Alec Torres:
In what is rapidly becoming the latest liberal trope, left-wing news outlets and commentators have begun telling the world that there actually are no victims of Obamacare. Daring to do the impossible (again), the Left is telling America that all the stories of cancellations, lost plans, premium hikes, and other troubles are all just made up by vicious and deceitful right-wingers in order to defame their beautiful Obamacare.
Nobel laureate Paul Krugman uses his perch at the New York Times to argue that Obamacare is doing just fine, and conservative doomsday predictions won’t come true. Conservatives, knowing this, Krugman writes, are “groping toward a new strategy, one that relies on highlighting examples of the terrible harm Obamacare does. There’s only one problem: they haven’t managed to come up with any real examples.”
At MSNBC, Steve Benen takes up the same line, saying, “Conservative detractors have spent the last several months in a desperate search for ‘Obamacare victims.’ . . . The problem, of course, is that all of these examples, once they’re subjected to even minor scrutiny, have fallen apart — the ‘horror stories’ really aren’t so horrible.”
Or take Kevin Drum at Mother Joneswho says, “I’m beginning to think there’s not actually a single person in America who’s been harmed byObamacare.”
These claims are contradicted by the same news outlets, in some cases, that employ the people making the claims.
For example, if Paul Krugman read the paper he writes for, he would have heard about Mike Horrigan, a lifelong Democrat and a former Obamacare supporter. As the Times wrote in December, Horrigan’s “coverage by a state high-risk insurance program was eliminated, then replaced by a more expensive plan. His wife’s individual plan was canceled for being substandard, then suddenly renewed — also at a higher price.”