President Obama appears not to understand car insurance

• Manhattan Buckeye

  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.
• Mr. 300

  

  The telepromptor never lies.
• fan_from_texas

  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.
• Little Danny

  

  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.
• jhay78

  

  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.
• I Wear Pants

  Acme insures all of the rockets I buy from them.
• BoatShoes

  Barry got swindled.
• Prescott

  If he got rear ended wouldn't the other driver's insurance pay for the damage to his car?
• general94

  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.
• dwccrew

  

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

  

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

  

  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?
• I Wear Pants

  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.
• Glory Days

  

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

  
• FairwoodKing

  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.
• QuakerOats

  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.
• jmog

  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.
• CenterBHSFan

  

  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.
• Little Danny

  

  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?
• general94

  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.
• jmog

  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.
• bases_loaded

  

  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.
• BCBulldog

  

  “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.

• Writerbuckeye

  

  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.
• Little Danny

  

  ^^^ 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.