Former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour has some advice that insurance companies might have wished they had a few years ago: "Never pay the cannibals to eat you last."
The insurance industry decided early on to try to help President Barack Obama pass health insurance reform. But as an
Investor's Business Daily editorial noted, any goodwill the industry hoped to attain by joining rather than fighting, as they did in 1994, wasn't long enjoyed.
They "tried to cut a deal," Barbour told Fox News Channel's
"On the Record with Greta Van Susteren" on Monday. " They really got it in the throat."
As soon as things started turning sour with a malfunctioning website and a
media pushback on Obama's repeated promises that people could keep their current insurance,
the president and his team started blaming "bad apple" insurance companies for canceling policies and selling "junk" policies.
"It has been an incompetent exercise that should be an embarrassment to this administration," Barbour said. "But instead of being embarrassed like most people, they're trying to say, 'Don't believe your lying eyes.'"
Van Susteren played a series of quotes from Obama promising that people who liked their health insurance could keep it. She then read a quote he made on Monday explaining that if people had policies they liked when the law was passed in March 2010, and if they have not changed significantly since, they can keep them.
"Now we've got an 'if,'" Van Susteren said.
"And there are going to be more ifs and more ifs and more ifs and more ifs," Barbour responded. "But the American people know a declarative statement when they hear one."
Barbour said the liberal media has allowed Obama to get away with misrepresenting his policies since his election in 2008. Now, he said, even the left is calling his hand, "and they're not used to that."
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