WASHINGTON (AP) — It sounded so simple. Too simple, it turns out.
President Barack Obama's early efforts to boil down an intricate health care law so Americans could understand it are coming back to haunt him, leaving a trail of caveats and provisos in place of the pithy claims he once used to sell the law.
In the summer of 2009, Obama laid out his health care agenda in a 55 minute speech to the American Medical Association. It was, his former speech writer Jon Favreau recalls, "one of the longest speeches he ever gave."
Fine as an initial policy speech, Favreau thought, but not a communications strategy.
"My lesson from that was, well, he can't be giving a speech this long and complicated every time he talks about health care," Favreau said.
Indeed, a good sales pitch must be brief, compelling, accurate. But when it comes to a complex product like health insurance, brevity and persuasiveness can take a toll on precision.
For example, Obama had promised, "If you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan, period."
Instead of a period, the statement required an asterisk. It turned out that, yes, some plans would be taken away as an indirect result of the law's tougher standards.
The enrollment experience, Obama said, would be simple: Hop online and comparison-shop "the same way you'd shop for a plane ticket on Kayak or a TV on Amazon."
Instead, as the entire country now knows, October was a website disaster.
