Obama Obamacare White House Press Corp press conference December 20, 2013, 12 questions that could have been asked, Orwellian thought control ruled, Big brother lies of Obama
“If you like your plan, you can keep it.”…Barack Obama
“millions of Americans are getting or are about to get cancellation letters for their health insurance under Obamacare, say experts, and the Obama administration has known that for at least three years.”…NBC News October 29, 2013
“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”…George Orwell, “1984″
I read through the transcript of the Obama Obamacare White House Press Corp press conference yesterday to the extent that my weakened stomach would allow. It was the usual claptrap of weak questions and Orwellian responses from Obama.
If you can stand it, here is the transcript.
Thanks to Hot Air for providing some real questions that could have been and should have been asked.
“It is rare that the White House press corps asks exactly what I want it to ask, but today’s display, with a few notable exceptions, was truly irresponsible. Not only would critics of Obamacare like to know how Obama proposes to fix it, but I’m sure the law’s liberal champions would appreciate some more information and assurances as well. Real people are losing their real coverage in real life, and the press corps is wasting the bulk of its questions on this pitifully rare opportunity on how the president feels about this rolling calamity. Well, if the president’s mind-numbing self-reflection can cure your kids when they get sick, you’re in luck, America. Otherwise, you’ll have to wait for the next meeting of the White House Encounter Group for a shot at more answers from the man in charge.”
“1. Hey, from where do you derive the legal authority to change large parts of this law passed by Congress? And, if you believe you have the legal justification for it, what’s to stop a future president from simply deciding he won’t enforce large parts of it?
2. How exactly does the hardship exemption work? Do you have a ballpark number for how many Americans might be eligible? Is there an enforcement mechanism? For instance, will the IRS or someone demand to see a cancellation letter and proof a family couldn’t afford a new plan? If they don’t have the proper evidence would they later face any consequences?
3. Does the administration have the authority to exempt people from certain taxes on an ad hoc basis? From where does it derive this power? Are there other taxes from which people could be exempted by the president’s decree?
4. The demographic make-up of the group enrolled in the exchanges is extremely important to making the law work and avoiding a death spiral, or adverse selection. HHS has been extremely stingy with numbers and specifics about those demographics. Do you have them? Are you getting reports or any sense of what the pool looks like? Colorado, for instance, is enrolling large numbers of 45+ citizens. Does that suggest to you that the health of the pools is in danger? And, could we get some assurances from you that the administration will be transparent about these numbers as we move forward?
5. A report today reveals that Teresa Fryer, chief information security officer for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), thought HealthCare.gov was so full of security holes it should be denied its “Authority to Operate” certification but was overridden. Your HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has said she had no knowledge of security concerns yet Fryer has reportedly told Congress members she briefed Sebelius and others. Were you aware of any security concerns before the launch? Are you at all confident Americans who are submitting sensitive information to the site are safe? Will the federal government be transparent about breaches when and if they happen?
Follow up: There have already been two “high-risk” security findings found as the site has been operating over the past months, along with several medium and low-risk findings. Are you kept abreast of these findings? How did the site launch with these security issues unresolved? Should it have been delayed until they were fixed?
6. Today, just hours before we came to this press conference, the HealthCare.gov website was down. It had a note on it referring to the crash as “scheduled maintenance.” Was it scheduled maintenance today or just another crash? And, if it was scheduled maintenance, why was maintenance scheduled just days before the extended deadline for enrollment?
7. Given the high number of cancellation notices that have gone out—estimates are rough, but some think it may be in the millions if you add up data available to us state by state—combined with the persistent problems with the website, isn’t it possible that the net number of insured will actually go up in the new year? As the formerly insured add to the uninsured pool because they cannot afford a new plan, or they can’t get through the process on HealthCare.gov, or take this latest exemption as a reason to put off purchasing altogether, wouldn’t that destroy this law’s raison d’etre? What does it mean if ACA, which was meant to get the uninsured insured, is a net negative in terms of insured Americans in 2014?”
I urge you to read more:
But actually, he thought as he re-adjusted the Ministry of Plenty’s figures, it was not even forgery. It was merely the substitution of one piece of nonsense for another. Most of the material that you were dealing with had no connexion with anything in the real world, not even the kind of connexion that is contained in a direct lie. Statistics were just as much a fantasy in their original version as in their rectified version. A great deal of the time you were expected to make them up out of your head. For example, the Ministry of Plenty’s forecast had estimated the output of boots for the quarter at one-hundred-and-forty-five million pairs. The actual output was given as sixty-two millions. Winston, however, in rewriting the forecast, marked the figure down to fifty-seven millions, so as to allow for the usual claim that the quota had been overfulfilled. In any case, sixty-two millions was no nearer the truth than fifty-seven millions, or than one-hundred-and-forty-five millions. Very likely no boots had been produced at all. Likelier still, nobody knew how many had been produced, much less cared. All one knew was that every quarter astronomical numbers of boots were produced on paper, while perhaps half the population of Oceania went barefoot. And so it was with every class of recorded fact, great or small. Everything faded away into a shadow-world in which, finally, even the date of the year had become uncertain.”…George Orwell, “1984”
Citizen WElls 