Glad That's Over With

Thank God that’s over with. Ever since the rollout of ObamaCare, we have been inundated with story after story, (including mine) of Americans being kicked off of their health plans by the new law, this despite the President’s ironclad campaign assurances about how if we liked our health plans, we would be able to keep them.

The White House has struggled mightily to spin their way out of what seemed to some  a bald-faced lie. First, they denied people were actually losing their coverage. Then they claimed that the people who were losing coverage would find better and even cheaper coverage on the exchanges. When that explanation turned out to be false, they blamed the insurance companies. When that charge was debunked by none other than the Washington Post’s fact checker, it was time for the President himself to offer an explanation. In a speech three days ago, he told a crowd of 200 true believers that what we all heard him say more than 30 times over the past 4 years wasn’t what he said at all. The word IF was added to the sentence in question, as in “IF your insurance company made no changes to your plan after March of 2010, you could keep it.” The trouble with that explanation was that nobody can find any tape of the President ever uttering this new formulation. Even for our famously in-the-tank news media, this was a bridge too far. So, the wise men surrounding the President got together and decided to have the President do what he should have done months ago.

There was the President sitting across from NBC reporter Chuck Todd, a portrait of George Washington hanging forlornly over a fireplace behind them. When asked about the nearly 5 million Americans who will be losing coverage because of Obamacare, President Obama said, “I’m sorry.”

“I am sorry that they are finding themselves in this situation based on assurances they got from me.”

Well, ok then. We can all move on. There’s nothing else to see here. The President is sorry that the empty assurances he employed so brilliantly to get his law passed in the first place didn’t turn out to be…well, true. But isn’t that what really matters, that he’s sorry? I mean, hey, we all make mistakes.

I watched the entire interview. The only thing that was missing was Oprah, and tears. The President could have greatly helped his cause if he could have managed to tear up a bit, to demonstrate the depth of his contrition. But Chuck Todd is no Oprah Winfrey. No tears. In fact, the President looked like someone who would rather have been having a root canal without Novocain, than to be forced to apologize to a lousy 5 million Americans too stupid to know what a great deal they were getting with Obamacare. Seriously?! 5 million people lose their health insurance? 5 million out of 250 million?? How in hell are you supposed to make an omelet without breaking a few eggs?

But, there he was, having a difficult time maintaining eye contact with Chuck, galled beyond human understanding to have been put in such a humiliating position, but there he was saying those magic words, “I’m sorry.”

Glad that’s over with.