OBAMALIES, OBAMADECEIT, OBAMACARE

Passage of his health care law is his proudest achievement, Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-NY, said she was told by President Barack Hussein Obama, Jr..

But when the second anniversary of Obamacare rolled around last Friday (3/23), the White House hoped you wouldn’t notice.  Why?

Because we’ve learned everything Democrats said about it is false.  Here’s a quick compendium of Obamalies and Obamadeceit on Obamacare.

*His plan "will slow the growth of health care costs for our families, our businesses, and our government," the president told a joint session of Congress in November, 2009.

Obamacare will increase overall spending on health care by $311 billion over the next decade, predicts the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).  It will cost taxpayers nearly twice as much as President Obama said it would, estimates the Congressional Budget Office.

"My plan will cover every American and cut the cost of a typical family’s premium by up to $2,500 a year," Mr. Obama said.

The average cost of a family’s private health insurance premium rose $1,482 last year, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.  When the law goes fully into effect in 2014, the cost of private insurance will be 88 percent higher than it would have been without Obamacare, CMS actuaries predict.

Obamacare is "a huge burden on businesses and employers," says the president of the National Business Group.  It’s having a "crushing impact" on them, small business owners say. The costs it imposes could "totally wipe out" the restaurant industry, said the CEO of a fast food chain.

Obamacare will create four million new jobs, said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Business leaders say it is the chief reason they’re not hiring. CBO estimates Obamacare will destroy 800,000 jobs.

*His plan will improve the quality of care, the president said.   Fifty six percent of doctors surveyed by the Physicians Foundation say the quality of care they can give their patients will diminish because of it.

*If you’re satisfied with your private insurance, "nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have," Mr. Obama said.   CBO estimates Obamacare rules will force private companies to drop health insurance for five million workers.

*If you like your doctor, " you’ll be able to keep your doctor," the president told the American Medical Association in June, 2009.  Forty percent of the doctors in the survey mentioned above said that because of Obamacare, they planned to get out of medicine.

Obamacare rules and a new tax on medical devices will slow medical innovation so much that five million life years will be lost annually by 2025, the Pacific Research Institute estimates. (A life year is an additional year of life obtained by a medical intervention.)

To make his health plan seem less expensive, the president plans to cut spending for Medicare by $507 billion through 2021.  The cuts would put 33 million seniors at risk of losing access to care, Medicare’s chief actuary said.  An additional 8.5 million in the Medicare Advantage program risk losing benefits, he said.

Obamacare imposes huge additional costs on taxpayers — CBO estimates them at $250 billion a year once the program is fully implemented — while making health insurance premiums rise faster; diminishing the quality of care, and clobbering employment.

Worse than all of the above is Obamacare’s assault on liberty.   The president’s edict that religious institutions must provide contraception and abortion drugs in insurance policies violates the freedom of conscience protections in the First Amendment to the Constitution.

The edict will create a medical emergency if the Roman Catholic church — which operates 12 percent of the nation’s hospitals — closes their doors rather than obey an immoral edict.

The individual mandate is unconstitutional, said the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, because requiring Americans to buy health insurance clashes with the limits the Constitution imposes on the power of the federal government.

"Rarely has one law so exemplified the worst of the Leviathan state – grotesque cost, questionable constitutionality and arbitrary bureaucratic coerciveness," said columnist Charles Krauthammer.

It’s no wonder why the White House would like us to overlook this unhappy anniversary.   But the Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments this week on Obamacare.  So we won’t.

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.