In 2009, White House aide Linda Douglass made a remarkable video dismissing the idea that the health care law could force people off of their current insurance policies.
She accused the plan's critics of "disinformation" and cited the president's promises:
Now, for example, here is a clip that they probably won't show you.CBS reports:
THE PRESIDENT: Here is a guarantee that I've made. If you have insurance that you like, then you will be able to keep that insurance. If you've got a doctor that you like, you will be able to keep your doctor. Nobody is trying to change what works in the system. We are trying to change what doesn't work in the system.
LINDA DOUGLASS: And here's another one.
THE PRESIDENT: The public plan I think is an important tool to discipline insurance companies. What we've said is, under our proposal, let's have a system the same way that federal employees do, the same way that members of Congress do where we call it an exchange, but you can call it the marketplace, where essentially you've got a whole bunch of different plans. If you like your plan, and you like your doctor, you won't have to do a thing, you keep your plan, you keep your doctor. If your employer is providing you good health insurance, terrific, we're not going to mess with it.
But people across the country are finding out they're losing their existing insurance plans under Obamacare because requirements in the law, such as prenatal and prescription drug coverage, mean their old plans aren't comprehensive enough.
In California, Kaiser Permanente terminated policies for 160,000 people. In Florida, at least 300,000 people are losing coverage.
Buried in Obamacare regulations from July 2010 is an estimate that because of normal turnover in the individual insurance market, “40 to 67 percent” of customers will not be able to keep their policy. And because many policies will have been changed since the key date, “the percentage of individual market policies losing grandfather status in a given year exceeds the 40 to 67 percent range.”As of this morning, however, the White House website was still making the same claim:
That means the administration knew that more than 40 to 67 percent of those in the individual market would not be able to keep their plans, even if they liked them.
