Politicians of all stripes routinely spin facts and logic so fast they make the rest of us shake our heads in bemused wonder. Then there are those rare occasions when a prominent politician says something that clearly deserves a place in the Political Chutzpah Hall of Fame. President Obama earned a place in the pantheon with his Saturday radio address.
“It’s smoke and mirrors,” he said. “It’s bogus, and it’s all too familiar. Every time we get close to passing reform, the insurance companies produce these phony studies as a prescription and say take one of these and call us in a decade. Well not this time. The fact is the insurance industry is making this last-ditch effort to stop reform even as costs continue to rise and our health care dollars continue to be poured into their profits and bonuses and administrative costs that do nothing to make us healthy, that often actually go toward trying to figure out how to avoid covering people. And they are earning these profits and bonuses while enjoying a privileged exception from our anti-trust laws, a matter that Congress is rightfully reviewing.”
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