Ed Morrissey at Hot Air spotlights a rather amusing clip of Barack Obama sounding almost conservative at a townhall for Spanish-language media. Obama was challenged on the affordability part of the Affordable Care Act, and his response was that people should just cancel their cable and cell phones.

)

[T]he minimum here is $315 a month, I think that’s too much for me. That’s the question this gentleman here has… for families living paycheck to paycheck, $316 might be a lot… I guess what I would say is, if you looked at that person’s budget, and you looked at their cable bill, their telephone, their cell phone bill, other things that they’re spending on, it may turn out that it’s just they haven’t prioritized health care.

Most conservatives would probably agree with the president there, and apparently, enough of them did that the White House felt the need to reassert Obama’s inherent liberalism. No no, do’t worry — Obama doesn’t suddenly expect people to exercise personal responsibility!

.@mckaycoppins @EdMorrissey Here's what the video *mysteriously* cuts out from middle of clip. Kind of unlike you, Ed pic.twitter.com/4AQf6GJiZq

— Jesse Lee (@jesseclee44) March 12, 2014

Apparently, Jesse Lee missed the part where Obama actually refuted what the man in question was saying here: that $315 a month was too expensive for him — probably because, you know, he didn’t. And while the point is that a person could exercise some financial responsibility and choose to go without some luxuries that really aren’t necessities, such as cable television, Obama misses a bigger point: it isn’t up to Obama to decide how people spend their money. The man in question has to spend $315 a month on health care because he has no choice. Obamacare makes going without health care illegal, so a person can’t sit down and make that decision on their own. Not only that, but thanks to Obama himself, health care is now more expensive than it was before he enacted the Affordable Care Act. Ed breaks it down:

Let’s take a look at that $300 a month, too. Assuming that we’re talking about a family of four, that would force the family to spend $3,600 a year. While that might be money well spent in the case of catastrophe, it’s a bad investment on several levels otherwise. If both kids break a bone, it might run them $500 each to get treated, or perhaps even a thousand each if they go to an emergency room. If they get the flu, perhaps another $200 each for a doctor visit. Throw in wellness checks for everyone at $250 each, and we’re talking about $3400 in medical care, $200 less than their premiums.

But wait! In most plans of that cost, the family will have to spend thousands of dollars in deductibles first for everything but the wellness checks — so the only benefit will be covering the $1000 those cost. In this example, the family that normally would have spent $3400 out of pocket in that year will now spend $5,800.

The whole reason this is even a question is because the Affordable Care Act is so unaffordable. People can’t afford health care more now than they could before Obamacare, and Obama’s condescending response is to cancel your cable and sign up for Medicaid.

And it all boils down to the fact that Obama doesn’t believe that people should be able to make these decisions for themselves. As he said in the video: that person may not have prioritized health care. And we should be able to choose whether or not we want to do so, even if it is a more irresponsible decision. The government does not exist to save us from our bad choices. If someone chooses to struggle to afford basic necessities because they want to have cable and the new iPhone, that’s their decision to make. Yet in Obama’s America, we’re not allowed to decide for ourselves anymore. He expects people to live miserable, subservient lives where we can’t choose what luxuries we can afford and what things we can go without. And rather chillingly, we’re told that it’s all for our own good — the mantra of socialists and dictators everywhere.