Alex Adrianson muses on the Heritage Foundation’s “Insider Online” blog that President Obama meant to say, “If I like your health plan, you can keep it.”

So, did nobody bother to tell the President that lots of people do in fact like their plans?

… David Hogberg tallied numbers from news reports of health insurance cancellations [in October]; he reported that almost 1.5 million insurance cancellations have hit so far. [Amy Ridenour’s National Center Blog, October 28]

Health insurance industry analyst Robert Laszewski believes that as many as 16 million of the 19 million people covered in the individual health insurance market before October 1 have plans that will not be grandfathered at their next renewal. [Health Care Policy and Marketplace Review, October 17]

If you do the math, of course, you can’t both change the way health insurance works and force nobody to do anything differently. And sure enough, President Obama’s defenders are now claiming that everyone really understood this point all along.

David Henderson isn’t buying:

Imagine how different Obama’s rhetorical flourish would have been had he said: “And folks, the opponents of my plan are trying to scare you. But if you like your health insurance the way it is, and if I like your health insurance the way it is, then you can keep it.” [EconLog, October 29]

Neither is Megan McArdle:

We forget that when millions of people hear the president say that “if you like your insurance, you can keep it” and “premiums will fall by $2,500 for the average family,” they don’t listen with a wry smile. They don’t write it off as understandable hyperbole from a president who is working to pass a great law with a few flaws. They don’t think this speech means “I care about getting the best insurance for as many people as possible.” They think it means “if you like your insurance, you can keep it” and “premiums will fall by $2,500 for the average family.” If they didn’t think it meant that, they might not have supported the law.

That gap matters – not least because there’s a strong risk that when the people outside Expertopia finally figure out what everyone knew all along, they will turn on the people who allowed all that tacit knowledge to stay tacit. That’s what Democrats are now experiencing. It’s kind of surprising, in fact, that not everyone knew this was going to happen. [Bloomberg, October 30]