This spring he claimed that California was in the middle of a roaring comeback. Has he ever been here? Read coverage of our Legislature? Read the Census Bureau’s declaration that the Golden State has the worst effective poverty rate of any state?

His blathering led to a harshly funny response from a professor who actually does know California because he lives here, Victor Davis Hanson, writing for National Review Online.

Now Krugman is at it again, suggesting Covered California is doing so well that it’s a confirmation of the glory that is Obamacare. And once again his blathering has inspired lots of sharp responses, this time including from other East Coast folks.

D.C.-based health-policy blogger Robert Laszewski, for example, notes that the Golden State is on track to have far fewer people covered by insurance than it did before Covered California began accepting applications.

“So, let’s summarize:

“–California has 5.3 million uninsured eligible to buy in the exchange with half estimated to be subsidy eligible.

“–California is cancelling another 1 million people of which Covered California has estimated hundreds of thousands will qualify for a subsidy they can only get if they go to Covered California. At least 80% need to act by December 23 to avoid losing their coverage.

“–The state is spending $250 million in federal money to get people signed up––dramatically more than any other state.

“–The Covered California goal is to sign-up 500,000 to 700,000 subsidy eligible people by March 31.

“Why should we be so impressed with Covered California because they have signed-up 80,000 people so far? Or, even that their goal is to sign-up 500,000 to 700,000 of the state’s 6.3 million people––half subsidy eligible––who are uninsured or having their insurance canceled?”

Two very good questions.

And here’s a funny point: California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, can’t think things are going well with the Obamacare rollout in her home state or she wouldn’t have endorsed this bill.

Obamacare and the Orwellian gap between promises and reality

Krugman declaring success for a state health insurance exchange that will lead to fewer Californians having health coverage isn’t the only example of the amazing rhetorical baloney-fest surrounding the Affordable Care Act.

We were told if you like your policy, you can keep it. Then we’re told if the president likes your policy, you can keep it, and if it was canceled, that’s because it was “crappy.”

We were told that it would sharply cut health-care costs for the average family of four. Now as reality demolishes this promise, the MSM rarely even bring it up.

We were told there wouldn’t be de facto “death panels” deciding what medical procedures would be denied to the very sick. Now even the MSM treats this as a given.

I could go on and on in this vein. But the larger point that needs to be made is this is Orwellian manipulation of the American public. The most profound policy change in the United States in decades was imposed by the narrowest of margins only after a sophisticated concert of lies.

And as for the people who compare this with George W. Bush/Iraq/weapons of mass destruction, the ACA Deceptathon is even worse. Bush 43 was a disaster in many ways, but at least he had foreign and U.S. intelligence agencies backing him up on WMDs.

Obama had his own administration telling him in 2010 that “if you like your policy, you can keep it” was just not true. But he kept peddling the lie until the cancellation notices made it impossible to keep asserting.

The pathetic excessive paternalism of this judgment is bad enough; you American idiots don’t know what’s good for you, etc. But objectively speaking, it’s just not true that the people with cancelled plans all had “bad” policies with high deductibles and little coverage. The 160,000 policies that Kaiser Permanente cancelled in California reflected a big range of coverage, including at least 30,000 policies that could never be depicted as “crappy” or “cut-rate.”

ProPublica offers a telling example of such a policy in a story headlined “Loyal Obama Supporters, Canceled by Obamacare”:

“San Francisco architect Lee Hammack says he and his wife, JoEllen Brothers, are cradle Democrats.’ They have donated to the liberal group Organizing for America and worked the phone banks a year ago for President Obama’s re-election.

“Since 1995, Hammack and Brothers have received their health coverage from Kaiser Permanente, where Brothers worked until 2009 as a dietitian and diabetes educator. ‘We’ve both been in very good health all of our lives – exercise, don’t smoke, drink lightly, healthy weight, no health issues, and so on,’ Hammack told me.

“The couple — Lee, 60, and JoEllen, 59 — have been paying $550 a month for their health coverage — a plan that offers solid coverage, not one of the skimpy plans Obama has criticized. But recently, Kaiser informed them the plan would be canceled at the end of the year because it did not meet the requirements of the Affordable Care Act. The couple would need to find another one. The cost would be around double what they pay now, but the benefits would be worse.”

Reporter expected horror story to be false

ProPublica reporter Charles Ornstein, in a bit of unusual but still telling candor, admits he was inclined to doubt the truth of Obamacare horror stories. But he found the Hammacks’ tale credible.

“I tried to find flaws in what Hammack told me. I couldn’t find any.

“—The couple’s existing Kaiser plan was a good one.

“—Their new options were indeed more expensive, and the benefits didn’t seem any better.

“—They do not qualify for premium subsidies because they make more than four times the federal poverty level, though Hammack says not by much. …

Ornstein notes the basics of the Kaiser plan being cancelled vs. the plan Kaiser recommended in its place:

“It carried a $4,000 deductible per person, a $40 copay for doctor visits, a $150 emergency room visit fee and 30 percent coinsurance for hospital stays after the deductible. The out-of-pocket maximum was $5,600.” …

“[The] new Kaiser plans  would cost nearly $1,300 a month for the two of them (more than $15,000 a year).

“And for that higher amount, what would they get? A higher deductible ($4,500), a higher out-of-pocket maximum ($6,350), higher hospital costs (40 percent of the cost) and possibly higher costs for doctor visits and drugs.”

No, Covered California did not offer relief

At this point in stories of this type, defenders of Obamacare will always say, “But under the ACA, they have options. What about the other options?” And if reporters are worth a damn, they will look at the other options — and almost always find out what Ornstein did: Other options are very costly, too.

“When they shopped around and looked for a different plan on California’s new health insurance marketplace, Covered California, the cheapest one was $975, with hefty deductibles and copays.”

Read Ornstein’s entire story for plenty more details about the latest chapter in “Obamacare Lies: The California Edition.” It’s going to end up a really, really long book.