Lie of the Year 2013 Is From Pres. Obama

Do you know which is the 2013 lie of the year? It is no other than this: “If you like your health plan, you can keep it.” That is the statement Pres. Barack Obama promised and repeated over and over again during and after the health care bill’s passage through Congress.

The “lie of the year” was released on Thursday by PolitiFact. “… the promise was impossible to keep… So this fall, as cancellation letters were going out to approximately 4 million Americans, the public realized Obama’s breezy assurances were wrong,” PolitiFact explained. “Boiling down the complicated health care law to a soundbite proved treacherous, even for its promoter-in-chief. Obama and his team made matters worse, suggesting they had been misunderstood all along. The stunning political uproar led to this: a rare presidential apology.”

“Obama’s ideas on health care were first offered as general outlines then grew into specific legislation over the course of his presidency,” the organization noted. “Yet Obama never adjusted his rhetoric to give people a more accurate sense of the law’s real-world repercussions, even as fact-checkers flagged his statements as exaggerated at best. Instead, he fought back against inaccurate attacks with his own oversimplifications, which he repeated even as it became clear his promise was too sweeping.”