The President Bows Down to fake outrage

Esquire

So the president, in the interest of finding a "middle ground" on his health-care that is approximately as real as are the Elvish lands, has decided to allow people to keep their moth-eaten, useless -- but cheap! -- health-care coverage for a year. This, of course, is meant to "head off" a general stampede by the Democratic chickenshit caucus. It is also meant to show that the president is conscious of the concerns of a Republican opposition that will now proceed to demand a delay in the individual mandate, tort reform, and the removal of one of the As in the president's surname.

Obama delivered a message to Americans who have complained about receiving cancellation notices: "I heard you loud and clear." He continued: "Already people who have plans that predate the Affordable Care Act can keep those plans if they haven't changed. That was already in the law. Today we're going to extend that principle both to people whose plans have changed since the law took effect and people who bought plans since the law took effect."

Translation From The Presidential Weaselspeak: OK, keep that lemon of a plan you're so fond of, but please, shut yer gob about it now. Also, pray that you don't need any medical procedure more complicated than a Band Aid for the next year, because that's all you're covered for. But... cheap!

There are two fundamental dynamics at play here. The first is that, by and large, on this issue, the general public has evinced a fairly lethal combination of stupidity, timidity, and laziness. There's more than enough evidence that most people didn't background themselves sufficiently on their options, and that therefore they were easily scared by Big Scary Letters from the insurance companies, and that therefore they decided it was easier to keep their Get-Sick-And-Die plans than shop around for better ones. None of these were helped by the botched website, but they were all very basic to the subsequent panic over If-You-Like-Your-Plan-Keep-It, which is what scared all the Democrats into bailing out.