It was founded on a lie.
You gotta break a few eggs to make a frittata.
The ends justify the means, correct?
No. But the “lie” is true in the large majority of cases.
It would have passed even if he hadn’t made that statement.
Overall I am all for it and believe it was high time we had health care reform here in the United States.
The statement, which is true in the vast majority of the cases, had nothing to do with passing the bill or “founding” it. Was your old plan compliant? If not, you couldn’t keep it. Was your old insurer going out of business? If so, you could hardly keep it, could you? Almost everybody kept their old plans. For a very limited number, they could not keep their plan. Since the statement is true for many more people than it was not, it cannot be said with a straight face to be a lie.
“Faithful to my wife? Why, I’ve never been with another woman!”
“You’ve cheated on her with dozens and dozens of women.”
“One just this morning! But not most women.”
I think a better analogy would be:
After we enact these food safety rules, you can still eat at your favorite restaurant.
Oh, your favorite place closed down? Well, their hamburgers were half asbestos by weight, so we closed them down. There are plenty of non-asbestos burgers around if you want…
Sure, we could analogize it to all sorts of lies that are usually true. “I never murdered anybody. Well, not most people. I mean, I haven’t even met most people.” Or maybe: “I’m unemployed. Sure, I have a paying job, but that’s only 40 hours a week; the other 128 hours a week – the vast majority of the time – I’m just aimless.”
(“Read my lips: No New Taxes. Not absolutely; just compared to what I could do.”)
Whoa there! What’s with the time travel? Or do we have backward causality across time in some other manner?
Due to a ‘lie’ in 2013*, the ACA was passed by Congress and signed by the President in 2009 and 2010?
*“Lie of the year”? Dear PolitEquate: if that was the worst falsehood spoken by a major American political figure in 2013, it was the most honest year in American politics since the rise of Nixon, at least. Sheesh.
The worst of the useless plans weren’t catastrophic - in fact, they were the opposite. They were sold dirt cheap to low wage workers who paid around $25 a month in premiums for individuals or $60 for families
Here are the specifications on one of these plans
http://2013.mypayless.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/Starbridge_-_Group_1629_-_2013_SBC_Level_1_Medical.pdf
People that had these plans often loved them, they were cheap and they offered up $15 doctors visits and discounts on prescriptions.
I would venture to say that most of the people that loved the plan never got sick or they would have quickly discovered that the plan had an annual limit on benefits of $1000 for outpatient, although if you were actually hospitalized your maximum annual benefit went up to 2000 whole dollars. Wow, great insurance
Of course, people who had these plans freaked out when they were discontinued and they had to pay more than 10 times as much for ACA compliant insurance. Most of them had never really used their insurance for anything halfway serious so they never knew how useless their insurance was.
So he could’ve told the truth: “If you like your plan, you can keep it, if I like it too.” Or: “If you like your plan, you can keep it, unless I think you’re ignorant.”
So why would he bother to lie, since he could just sell it on those merits?
Wow, must be shitty to have that as the best response you can come up with. Sorry.
Ouch. That’s super shitty. Worse than I knew.
I can produce any number of analogous lies; they’d all be as shitty as Obama’s lie.
“That gun’s not loaded.” <bang> “Well, not most of the time.”
“I didn’t kill my wife.”
“Yes, you did.”
“But not most days. So that’s, like, a thousand to one!”
“Judge, my client is a minor.”
“No, he’s not.”
“Well, no. But for most of his life, he was.”
“So you lied?”
“I don’t see it that way.”
“You’re fired.”
“What? Why?”
“For being drunk on the job.”
“I’ve never been drunk on the job!”
“YOU’RE DRUNK ON THE JOB RIGHT NOW!”
“Well, yes.”
“You get drunk EVERY Friday afternoon!”
“Oh, like clockwork! But only after three!”
“How is that relevant?”
“Well, that’s only five percent of the time, see.”
“So?”
“So it’s not a lie!”
Yep, there are some more.
Of course; I’ll readily analogize false advertising to false advertising, perjury to perjury, lies to lies. And the excuse that it’s usually true would never be persuasive.
Or, you know, you could say that it’s not much of a lie.
The word No.
Some of them have always realized they need to present somethingof their own. But only a few of them. So it hasn’t happened and isn’t going to.
Bold words, Joe. Bold words indeed. 
Unless the poll standings hold:
At least there’s one respect in which he might not be a total disaster.