Cartoon by Michael Ramirez of Investor’s Business Daily.
“Obamacare, meet Hayek,” James Pethokoukis writes at the American Enterprise Institute Website:
The entire of Obama press conference today played out like some Hayekian cautionary tale where a befuddled central planner complains about the complexity of real life. As the president put it: “What we’re also discovering is that insurance is complicated to buy.”
Yup, reality is more complicated on the ground than from 30,000 feet or from White House meeting rooms. But Obama’s discovery has led to no humility. In theory, insurers might be able to extend health insurance policies — ones that might otherwise be canceled — next year for current policyholders, thanks to Obama’s administrative decision today. But maybe only in theory.
Pethokoukis goes on to quote Jim Donelon, president of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, and insurance industry consultant Robert Laszewski, who question what Al Gore would call the president’s risky retroactive scheme, which aims to put a band-aid on the giant tumor caused by his now-infamous repeated “if you like your plan you can keep your plan” lie. Add to the criticism of the insurance industry the flat-out nos from Democrat insurance commissioners Mike Kreidler in Washington state and Jay Bradford in Arkansas on allowing residents to keep their cancelled plans, and the train wreck thunders on, unabated.
Oh, and the president — who seems to be learning new and “unexpected” facts of life on a daily basis — admitted learning something new and novel that the rest of us already understood intuitively:
What a difference a month makes:
Obama 10/1: “…same way you’d shop for a plane ticket on Kayak.” Today: “…never going to be like buying a song on iTunes”
— Josh Lederman (@joshledermanAP) November 14, 2013
As Stacy McCain writes:
It’s an endless tsunami of political pain for Obama nowadays. When your signature issue goes sideways, there’s really nowhere to hide when you’re the Leader of the Free World. Has anyone else noted the irony that ObamaCare now is basically “Bush’s War” circa 2006?
Everyone is now realizing that this massive failure is an electoral albatross for Democrats going into 2014. I’m starting to hear talk from GOP operatives about their campaign plans, and they’re just absolutely loving the political environment that is developing. Scarcely had Obama’s Awful Press Conference From Hell ended than the NRCC‘s rapid response team shot out a Twitchy-style roundup of Twitter reaction, “12 Tweets That Explain What An Unmitigated Disaster Obama’s Press Conference Was,” some of which I’ll just steal.
Stacy’s post is titled, “Shorter Obama: ‘It Sucks to Be Me’”
James Pethokoukis’ post quoted at the top of the page could be shortened to TANSTAFL, which Mr. Obama would have known, had he even read the comic book edition of The Road to Serfdom* that was distributed a pre-Government Motors GM. In other words, today’s Barackian clusterSCOAMF is all yet another reminder that, as GK Chesterton wrote a century ago, “Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.”
Exit quote: “Finding myself in agreement with Howard Dean is surreal. So is watching a president ignore the rule of law with impunity.”
* Of course, that assumes he didn’t already read it not as a warning, but as a how-to guide.
Earlier: All Hail Hanna-Barbera Care!
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