It’s hard to keep score on the untruths the public has been told by President Obama. When he was selling ObamaCare to us he told us repeatedly that health care premiums would go down by an average of $2,500 by the end of his first term.
Here are the facts, as reported by Jake Tapper.
“During Obama’s term, between 2009 to 2012, premiums have climbed $2,370 for the average family with an employer-provided plan – a rate faster than the during the previous four years under President George W. Bush, according to Kaiser.
Experts point to rising health care costs as the driver of increased individual spending and higher premiums.
During the 2008 campaign and health care reform debate in 2009, President Obama said repeatedly that his plan would bend the cost curve downward, ultimately saving the average family $2,500 per year.
At a rally in Virginia in June 2008, Obama said: “In an Obama administration, we’ll lower premiums by up to $2,500 for a typical family per year.”
“We’ll do it by investing in disease prevention, not just disease management; by investing in a paperless health care system to reduce administrative costs; and by covering every single American and making sure that they can take their health care with them if they lose their job,” he said at the time. “We’ll also reduce costs for business and their workers by picking up the tab for some of the most expensive illnesses.
“We won’t do all this twenty years from now, or ten years from now,” he said. “We’ll do it by the end of my first term as President of the United States.”
And in a debate with Sen. John McCain in October 2008: “The only thing we’re going to try to do is lower costs so that those cost savings are passed onto you. And we estimate we can cut the average family’s premium by about $2,500 per year,” he said.”
Will you read this in the New York Times? Will you see it reported on any major news network? No and No.
