On Monday’s “Special Report” on the Fox News Channel, network senior political analyst Brit Hume speculated that President Barack Obama may not have been concerned about the rollout of his signature health care legislation, which has been fraught with problems.
Hume noted all the problems with the law, which includes requirements for insurance coverage that the consumer couldn’t need and some of the failed promises made by Obama himself.
“On ‘The Kelly File’ here on Fox News the other night, Ezekiel Emanuel, brother of Rahm and one of the designers of the Affordable Care Act, explained why so many people are losing their health insurance,” Hume said. “Quote, ‘It does seem to me,’ he said, ‘that you should have a policy that you have to have a minimum amount of care,’ end quote. That minimum, however, includes such things as maternity and pediatric care. Helpful no doubt for young people, especially those with kids. But for older people with no children and no intention of having any, such services are useless as are the higher premiums they entail. But under Obamacare people have to have them. And insurance companies are not allowed to sell policies without them. Thus — the cancellation of hundreds of thousands of existing policies.”
“But what about President Obama’s explicit promise that if you like your insurance you can keep it?” he continued. “He later amended that to the government is not going to make you change plans. But that’s not true either because the government has made many lower cost plans illegal. Emanuel and others argue such plans were a rip-off and people should have better ones. But better in whose opinion? Why the government’s of course. And never mind the president’s repeated promise it would never come to this. A promise the very design of Obamacare made impossible to keep. Maybe the president knew this. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he simply didn’t care.”
“Special Report” anchor Bret Baier asked Hume if it were a possibility Obama may very well have been out of the loop. Hume said that was possible but it would mean a president praised as a person who pays attention to detail was extremely disengaged.
“It’s conceivable to me he could be out of the loop on any one of them,” Hume replied. “But it’s hard to believe he wouldn’t have known about any of them — any of these ones they said he didn’t know about. You know, we’ve been given to believe this is a very bright, very curious man who cares about policy details, grasps without difficulty and asks very good questions. The picture that emerges from the array of things he was not in the loop on was a more disengaged president who is leaving it all to others, in which case it’s imperative you pick good others. It’s questionable whether he has.”