[T]here is no way to see which doctors and hospitals are included in the plan, and so no way to find out which plan to buy if you want to keep your doctor and hospital.

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If you still think no one can top President Barack Obama’s now infamously deceptive promise, “If you like your health insurance, doctor and hospital, you can keep them,” then you didn’t watch Ezekiel Emanuel’s appearance on Fox News Sunday last weekend.

Emanuel, a Harvard-trained bioethicist and one of the architects of ObamaCare, started out by walking back Obama’s unconditional guarantee.

“The president never said you were going to have unlimited choice of any doctor in the country you want to go to,” he said to host Chris Wallace. “[I]f you want to pay more for an insurance company that covers your doctor, you can do that. This is a matter of choice. We know in all sorts of places you pay more for certain – for a wider range of choices or a wider range of benefits.”

Talk about changing the subject.

No one who heard or read President Obama’s repeated promises thought he was talking about offering more options after ObamaCare. Emanuel implies that everyone knew choices after ObamaCare would be limited. But contrary to Emanuel’s argument, even those limited choices would absolutely include the right to keep what one already had. 

It gets worse for Emanuel’s version of the truth. The president’s entire sales pitch for ObamaCare was precisely that anyone already satisfied with her current health care setup would have, to use Emanuel’s words, the “unlimited choice” to keep it. To drive this point home, Obama often punctuated his line by saying, “Period.” No conditions, no caveats. But now a surrogate goes on a nationally televised show attempting to convince Americans they simply misunderstood arguably the single most important element of the new law. It’s an act of hubris even Obama couldn’t stomach.

Even Emmanuel's twisted formulation is also another false promise. According to Emanuel, ObamaCare’s offer says, “[I]f you want to pay more for an insurance company that covers your doctor, you can do that. This is a matter of choice.” The implication here is that people searching for health insurance on an ObamaCare exchange can easily find which plans include their current doctor and purchase accordingly.

But what if there is not enough transparency to make an informed decision?

“Many exchanges don’t even list the insurance companies on their web sites. Some that do, like California, don’t provide names of doctors or hospitals,” says a report by Watchdog.org.

That’s likely because ObamaCare is primarily focused on controlling costs, not illuminating price or provider differences that let consumers make intelligent decisions.

Consider the “Shop and Compare” tool at Covered California, the state’s ObamaCare exchange. After entering information such as family size, annual income and ZIP code out pop several options in each of the four coverage tiers (i.e., platinum, gold, silver and bronze). My search totaled 31 plans.

Each contains two kinds of information. First, it has a breakdown of the plan’s monthly premium and how much a federal subsidy would reduce it, if applicable. Clicking on the plan’s details produces a laundry list of covered services, including the price or percentage chargeable to the consumer.

That’s it. In other words, there is no way to see which doctors and hospitals are included in the plan, and so no way to find out which plan to buy if you want to keep your doctor and hospital. Even if, as Emanuel puts it, you are willing to pay more.  In addition, because of economic choices made by some insurance companies and some doctors in some states, it is clear that some doctors and some hospitals will be excluded from many of the plans.

Looking at Covered California’s display, it seems clear that exchange operators think the only important decision point for consumers is how much a plan costs. That might be true for some who are buying insurance primarily as a way to comply with the individual mandate. But it is certainly not the only critical information that matters. By leaving out which doctors and hospitals a plan includes, Covered California – and any other exchanges that do the same – gives the lie to the latest promise about ObamaCare.