Administration Officials Worried Obama’s Promise that People Could Keep Their Plans Wasn’t Right, and Let Him Make It Anyway

We already know that administration policymakers
were aware that President Obama’s promise that people who like
their plans can keep them under Obamacare was not true, because
estimates built into early regulations indicated that many plans
would lose their grandfathered, protected status.

A
report in today’s Wall Street Journal indicates that
senior White House advisers were also concerned that the promise
could not be fulfilled, but decided to let the president make it
anyway: 

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.

“You try to talk about health care in broad, intelligible points
that cut through, and you inevitably lose some accuracy when you do
that,” the former official said.

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.

So they apparently decided the president should repeatedly make
a promise that wasn’t true, and whose impacts would be felt by
millions of Americans, simply because they hoped that would make it
easier to sell the legislation they wanted to pass.