"You try to talk about health care in broad, intelligible points that cut through, and you inevitably lose some accuracy when you do that”

A former official of the Obama admin discussing how it was more important to have ‘salable’ points to the public than accuracy.

This article in the WSJ is a fascinating look at how direction to achieve ends is formed in this administration. There can be no argument that ‘accuracy’, i.e. truth, reality, and facts are second to making the sale.

WSJ:

As President Barack Obama pushed for a new federal health law in 2009, he made a simple pledge: If you like your insurance plan, you can keep your plan. But behind the scenes, White House officials discussed whether that was a promise they could keep.

When the question arose, Mr. Obama’s advisers decided that the assertion was fair, interviews with more than a dozen people involved in crafting and explaining the president’s health-care plan show.

But at times, there was second-guessing. At one point, aides discussed whether Mr. Obama might use more in-depth discussions, such as media interviews, to explain the nuances of the succinct line in his stump speeches, a former aide said. Officials worried, though, that delving into details such as the small number of people who might lose insurance could be confusing and would clutter the president’s message.

Notice, NUANCE=LIE.

A is A as someone, who has turned out to be a rather accurate observer of human nature and markets in this Obamacare debacle, once wrote.

The former official added that in the midst of a hard-fought political debate “if you like your plan, you can probably keep it” isn’t a salable point.

"With 20/20 hindsight, maybe this should have been parsed more carefully,” said Jim Margolis, a media adviser to Mr. Obama’s campaigns in 2008 and 2012, said of Mr. Obama’s broad promise. But, he added, "The president’s statement seems fair."

Notice, PARSE=LIE

At the time the law was being written, Mr. Obama was trying to make the case for the health-care overhaul in understandable terms, and in an environment in which Republicans were casting it as a “big government” takeover of the health system. Mr. Obama’s aides were focused on telling people that disruption would be minimal and benefits from the law substantial.

Imagine if they had said, “this will create a disaster for some part of 15 million people, maybe most of them, AT A MINIMUM, also greatly expand the burden of Medicaid in those states accepting the 1-2 year of $ from the govt for expansion, and be nearly impossible to administer,secure and introduce, but please pressure your congressman and senator to vote for it, also it will be 1/3 to 3 times more expensive if you have to pay, and we can’t tell you how much your tax credit is if you qualify until later. We don’t know when”

If all this is not a lesson to the public, we deserve all the pain we get.

Imagine if they had started to deduct random amounts of SS withholding and when the time came to retire you got a letter stating that the amount to be sent to you would be determined soon.

One former senior administration official said that as the law was being crafted by the White House and lawmakers, some White House policy advisers objected to the breadth of Mr. Obama’s “keep your plan” promise. They were overruled by political aides, the former official said. The White House said it was unaware of the objections.