August 10, 2009

Healthcare

You Don't Get to Decide About Keeping Your Current Healthcare Coverage, Unless You are One with Your Employer

Carroll Andrew Morse

A number of analysts have begun to note that, under current Democratic healthcare proposals, President Barack Obama's promise that "if you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan" is not reality-based. Under the Democratic plans, "you" don't get any choice in whether to keep your existing coverage if your employer decides to discontinue coverage under the new rules.

If the President and Congressional Democrats were serious about helping "you" keep the coverage you have now, they would support two basic reforms…

  • They would give individuals who purchase health insurance directly from an insurance company the same tax-breaks that are given to corporate-provided health plans. Presently, corporate-purchased health plans qualify for tax-breaks that individually-purchased plans do not; the proposals favored by the President continue this disparity.
  • They would end the disparate legal treatment of insurance-company coverage decisions that is an unintended consequence of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974. ERISA has driven insurers towards offering their products only through employers, because a wide-range protections from lawsuits over improper coverage decisions is granted to employer-based plans, but not to individually-purchased ones. The effect of ERISA is an important underdiscussed factor in creating the unsatisfying health insurance system we have today.
These reforms are also worth supporting out of a basic sense of fairness, as well as prime examples of how the distortions in the current system have not been created by out-of-control market forces, but by strange government regulation. But I suspect that Democrats aren't interested in them, because they don't help push us towards a totally government-run system.

p.s. Does the fact that this post illustrates that the claim made in today's USA Today by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer...

[The proposals passed by Committees in the House] will allow every American who likes his or her current plan to keep it.
…requires some very heavy qualification mean that I am un-American for posting it?

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If I may reprise a comment I left on another thread, as it is relevant here:

In law misrepresenting a material fact, or omitting a material fact, are elements of fraud.

President Obama and his Democrat minions are running around telling people that they'll be able to keep their present private insurance. Of course they realize that the average listener will surmise or assume that there is no expiration date, and that the "status quo" will remain, with a "public option" merely serving to help those who fall through the cracks.

What they're not telling people - a very material fact - is that after 2013 (i.e., after Obama will not need to face reelection) private insurers will be prohibited from accepting new customers. So anyone who changes jobs or wants a different insurer will be forced into the "public option." And of course before long private insurance will disappear.

So we should not be surprised that Obama and his fellow fascists are engaging in fraud - are lying. (Lest you think that I'm using the term "fascist" gratuitously, read Jonah Goldberg's book "Liberal Fascism" and then decide for yourself).

Pat Crowley is but a minnow in this Democrat / progressive ocean of fascist fish, though he may think he's a shark.

SEIU? Now there's some fascist sharks.

Oops. I mentioned something a"fishy" about Obamacare / KatrinaKare. I'd better self-report myself (again) to the White House.

Posted by: Tom W at August 10, 2009 2:40 PM

OBAMA IS LYING!
PEOPLE WILL BE DYING!

Posted by: Mike Cappelli at August 10, 2009 4:34 PM

"mean that I am un-American for posting it?"

If someone drops a dime on the White House Snitch Line, please be sure to include the information that Andrew is a contributor to the blog Anchor Rising.

That's A n c h o r R i s i n g.

Posted by: Monique at August 10, 2009 5:15 PM

The White House Snitch Line...just another urban legend.

Posted by: rhody at August 10, 2009 11:29 PM

Rhody, if Bush or a Republican president did exactly the same thing, you'd call it something a lot stronger than that.

Posted by: Monique at August 10, 2009 11:57 PM
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