President Obama spoke to the Congress and the country about health care in a speech Wednesday night. The full text of the speech is available here. I have not witnessed previously any previous forty-eight minutes as crammed packed with lies, falsehoods, and prevarications. If this speech were made under oath it would be almost in its entirety perjurious.

Here are just some examples.

Obama begins by talking about health insurance and those that do not have it. He mentions that "these are middle-class Americans." Yet the ranks of the uninsured is not primarily middle class Americans. One third are not Americans at all. One third are not middle class but those poor enough to be eligible for Medicaid and the children's health insurance plan who do not enroll. 

He continues: "Some can’t get insurance on the job. Others are self-employed, and can’t afford it, since buying insurance on your own costs you three times as much as the coverage you get from your employer." What are we to make of this statement. Buying individual insurance does not cost three times as much as the cost of employer provided insurance. The key to the half-truth here is the you as 'costs you three times as much'. This really is a lie. The employer may not directly charge you for the health insurance the employer is paying for, but you are paying for it in lower wages. The insurance itself does not cost three times as much, in fact if you could buy a policy that provided you the coverage you wanted and allowed you to accept the risks you wanted you could pay substantially less than the employer does.   read more »