President Obama should have NEVER apologized for his "if you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it" promise, and that's because he never actually lied about that:
President Obama has been getting a lot of grief in the last few weeks over his pledge that with the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in place, people would be able to keep their insurance if they like it. The media have been filled with stories about people across the country who are having their insurance policies terminated, ostensibly because they did not meet the requirements of the ACA. While this has led many to say that Obama was lying, there is much less here than meets the eye.
First, it is important to note that the ACA grand-fathered all the individual policies that were in place at the time the law was enacted. This means that the plans in effect at the time that President Obama was pushing the bill could still be offered even if they did not meet all the standards laid out in the ACA.
The plans being terminated because they don't meet the minimal standards were all plans that insurers introduced after the passage of the ACA. Insurers introduced these plans knowing that they would not meet the standards that would come into effect in 2014. Insurers may not have informed their clients at the time they sold these plans that they would not be available after 2014 because they had designed a plan that did not comply with the ACA.
(emphasis mine)
In short, the whole reason there's a political controversy over Obama's "if you like it, you can keep it" promise is because health insurance companies issued policies that did not meet the standards of the ACA after the ACA was signed into law as part of a larger attempt to sabotage the ACA.
It's not just health insurance companies that are sabotaging the ACA.
Republican politicians on Capitol Hill and in dozens of states have actively worked against the ACA on many levels. The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives has voted dozens of times to repeal the ACA, and Republican governors and state legislators in dozens of states have refused to take federal money to expand Medicaid, refused to set up state health insurance exchanges (in states that do have state exchanges, many of them are working much more smoothly than the federal exchange is), and have even publicly threatened to arrest federal officials for implementing the ACA.
The mainstream media has also helped to sabotage the ACA. FOX News and right-wing talk radio blowhards like Rush Limbaugh are obviously the worst offenders when it comes to spreading lies about the ACA, however, even media outlets that were once respected for providing quality journalism, like CBS News and The New York Times, have jumped on the anti-ACA bandwagon. Also, we don't have a mainstream media in this country that is a natural adversary to every elected official and candidate for public office, as well as every other type of political figure, like our country's Founding Fathers intended it to be. Instead, we have a mainstream media in this country that does nothing but help far-right Republicans like Chris Christie and Scott Walker get elected.
Now, even Democrats in Congress have joined the anti-ACA bandwagon. From what I've heard, there's a possibility some Democrats in the House may vote for a bill sponsored by U.S. Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) that is basically a "repeal Obamacare" bill in sheep's clothing.
The main point that I'm trying to make here is that President Obama caved to the Republicans, the health insurance companies, and the mainstream media when he apologized for what many people have interpreted as breaking his "if you like your health insurance plan, you can keep it" promise when, actually, he didn't break that promise because the health insurance companies issued substandard policies after the ACA was signed into law as part of a larger attempt to sabotage the ACA.
I am sick and tired of gutless Democrats caving to the right-wingers and the mainstream media all the time. I am currently writing a progressive manifesto where I will share my thoughts on how to make the Democratic Party more progressive and make America a better place to live, and I intend to publish it to my Scribd account sometime in the next couple of weeks.