“No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away, no matter what.” –Barack Obama in June 2009

Well, never mind. NBC News now reports that “50 to 75 percent of the 14 million consumers who buy their insurance individually can expect to receive a ‘cancellation’ letter or the equivalent over the next year because their existing policies don’t meet the standards mandated by the new health care law.” Surprise!

The administration, of course, has known this since the law passed and its regulations were written. Those regulations set specific standards for health insurance, and the administration acknowledged (though not publicly) in 2010 that between 40% and 67% of customers would lose their plans. It wasn’t passive knowledge that the market would react a certain way, either; it was writing the rules so that people would lose their policies. And not only are policies being canceled, but many insurers aren’t participating in the ObamaCare exchanges at all. The goal is to crush private insurance.

Yet the president and his NeoCom cadres continued to lie for four more years, “If [you] already have health insurance, you will keep your health insurance.” (Watch the video montage.)

Why do they lie? They don’t, says House Democrat Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD): “I don’t think the message was wrong. I think the message was accurate. It was not precise enough. … [It] should have been caveated with: ‘assuming you have a policy that in fact does do what the bill is designed to do.’” Rep. Sander Levin (D-MI) says those “so-called cancellation notices” are just a means to “help people transition to a new policy.”

Meanwhile, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney blamed insurance companies, saying of course you can’t keep your plan “if your insurer basically threw you off that plan.” He also explained that Americans just aren’t buying the right policies. “It’s correct,” Carney conceded, “that substandard plans that don’t provide minimum services … are no longer allowed because the Affordable Care Act is built on the premise that health care is not a privilege, it’s a right.” The Left thinks it’s your “right” to be forced to buy insurance that pays for everything from contraceptives to mental health, whether or not you need or want it. You don’t know what’s good for you; Obama does. Or as analyst George Will put it, “You’re free to choose if you choose the right thing.”

Also in 2009, Obama said, “My view is that health care reform should be guided by a simple principle: Fix what’s broken and build on what works.” He has now built what’s broken. Indeed, from here forward, Americans of every political stripe who have any issue with health care will tie blame for their discontent like a noose around the necks of Obama and his Democrats.