On Monday, NBC News reported that at least half of the approximately 14 million Americans with individual insurance are set to have their health plans shut down by insurers under Obamacare. On Wednesday, the story was featured on the front page of some of the nation’s leading newspapers and was the main talking point for Republican lawmakers during the congressional hearing with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.For Republicans, it’s been a long time coming.
“We’ve been warning that these things were going to happen since 2009,” said Kirsten Kukowski, the press secretary for the Republican National Committee.
“There were stories all across the country,” said Brendan Buck, the press secretary for House Speaker John Boehner. “We see stories like that get dismissed — but this was going to happen at some point, it was inevitable.”
For the past few years, the RNC, top conservative think tanks and several influential right-leaning bloggers have been trying to convince Americans that Obama’s claim about being able to keep your plan was wrong. A few news outlets also cautioned against the president’s promise. As early as June 2009, The Associated Press wrote that “no president could guarantee such a pledge.”
But for the most part, the mainstream media failed to aggressively pursue the story, taking Obama’s claim at face value without testing it against the facts. Meanwhile, congressional Republicans, who had given a burst of attention several years ago to the issue that people may lose their plans, moved on to critiquing other aspects of the legislation and the press coverage followed.
“For the mainstream media, this matters to them now because they feel like they were lied to — that’s why it’s caught on,” Kukowski said. “The White House made it out like we were the ones crying wolf, now it turns out they’re the ones who were wrong.”
Nobody who's not hopelessly brainwashed like being handed a bunch of jive.
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