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Lie of the Year: 'If you like your health care plan, you can keep it'
MORE: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...ar-if-you-like-your-health-care-plan-keep-it/
Lie of the Year: 'If you like your health care plan, you can keep it'
Published on Thursday, December 12th, 2013 at 4:44 p.m.
Pants on Fire!
"What we said was, you can keep (your plan) if it hasnt changed since the law passed."
Barack Obama, Monday, November 4th, 2013.
Ruling: Pants on Fire!
We counted dozens of times that President Barack Obama said that if people liked their health plans, they could keep them.
It was a catchy political pitch and a chance to calm nerves about his dramatic and complicated plan to bring historic change to Americas health insurance system.
"If you like your health care plan, you can keep it," President Barack Obama said -- many times -- of his landmark new law.
But the promise was impossible to keep.
So this fall, as cancellation letters were going out to approximately 4 million Americans, the public realized Obamas breezy assurances were wrong.
Boiling down the complicated health care law to a soundbite proved treacherous, even for its promoter-in-chief. Obama and his team made matters worse, suggesting they had been misunderstood all along. The stunning political uproar led to this: a rare presidential apology.
For all of these reasons, PolitiFact has named "If you like your health care plan, you can keep it," the Lie of the Year for 2013. Readers in a separate online poll overwhelmingly agreed with the choice. (PolitiFact first announced its selection on CNN's The Lead with Jake Tapper.)
For four of the past five years, PolitiFacts Lie of the Year has revolved around the health care law, which has been subject to more erroneous attacks than any other piece of legislation PolitiFact has fact-checked.
Obamas ideas on health care were first offered as general outlines then grew into specific legislation over the course of his presidency. Yet Obama never adjusted his rhetoric to give people a more accurate sense of the laws real-world repercussions, even as fact-checkers flagged his statements as exaggerated at best.
Instead, he fought back against inaccurate attacks with his own oversimplifications, which he repeated even as it became clear his promise was too sweeping.
The debate about the health care law rages on, but friends and foes of Obamacare have found one slice of common ground: The presidents "you can keep it" claim has been a real hit to his credibility.
Why the cancellations happened
How did we get to this point?
MORE: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-m...ar-if-you-like-your-health-care-plan-keep-it/