Fact Check on President’s Premium Promises
A little bit ago, Rep. Hinojosa claimed at a House Education and the Workforce Committee hearing that the President’s campaign promise to cut health insurance premiums by $2,500 shouldn’t apply until 2014, because that’s when most of the major provisions of the health care law take effect. But that’s not what was promised during the campaign. Jason Furman – then an Obama campaign adviser, now Deputy Director of the National Economic Council – told the New York Times in July 2008 that “We think we could get to $2,500 in savings by the end of the first term, or be very close to it.”
Less than a month into his Administration, President Obama signed a massive expansion of government-funded health care in the SCHIP bill. He then also signed the $800 billion “stimulus,” and claimed at its signing ceremony that “we have done more in 30 days to advance the cause of health care reform than this country has done in an entire decade.” The President and Democrats can’t simultaneously take credit for “advanc[ing] the cause of health care reform” within weeks of taking office, while claiming that promised premium reductions need not materialize until 2014 because the coverage expansions don’t start until then (a delay which some people might note was done largely to reduce the law’s 10-year costs anyway).
So once again, candidate Obama promised to cut premiums by $2,500 for the average American family – and do so by the end of the President’s first term. A graph showing the Administration’s “progress” on this issue follows below.
