To defend President Obama’s lie that we could keep our insurance policies and doctors if we liked them, many liberals tried to say that the President simply “misspoke.” But a 2009 video from the White House Health Reform Office shows that the lie was the official White House position, brought to us by none other than journalist-turned-Obama flack Linda Douglass.
In the first week of November, as it became more evident that Obama’s claim was indeed a lie, some liberals rushed out to wave off any claim that Obama was purposefully misleading the country on whether or not we could keep our insurance policies and doctors “if we liked them.” The New York Times, for instance, rushed out to assure readers that Obama just “misspoke.”
But by the second week of November, pressure mounted so much on the President that he went on NBC to offer a half hearted non-apology for lying, undercutting the Times’ claim that he just “misspoke.”
But there doesn’t seem to be any doubt about the “you can keep your policy” lie. It wasn’t just the occasional “misspeak” uttered by an inexact president. It wasn’t just an act of bad phrasing of the effects of Obamacare. In fact, the video from 2009 proves that it was White House policy to promulgate the “you can keep it” lie.
The video from the White House Health Reform Office was posted on August 3, 2009 and prominently featured the President’s claims that Americans could keep their insurance and doctors if they liked them. Not only did this video feature the President’s lies, it was pointed out as a positive truth that was so great that the White House was sure the Republicans wouldn’t tell Americans about this wonderful feature of Obamacare. (The video is archived here in case the White House suddenly deletes the original video.)
The video is hosted by Linda Douglass, one of the dozens of journalists that went to go work for Obama. Douglass was a well-known reporter for ABC and CBS before she threw away all pretense of objectivity to become a flack for team Obama in May of 2009.
Titled “The Truth About Health Care Insurance Reform,” Douglass warned America about all the lies Republicans were telling about Obamacare in the video.
“One of my jobs,” Douglass says, “is to keep track of all the disinformation that’s out there about health insurance reform.”
Douglass went on to disingenuously claim that opponents of Obamacare were engaged in a campaign of “taking things out of context” to “scare people” into thinking Obamacare was a bad policy. Douglass went on to say that the President’s enemies are putting “words and phrases” together to make it seem like he said things “that he really didn’t say.”
“Here’s a clip they probably won’t show you,” Douglass proudly said as an introduction to a video of the President’s July 2009 appearance at an AARP forum where he uttered the lie that Americans could keep their policies.
“Here’s a guarantee that I’ve made, ” Obama said. “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 tryin’ to change what works in the system.”
This video clip was followed by another from an Obama press conference from June 23, 2009 where he repeated the “you can keep it” lie.
This, of course, has all been proven a lie. Millions more Americans every day are losing their current plans whether they liked those plans and wanted to keep them or not.
Lastly, it should be noted that at least as far back as February of 2010, Obama had admitted that millions of Americans would lose their insurance policies under his Obamacare plan. If he knew the truth this late, it is likely he knew from the beginning. His repeated claim to the contrary was not him misspeaking; it was a flat out lie.
Regardless of what his policy would actually do, for four years the President said we could keep our insurance over and over again.