http://dailycaller.com/2010/02/28/obama-demonizes-acme-insurance-for-not-covering-liability-insured-car-video/

“When I was young, just got out of college, I had to buy auto insurance,” the President recounted. “I had a beat-up old car. And I won’t name the name of the insurance company, but there was a company — let’s call it Acme Insurance in Illinois. And I was paying my premiums every month. After about six months I got rear-ended and I called up Acme and said, I’d like to see if I can get my car repaired, and they laughed at me over the phone because really this was set up not to actually provide insurance; what it was set up was to meet the legal requirements. But it really wasn’t serious insurance.

Now, it’s one thing if you’ve got an old beat-up car that you can’t get fixed. It’s another thing if your kid is sick, or you’ve got breast cancer.”

I don't consider this a verbal gaffe, this is a calculated analogy that makes no sense with respect to the government sponsored health insurance debate.

I have my reservations whether his story is even true (politicians puff up fabricated stories all of the time), but either Obama is an ignoramus regarding auto insurance or he isn't but thinks the rest of us are.

We have a clunker that we inherited from my wife's grandfather (1997 Buick Century), all we keep is the minimal state mandated liability, it doesn't make sense to pay collision premiums on a car that is barely worth $2,000. It doesn't take a Harvard graduate to understand you don't insure an asset that isn't as valuable as the premiums you pay.

The telepromptor never lies.

This is pretty bad. Either he doesn't understand something very simple that affects all Americans, or he understands it and is intentionally misusing an analogy to score some cheap political points. Either way, not so good.

Agree with FFT. Considering he has a legal education, I am certain he knows the difference between liability insurance and first party coverage. Unfortunately I think FFT's second option applies here.

Man, I'll never buy insurance from Acme, that's for sure!


"intentional misusing an analogy to score some cheap political points"- Obama's getting pretty good at that.

Acme insures all of the rockets I buy from them.

Barry got swindled.

If he got rear ended wouldn't the other driver's insurance pay for the damage to his car?

He attended C.O.C. (Community Organizer College) apparantly they did not teach this or he was absent that day like he was most of the time he was in the Senate.
If you never worked, or even attempted to be in the private sector, how could you know how it works. I'm sure ACORN would have fixed his car.

Obama is a blatant liar and some idiots will still believe this crap.

We need to get the President and the AFLAC duck together for a meeting of the minds on this whole insurance question.

killdeer wrote: We need to get the President and the AFLAC duck together for a meeting of the minds on this whole insurance question.

A beer summit perhaps?

Terribly stupid analogy. But...

There are people who cannot get health care even though they have insurance for various reasons including the oft cited "pre-existing condition". This is what I think he was talking about. People who have "health insurance" that isn't really health insurance.

I Wear Pants wrote: Acme insures all of the rockets I buy from them.

My health insurance is with Regence Blue Shield. This year they raised my premiums by 64% and my co-pays by 150%. I can't even guess what else they have done. I support Obama 100% in his attempt to bring this bullshit to a close.

fan_from_texas wrote: This is pretty bad. Either he doesn't understand something very simple that affects all Americans, or he understands it and is intentional misusing an analogy to score some cheap political points. Either way, not so good.

The latter .................. sadly.

FairwoodKing wrote: My health insurance is with Regence Blue Shield. This year they raised my premiums by 64% and my co-pays by 150%. I can't even guess what else they have done. I support Obama 100% in his attempt to bring this bullshit to a close.

Unfortunately, the dems plan won't bring down premiums on those of us who already have insurance.

Think about it, they want to add between 15-30 million Americans to basically medicare/medicaid/government insurance. Medicare/Medicaid only pays doctors about 60% of what it costs to really do the work, and currently the doctors/hospitals pass the rest of the cost onto us that have private insurance.

Now, add another 15-30 million people on government insurance that is only paying 60% and those of us with private insurance, our premiums will only go up.

FairwoodKing wrote: My health insurance is with Regence Blue Shield. This year they raised my premiums by 64% and my co-pays by 150%. I can't even guess what else they have done. I support Obama 100% in his attempt to bring this bullshit to a close.

I'm sorry.

Another reason this analogy fails is because Obama paints the picture the requirement of liability insurance is madated by Acme Insurance and other carriers. That is not the case, it is mandated by the Government. Isn't that exactly what they want to do with the Health System?

FairwoodKing wrote: My health insurance is with Regence Blue Shield. This year they raised my premiums by 64% and my co-pays by 150%. I can't even guess what else they have done. I support Obama 100% in his attempt to bring this bullshit to a close.

And Obama's plan will help yours and others in your situation how? Mandating another 30 million people on the insurance rolls who can't pay for it will do nothing but raise the premiums even more for those of us who already have insurance.

general94 wrote:

FairwoodKing wrote: My health insurance is with Regence Blue Shield. This year they raised my premiums by 64% and my co-pays by 150%. I can't even guess what else they have done. I support Obama 100% in his attempt to bring this bullshit to a close.

And Obama's plan will help yours and others in your situation how? Mandating another 30 million people on the insurance rolls who can't pay for it will do nothing but raise the premiums even more for those of us who already have insurance.

Shh, common sense is not allowed on the politics discussion boards.

Kudos to many posters on here, just reading through the thread there was a few times I was getting ready to hit "reply to" and within 2 posts someone got it. It is too bad there isn't a live message board down in the corner of his press conferences and interviews haha.

“When I was young, just got out of college, I had to buy auto insurance,” the President recounted. “I had a beat-up old car. And I won’t name the name of the insurance company, but there was a company — let’s call it Acme Insurance in Illinois. And I was paying my premiums every month. After about six months I got rear-ended and I called up Acme and said, I’d like to see if I can get my car repaired

As usual, Obama is barking up the wrong tree. He goes to the wrong insurance company to get them to pay for his car repair. Now he goes to taxpayers to pay for health care spending monster when unemployment is over 10%. I would say he is an idiot, but I'm sure it is much more nefarious than that.

FairwoodKing wrote: My health insurance is with Regence Blue Shield. This year they raised my premiums by 64% and my co-pays by 150%. I can't even guess what else they have done. I support Obama 100% in his attempt to bring this bullshit to a close.

If Obama gets his way, we will all end up with 'liability-only' health insurance. It may cost less, but it won't cover anything either.

FairwoodKing wrote: My health insurance is with Regence Blue Shield. This year they raised my premiums by 64% and my co-pays by 150%. I can't even guess what else they have done. I support Obama 100% in his attempt to bring this bullshit to a close.

Opening up insurance markets nationally will do more to bring down premiums than ANYTHING being proposed by Obama.

^^^ QFT. It's pretty simple really. If you increase the market to new competition, the prices go down as each company competes with each other in a pricing war to attract new business. If there are only a limited number of companies who provide the service, they can keep the rate high as the consumer has no alternative. To use the auto carrier analology Obama has used, it is like what the Geico's and Progressives of the world has done. Years ago everyone pretty much had Allstate, State Farm, Farmer's or Nationwide. Along came the gekko and those companies had to change their way of doing business to keep up with them.

Not only will this lower the pricing, the companies will have to provide better service and care to do better than the other guy. You want coverage for mental health or pre-exisiting conditions--- somebody will offer to outperform the other guy.