House Democratic whip Steny Hoyer conceded to reporters today that Democrats knew people would not be able to keep their current health care plans under Obamacare and expressed qualified contrition for President Obama’s repeated vows to the contrary.

“We knew that there would be some policies that would not qualify and therefore people would be required to get more extensive coverage,” Hoyer said in response to a question from National Review Online.


Asked by another reporter how repeated statements by Obama to the contrary weren’t “misleading,” Hoyer said, “I don’t think the message was wrong. I think the message was accurate. It was not precise enough . . . [it] should have been caveated with ’assuming you have a policy that in fact does do what the bill is designed to do.’”

Hoyer noted that people losing access to their current plans are mostly in the individual market, which is a small share of all Americans with health insurance. He also argued that requiring those plans to follow new mandates and regulations was important for ensuring those plans included “adequate coverage so the public would not have to be on the hook for serious illnesses or other illnesses.”