remember, one just wanted to kill puppies...
I wasn’t pushed out — staying just “wasn’t an option”kinda like I didn’t get a divorce, staying married just wasn’t an option…
Posted on 12/02/2014 7:42:00 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Well, she may claim to not know who Jonathan Gruber is, but she sure did get a copy of his talking points. Discussing Obamacare with a USA Today reporter, former Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius blamed many of the law’s problems on the fact that Americans lack her sophisticated understanding of insurance:
Still, Sebelius didn’t dispute the point that many Americans don’t fully understand how health insurance and the Affordable Care Act work, including the trade-offs involved in expanding coverage.
“A lot of Americans have no idea what insurance is about,” she said. “I think the financial literacy of a lot of people, particularly people who did not have insurance coverage or whose employers chose their coverage and kind of present it to them, is very low — and that has been a sort of stunning revelation. It’s not because people hid it from folks. It’s because this is a complicated product.”
Sebelius served as insurance commissioner for the state of Kansas before epically botching the roll-out of a federal entitlement program in historic and ostentatious fashion. So, she knows a thing or two, America.
Here’s the thing about Gruber and Sebelius. They decry the stupidity of Americans who have the temerity to express displeasure with their giant, ill-conceived, and iller-implemented social and policy engineering experiment. Americans just don’t understand the trade-offs, they say. Americans just don’t understand all the good stuff they’re getting. Americans just couldn’t be trusted with the truth of what we were passing because we had to force them into what’s best for them. But Americans, as they have shown in poll after poll after poll, have seen through all of this every single step of the way. They’ve had the architects and the bureaucrats pegged from Day One, and the architects and the bureaucrats are none too happy about it.
And here’s one more thing about Gruber and Sebelius. The American people, though wise enough to spot this lemon coming off the lot, are a generous folk. They might, indeed, have warmed to the law a bit if it had been executed comptently, if the interface for exchanges was as elegant and user-friendly as, say, Obama’s campaign website, if disruption had been manageable, managed smartly, and damage minimized, they might have given Gruber and Sebelius and Obamacare yet another chance. (I would have advised against this, but the American people are more generous than I.)
Guess whose job it was to get all of that right? The architects and the bureaucrats— the people who know so much better than we do. When Sebelius says the illiteracy of Americans about complicated insurance was a “stunning revelation,” she’s projecting her own lack of preparation and perception on us. Americans knew it was a complicated product and a complex undertaking and were rightly skeptical of her ability to deliver. She, on the other hand, was stunned to find out that micromanaging an entire country’s health care might not work out as smoothly as she envisioned. She was as stunned as Obama was that this didn’t come off without a hitch (though she may have been stunned a couple weeks earlier than Obama, as she saw her project hurtling inexorably toward IT disaster). They had both told themselves and voters that the federal government could do big things, especially when run by the Cult of Competence. There is no evidence that she or Obama tried very hard or even knew how to try to ensure that it would go well.
They had one job. They didn’t do it. Who’s stupid?
She’s right. Low because the IRS robbed us of much of it. Our finances that is...
I call him “Grubbels”.
HOW MUCH IS FREEREPUBLIC WORTH TO YOU?
If you read FR a lot like me, would it shock you to wake tomorrow and not be able to read it?
I’m talking to the members, but I am also talking to those who have not signed in.
I can access FR from work, but I cannot log in.
I can see the breaking news, see the responses and corrections.
I can see silly posts and zots.
I can see my FRiends talking with each other.
When I get home, I can respond and post and interact.
If you are not a FReeper, you can still donate. Just push the button.
$5.00 is perfectly acceptable.
We’re too stupid to know its not affordable and its not true health insurance. We still face substantial out of pocket costs before we’re covered.
Even Medicaid is a hell of more value than Obamacare!
But Kathleen Sibelius sneers and declaims we’re financially illiterate and incapable of taking care of ourselves. Thanks for the brilliant insight.
I’m financially literate enough that I noticed my out-of-pocket plus premium going from about 5K to about 12K.
RE: I’m financially literate enough that I noticed my out-of-pocket plus premium going from about 5K to about 12K.
According to Obama, folks like you just don’t know how to shop using the Healthcare.gov website.
Really?
I make more money than most.
I’d like to think I’m pretty savvy but, what the hell do I know?
The Government know it all has spoken.
Why doesn’t she have Obamacare, if it’s so damned great?
Is she financially illiterate or intellectually bankrupt, combined a severe case of savante idiocy?
Come January 1 our insurance rates are going up over $3000 for the year. I’m financially literate enough to know that $3000 has to come from somewhere else in our budget.
I truly despise them.
Eff U Katleen
Seems like these WH ‘officials’ have taken the talking point that WE, the American Public, are STOOOOPID.
In fact they are telling us that we are stupid enough times that they really don’t care OR think we are too dumb to notice they are saying we are dumb.
This goes right along with BO saying he heard ‘US’ but in the same breath he said he heard those that didn’t vote.
Now, if he were to have admitted that maybe he ‘lost’ his base because of the ‘actions’ of the Libs and BO, it would have been a purely legitimate statement.
However, by saying it and not expounding, it turned it back to him and himself only (as usual)...
to wit.....”I don’t blame you for sitting at home and not voting, after all, YOU couldn’t vote for me” or along that vein.
Bingo!
Another elitist calling the proletariat stupid.
remember, one just wanted to kill puppies...I wasn’t pushed out — staying just “wasn’t an option”kinda like I didn’t get a divorce, staying married just wasn’t an option…
Oh, by the way, they can also design one helluva website.
Kathleen, although aging rather poorly, has not lost any of her arrogance. She has made herself a hateful figure in a most ungracious fashion. What a sad way to enter into old age.
Not just out-of-pocket premiums, but our deductible and co-pays have gone up as well. If this was a car warranty, they would be basically giving us free oil changes and expect us to pay for everything else up to $10,000. Then, they’d sell us a lemon and expect us to be happy about it because of all the gas money we were saving because we could no longer afford to drive it.
Wasn’t she fired for failure/incompetence/screw-up? Did she not tell Congress: “I would suggest the website has never crashed.”
Most Americans don’t realize that paying more for less is a good thing.
“Just cough up the gold, peasants, and don’t fret over things you can’t possibly understand.”
His Majesty’s Royal tax collector
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.