Barack Obama’s biggest lie of all (if the number of people deceived is the yardstick) *UPDATED*

If you like the health care plan you have you can keep it.”

If you’re one of the more than 250 million Americans who already have health insurance, you will keep your health insurance.”

If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what.”

Every one of the above statements came directly from Obama’s mouth.  That is, they were not relayed by his press office or parroted through spokespeople.  Obama opened his mouth and there these words were.  These were fundamental promises that Obama made in order to convince Americans not to lynch the lawmakers who engaged in procedural chicanery to pass a monstrous bill that none of them had read.  (Or as Nancy Pelsoi explained, “But we have to pass the [health care ] bill so that you can find out what is in it.“)

Here’s another quotation, from Bob Laszewski, an expert in healthcare policy and marketplace review:

The U.S. individual health insurance market currently totals about 19 million people. Because the Obama administration’s regulations on grandfathering existing plans were so stringent about 85% of those, 16 million, are not grandfathered and must comply with Obamacare at their next renewal. The rules are very complex. For example, if you had an individual plan in March of 2010 when the law was passed and you only increased the deductible from $1,000 to $1,500 in the years since, your plan has lost its grandfather status and it will no longer be available to you when it would have renewed in 2014.

These 16 million people are now receiving letters from their carriers saying they are losing their current coverage and must re-enroll in order to avoid a break in coverage and comply with the new health law’s benefit mandates––the vast majority by January 1. Most of these will be seeing some pretty big rate increases.

For anyone paying attention (i.e., any who was not a member of the liberal elite with his body so contorted by leftist ideology that his brain was pressed deeply into his own inferior orifice), it was inevitable that almost every individual health insurance policy in America would have to be canceled, because almost none of them would have the exquisite balance of mandatory coverages called for by Obamacare (interesting things such as pregnancy care for 90 year old men, etc.).  For the insurers to add these things would (a) result in the cancellation of existing policies by operation of law and (b) inevitably force up the price of existing policies so that they contained things that aren’t insurance, but are maintenance.  Bye-bye, old policies; hello, new price increases.

And again, you don’t need an Ivy League degree to figure these things out.  Indeed, I do believe that an Ivy League degree impairs a person’s ability to figure out simple economic reality.

I’m running to pick up kids now, so I don’t have time to think about this question, let alone research it, so I’ll just ask it:  Can a blatant lie of this magnitude, a fraud on an extraordinary scale, justify impeachment?  (And I know this is theoretical, because no one would have the courage in Washington, even if they had a sizable majority, to impeach the first black president for fraud and deceit.)

UPDATE:  Daniel Henninger touches upon the much broader implications flowing from Obama’s lack of credibility.  As long-time readers know, I’ve been harping on Obama’s dishonesty since his 2008 campaign.  I was a cheerleader for this parade, not a latecomer.

If you want my opinion about Obama’s serial dishonesty, it’s because he’s a malignant narcissist.  Although these people have long-term goals, and long memories when it comes to holding grudges, one significant part of their brain exists only in the present:  Whatever they say is dictated by the needs of the moment.  There are no such things as absolute truths, incontestable facts, or binding promises.  When malignant narcissists open their mouths to speak, their “truth” is what will serve them best at that particular moment.  They’ll pass a lie detector test at that moment because, to them, absolute truth is identical to immediate need.  And when they blatantly lie about a lie (“I didn’t draw a red line; the world drew a red line”), they’ll pass that lie detector test too because their lizard brains are telling them “If you need to say it right now, then it’s the truth.”