Obama demonizes ‘ACME Insurance’ for not covering liability-insured car [video]

Last week’s health care summit produced a veritable video goldmine, but few clips from the bonanza are as puzzling as this anecdote, in which President Obama criticizes a fictional insurance company for not providing comprehensive collision protection he probably didn’t pay for:

“When I was young, just got out of college, I had to buy auto insurance,” the President recounted. “I had a beat-up old car. And I won’t name the name of the insurance company, but there was a company — let’s call it Acme Insurance in Illinois. And I was paying my premiums every month. After about six months I got rear-ended and I called up Acme and said, I’d like to see if I can get my car repaired, and they laughed at me over the phone because really this was set up not to actually provide insurance; what it was set up was to meet the legal requirements. But it really wasn’t serious insurance.

Now, it’s one thing if you’ve got an old beat-up car that you can’t get fixed. It’s another thing if your kid is sick, or you’ve got breast cancer.”

Powerline sums up some other possible explanations:

I can think of three possible explanations for what happened to Obama, assuming his story wasn’t a complete fabrication. First, he made a rational decision not to buy collision coverage on his vehicle. But in that case, he can hardly complain if his insurance company told him they didn’t cover the damage to his car when he was rear-ended. Second, he could have bought auto insurance from a company that went bankrupt. But in that case, he wouldn’t be out of luck, his claim would be picked up by a state fund. Third, he could have bought a high-deductible policy and the damage from being rear-ended was within his deductible. In general, buying high-deductible insurance is a good idea. If either 1) or 3) is correct, is Obama telling us that he is such a dope that the government should re-write his contracts so he can get a benefit he didn’t pay for?

[via theblogprof]