailing was 19.4 percent; pharmaceuticals averaged 19.3 percent; railroads 12.6 percent; gas and electric utilities 8.7 percent; and food consumer products 6.7 percent. Health insurance and managed care companies? They averaged 2.2 percent.

Follow the money.

Of the political contributions by the, say, communications/electronic industry in 2012, $94.6 million went to Democrats, and $55.7 million to Republicans. But from 1990 to the current 2014 cycle, according to OpenSecrets.org, insurance companies gave 63 percent of their political donations to Republicans versus 37 percent to Democrats.

Obamacare is now more unpopular than ever, in large part because of broken promises. At the televised health care summit in February 2010, just before passage of Obamacare, then-Minority Whip Eric Cantor predicted millions would lose their coverage. He had the following exchange with the President:

Cantor: I don’t think you can answer the question in the positive to say that people will be able to maintain their coverage, people will be able to see the doctors they want, in the kind of bill that you are proposing.

Obama: “The 8 to 9 million people that you refer to, that might have to change their coverage … would find the deal in the exchange better.” Yet Obama still publicly assured people that “no one” would take away their policy, if they liked it.

Finally, Obama still gets a pass on a tale he repeatedly told to sell Obamacare. How many times did we hear that Obama’s mom, dying of cancer, had to fight with her carriers to pay her medical and hospital bills? The story, crucial to humanizing the fight, turns out to be bogus. According to a book by an ex-New York Times reporter, the sole dispute was between Obama’s mother and an insurance company over a disability policy his mother had taken out. The insurance company said she’d had a pre-existing condition when she applied for that policy. But her medical bills – and this is what Obama insisted they fought over – were in fact paid by her health care insurer, directly and without dispute.

Yes, our health care system “suffers.” But it suffers from a lack of free markets. The antidote is more competition – reducing barriers to entry, health savings accounts, giving individuals the same health care tax breaks as given to business, competition across state lines, and for tough cases, charity.

COPYRIGHT 2013 LAURENCE A. ELDER
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM

Who We Are

The Patriot Post is a highly acclaimed weekday digest of news analysis, policy and opinion written from the heartland — as opposed to the MSM’s ubiquitous Beltway echo chambers — for grassroots leaders nationwide. More

What We Offer

On the Web

We provide solid conservative perspective on the most important issues, including analysis, opinion columns, headline summaries, memes, cartoons and much more.

Via Email

Choose our full-length Digest or our quick-reading Snapshot for a summary of important news. We also offer Cartoons & Memes on Monday and Alexander’s column on Wednesday.

Our Mission

The Patriot Post is steadfast in our mission to extend the endowment of Liberty to the next generation by advocating for individual rights and responsibilities, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. We are a rock-solid conservative touchstone for the expanding ranks of grassroots Americans Patriots from all walks of life. Our mission and operation budgets are not financed by any political or special interest groups, and to protect our editorial integrity, we accept no advertising. We are sustained solely by you. Please support The Patriot Fund today!


The Patriot Post and Patriot Foundation Trust, in keeping with our Military Mission of Service to our uniformed service members and veterans, are proud to support and promote the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, both the Honoring the Sacrifice and Warrior Freedom Service Dogs aiding wounded veterans, the National Veterans Entrepreneurship Program, the Folds of Honor outreach, and Officer Christian Fellowship, the Air University Foundation, and Naval War College Foundation, and the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13)

★ PUBLIUS ★

“Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!” —George Washington

Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray also for the protection of our Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Please lift up your Patriot team and our mission to support and defend our Republic's Founding Principle of Liberty, that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

The Patriot Post is protected speech, as enumerated in the First Amendment and enforced by the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with the endowed and unalienable Rights of All Mankind.

Copyright © 2024 The Patriot Post. All Rights Reserved.

The Patriot Post does not support Internet Explorer. We recommend installing the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.