Fraud in the Inducement -- and President Obama
Bulletin! This just in!!! Even the so-called mainstream media have caught on. Even they, his most loyal acolytes, have begun pounding Jay Carney, the president’s flack, over the rollout of ObamaCare.
It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out that the whole procedure is one great big mess. Even the libs on Saturday Night Live are making fun of it. But hey, Team Obama only had about three years to figure it all out.
The real mystery isn’t why Kathleen Sebelius, whose department is in charge of signing us up for ObamaCare, still has a job. What has me baffled is how she still has her citizenship. If she worked in the real world – the private sector where people are held accountable – she’d be long gone by now. And if she were lucky she might find work in Bangladesh.
But what’s troubling about the media coverage is that it’s been focusing mainly on those “glitches” – the hours and days and weeks it takes to log on to the official ObamaCare Web site. While that’s legitimate news, there’s a bigger story that is getting short shrift in the MSM. And it’s a story about fraud.
Let’s say you make a business deal with someone. But you lie about pertinent facts in the process. This is called “Fraud in the Inducement.” Here’s the definition from a legal dictionary: “the use of deceit or trick to cause someone to act to his/her disadvantage, such as signing an agreement or deeding away real property. The heart of this type of fraud is misleading the other party as to the facts upon which he/she will base his/her decision to act. Example: ‘there will be tax advantages to you if you let me take title to your property,’ or ‘you don't have to read the rest of the contract--it is just routine legal language.’ but actually includes a balloon payment”
Isn’t this pretty much what President Obama did when he pushed through the so-called Affordable Care Act? He looked us in the eye and with a straight face said (to use just one easy example) that under his new plan we could keep our doctors if we wanted to. But millions of Americans can’t. They’re losing their old coverage and being pushed into the ObamaCare “exchanges” -- and a lot of them will have to find new doctors. Surely Mr. Obama knew he wasn’t telling the truth. That’s one of the requirements to prove fraud – that he knew he was misleading us. The alternative is that he wasn’t lying at all, but that he is simply incompetent; that he had no idea what he was actually shoving down our throats. This is a possibility too. But let’s assume he knew what he was saying. Let’s assume he intentionally put a smiley face on his signature program. Why isn’t this “fraud in the inducement”?
He also told us our premiums would go down. For millions of us they’re going up. How is this any different from the example above when one party tells the other: “There will be tax advantages to you if you let me take title to your property.” If that’s a lie then so is the president telling us, “Your premiums won’t go up.” Instead of “tax advantages” he misled us about “premium advantages.”
I wasn’t on the “Repeal ObamaCare” bandwagon. I think the leaders of that movement did Republicans more harm than good. The way you get rid of ObamaCare is by winning elections. I think Ted Cruz and the others made that more difficult for the GOP– but time will tell, as the old saying goes.
But I do know this: If Barack Obama sold any of us a bill of goods based on a pack of lies in the private world of business, he just might find himself trying to explain what happened to a judge.