The Obama Tense

Was the President manning up for the shortcomings and downright misses of Obama care yesterday, or was he trying to shift the blame for this debacle onto scapegoats and enemies of his signature legislation? Let's break apart his comments and see if we can shed some light as to who he holds accountable for this experiment, shall we?

"I think everybody understands that I’m not happy about the fact that the rollout has been, you know, wrought with a whole range of problems that I've been deeply concerned about."

Point for manning up, he admits that things aren't going right and states his concern over that. But note the lack of possessiveness in regard to the rollout. 

"The problems of the website have prevented too many Americans from completing the enrollment process, and that’s on us, not on them"

Ok, slight shifting of gears as 'I' has now become 'us', but he's still making a clear distinction that this is his, I mean their fault.

"So bottom line is in just one month, despite all the problems that we’ve seen with the website, more than 500,000 Americans could know the security of health care by January 1st."

Now he's trying to paint the numbers in a better light, despite the 7+ million Americans this is intended to help initially and the 4+ million who got hurt by the law, the fact that we have about 4% of them covered now is deserving of some praise. We could go off for hours about the expenses and misrepresenting of numbers this reflects, but for now let's just accept this as Obama's attempt at a silver lining.

"It’s gotten a lot better over the last few weeks than it was on the first day, but we’re working 24/7 to get it working for the vast majority of Americans in a smooth, consistent way."

Now it's we who are implementing the fixes, it's 'we' when it comes fixing things, but 'the' website is still without a possessor. Not 'my' website or 'our' website, just 'the' website. 

"The other problem that has received a lot of attention concerns Americans who’ve received letters from their insurers that they may be losing the plans they bought in the old individual market"

Again, the problem isn't 'his' or 'our' problem, just 'the' problem. But the letters cancelling plans came from the insurance companies. Avoids saying the insurance companies cancelled the plans, but be backdoors the blame by saying the letters are all on the insurance companies.

"Now, as I indicated earlier, I completely get how upsetting this can be for a lot of Americans, particularly after assurances they heard from me that if they had a plan that they liked they could keep it. And to those Americans, I hear you loud and clear. I said that I would do everything we can to fix this problem. And today I’m offering an idea that will help do it."

Ok, the switching from who is ensuring a fix, but then placating who's fix it is, back to who's idea the fix is with the changing of 'I' to 'we' back to 'I' is getting a little hard to follow. "I said that I would do everything we can"

"And today I’m offering an idea that will help do it... Today we’re going to extend that principle both to people whose plans have changed since the law too effect and to people who bought plans since the law took effect."

Let me be clear, this is my idea, you're welcome, but other people are going to have to make it happen, so if it doesn;t work, then I can blame them on implementing it, but if it does work in placating the people, it was totally my idea.

"State insurance commissioners still have the power to decide what plans can and can’t be sold in their states"

Blame the States if this doesn't work.

"Now, this fix won’t solve every problem for every person, but it’s going to help a lot of people. Doing more will require work with Congress."

Blame Congress if this doesn't work.

"We’re also requiring insurers to extend current plans to inform their customers"

Blame Insurers if this doesn't work.

"If your received one of these letters I’d encourage you to take a look at the marketplace. Even if the website isn’t working as smoothly as it should be for everybody..."

Ok, this line doesn't even make sense. He's trying to put blame on individuals themselves while acknowledging that it may not be possible for those individuals to do anything about it.

"It is important to understand, though, that the old individual market was not working well. And it’s important that we don’t pretend that somehow that’s a place worth going back to."

Call up Websters, the word 'well' is now defined to mean 'the way that Obama wants it to'.

"And that’s why I will not accept proposals that are just another brazen attempt to undermine or repeal the overall law and drag us back into a broken system."

He spent almost a whole day coming up with these fixes, and all you haters who've known for years that this is exactly what would happen don't appreciate the amount of thinking this great man put in to these new never debated laws and regulations that pretty much contradict several provisions that are in the law with the language that it was 'voted' on with. 

I could go on and on for a while, but the bottom line is that Obama's plan is to empower everyone else to try and fix this debacle of a law with not enough time for any of them to actually create and implement a fix is like Coach Obama telling his quarterback to win a game by throwing a 90 yard hail mary pass while only sending one wide receiver deep in a game that you are down by 9 points. You can make it look pretty dramatic, but in the end, there is no realistic way that you are going to fix this thing at this point. The American people are just going to have to keep doing what they always do, persevere despite all the attempts of this government to stop us.