“If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it.” Barack Obama repeatedly promised that when selling the snake oil of ObamaCare. When that bill of goods became law and Americans across the country lost their health insurance plans, Obama’s phony promise became PolitiFact’s 2013 “Lie of the Year.”

Joe Biden, who likewise pledged during his campaign, “If you have private insurance, you can keep it,” is determined to keep proving that it’s a lie.

It’s really for the same reasons, too. The primary cause for people losing their health insurance plans after ObamaCare’s one-party enactment was the onerous requirements of the law. To put it simply, a plan must cover X, Y, and Z or it doesn’t qualify as health insurance. Plans were grandfathered, but if you changed anything, you lost everything.

Donald Trump and a Republican majority in Congress failed to repeal ObamaCare as promised, though Trump did in 2018 authorize short-term health insurance plans that were exempt from some of ObamaCare’s requirements like maternity and pediatric care or mental health services. Millions of young people venturing out on their own for the first time found these 12-month plans attractive because they didn’t want to pay extra for coverage they didn’t need, and they could extend the plan for up to 36 months.

Too bad for you, says Uncle Joe.

Deriding such plans as “junk insurance,” the Biden administration recently issued a regulation limiting such plans to three or maybe four months with no renewal. Why? Because in order to spread rising costs so as to mask them a little better, young and healthy people must be forced into the pool with older and sicker people.

“Here’s a definition of Bidenomics you won’t hear from the White House,” the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board aptly summed up. “Forcing Americans to buy expensive products they don’t want or need. Behold the President’s plan to limit short-term health insurance plans in order to jam more consumers into the heavily subsidized and regulated ObamaCare exchanges.”

The glaring irony is that the people hurt worst are the college graduates trying to pay back their student loans.

Biden made a huge show of trying to “help” them, and after he was blocked by the Supreme Court, he just today issued another scheme to do the same thing — wiping out $39 billion in student loans for more than 800,000 borrowers.

Another legal challenge is almost certain, though Biden will always get to play the part of the guy trying to help those potential voters against Republicans who just want to “take money away.”

Back to health insurance, the results of Biden’s move are predictable: higher premiums for everyone (especially when Inflation Reduction Act subsidies sunset in 2025) and more young people with no health insurance.

If anyone was really interested in fixing healthcare in this country, it would be to expand plans that include Health Savings Accounts (HSAs). Only an estimated 36 million Americans have such plans, but reducing restrictions and raising contribution limits while enrolling millions more would actually make insurance more available and affordable while controlling runaway costs for healthcare services. Seems like a win-win.