“If You Like Your Insurance, You Can Keep It.”
Remember when the President of the United States repeated that promise over and over to the American people? Well quite a few of us less-lofty folks predicted this contrary outcome:
Once provisions of the Affordable Care Act start to kick in during 2014, at least three of every 10 employers will probably stop offering health coverage, a survey released Monday shows.
But that’s not all:
The survey of 1,300 employers says those who are keenly aware of the health-reform measure probably are more likely to consider an alternative to employer-sponsored plans, with 50% to 60% in this group expected to make a change. It also found that for some, it makes more sense to switch.
In some cases, the lost benefit might transition to some other form of compensation (although many of us have also predicted that ObamaCare will not stop, and may accelerate, cost inflation and quality deflation in the medical industry). In the push for government control of healthcare, though, spanning its peculiar procedural maneuvers and bold flight in the face of taxpayer concerns, likely outcomes were downplayed, not thoroughly vetted.
The real question I have here is whether President Obama believed the promise when he made it.
Remember that in the same breath (or paragraph) he was promising that the plan would require insurers to extend coverage for (a) all pre-existing conditions and (b) adult children up to the age of 26.
If “your plan” didn’t include those things, then “your plan” would no longer exist after enactment of Obamacare.
So the “you can keep your plan” promise had absolutely no foundation……
Was President Obama lying, or was he woefully ignorant about how insurance works?
If Obama-The-Destroyer is moving his lips he is lying. I told you this 2+ years ago.
>>Was President Obama lying, or was he woefully ignorant about how insurance works?
>>
That trend started long before healthcare reform. In fact, the exchange portion of the bill was included specifically to address how individuals will buy insurance without coverage through their employer (which may explain why employers more familiar with what the reform does say they are likely to consider alternatives once it’s enacted).
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2010/0320/Health-care-reform-bill-101-What-s-a-health-exchange
Cum hoc (sort of) ergo propter hoc, Justin?
The planned endgame of HusseinCare is dependance on mama govt. They will make it easy for employers to drop their private health care plans funneling the masses to the govt. rationing agencies. When the govt. can appotion healthcare the masses are much easier to control….the ultimate goal of Hussein. Better “hope” there is a “change” in 2012.
btw, here’s McCain suggesting ending employer based health insurance and saying much the same thing as Obama (clearly because he’s secretly a socialist).
http://www.medpagetoday.com/PublicHealthPolicy/Washington-Watch/9294
It’s actually not the same thing, Russ. At all.
Your paraphrasing is also inaccurate. McCain did not suggest “ending employer based health insurance.”
Hey Russ…who the hell liked McCain? Enough RINO’s already. Missing Linc was a repub….look at ’em now. We need a conservative to articulate common sense issues to the voters not more of the same. In RI there is more of the same…how’s that working?
Dan, fair enough, but I was playing on the idea introduced above that Obama was trying to take over healthcare. I agree it’s a silly argument.
Anthony, so we can agree that there’s not much difference between Presidential candidates from the major parties. Also fair enough.
btw, this comment above is incorrect…
http://www.healthreform.gov/newsroom/keeping_the_health_plan_you_have.html
Russ,
Let’s agree McShame ran the WORST presidential campaign this side of Bob Dole. He has lost all touch with reality and further disgraced himself earlier this year by holding hands with the Muslim Brotherhod, I mean rebels, and declaring “these guys are not so bad.”
Obama WANTED the job. He just stinks at it. The rails have been greased for him since childhood, until now.
Russ —
I followed your link. According to that page all plans — even “grandfathered” ones — are required to make the changes relative to pre-existing conditions and adding adult children, eliminate lifetime limits, etc., etc.
If “your plan” doesn’t have these things in it after the effective date, it would not be “grandfathered” under the new law.
Is there a different reading of the info on that page?
Yeah, I stand corrected. Let me note though that those changes are changes to eligibility, not to the benefits so a statement that the plan is the same is correct.
btw, nice article on this in McKinsey Quarterly (registration required)…
“How US health care reform will affect employee benefits”
http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/How_US_health_care_reform_will_affect_employee_benefits_2813
There goes Russ again, spreading lies. Following is from today’s Wall St. Journal article about the McKinsey report: quote/ ObamaCare will lead to a dramatic decline in employer-provided health insurance—with as many as 78 million Americans forced to find other sources of coverage. This disturbing finding is based on my calculations from a survey by McKinsey & Company. The survey, published this week in the McKinsey Quarterly, found that up to 50% of employers say they will definitely or probably pursue alternatives to their current health-insurance plan in the years after the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act takes effect in 2014. An estimated 156 million non-elderly Americans get their coverage at work, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute. Before the health law passed, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that only nine million to 10 million people, or about 7% of employees who currently get health insurance at work, would switch to government-subsidized insurance. But the McKinsey survey of 1,300 employers across industries, geographies and employer sizes found “that reform will provoke a much greater response” and concludes that the health overhaul law will lead to a “radical restructuring” of job-based health coverage. View Full Image turner Getty Images/Stock Illustration RF turner turner Another McKinsey analyst, Alissa Meade, told a meeting of health-insurance executives last November that “something in the range of 80 million to 100 million individuals are going to change coverage categories in the two years” after the insurance mandates take effect in 2014. Many employees who will need to seek another source of coverage will take advantage of the health-insurance subsidies for families making as much as $88,000 a year. This will drive up the cost of ObamaCare. In a study last year, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office, estimated that an… Read more »
Russ —
Well, existing plans are set up and priced based on the characteristics of the members and the items to be covered. If changes to membership or coverage are mandated, then the insurer’s risk changes and they will either have to re-price the plan or, perhaps, shut it down if it becomes financially unsustainable.
So if the gov’t says to an insurer, “Add all these persons to your coverage,” or “Cover a bunch of conditions that were previously excluded,” those mandates have consequences which, if they are dramatic enough, may kill the plan.
Did Obama understand that, or not, do you think?
“If changes to membership or coverage are mandated, then the insurer’s risk changes and they will either have to re-price the plan or, perhaps, shut it down if it becomes financially unsustainable.
So if the gov’t says to an insurer, “Add all these persons to your coverage,” or “Cover a bunch of conditions that were previously excluded,” those mandates have consequences which, if they are dramatic enough, may kill the plan.”
Thank you! Why is this so hard for certain people (our own Congressional delegation, for example) to understand??? Their attitude is, we’ll just order those mean ol’ insurance companies (and, believe me, I’m no fan of Blue Cross) to cover all of this additional stuff but not allow them to raise their premiums. Problem solved!!!
Well, no, problem NOT solved. All of that additional coverage costs money!
“Did Obama understand that, or not, do you think?”
Yes, of course as did the payors, which is why the mandate was included. Those two items are tied.
“Health Plans Propose Guaranteed Coverage for Pre-Existing Conditions and Individual Coverage Mandate”
http://www.ahip.org/content/pressrelease.aspx?docid=25068
And, again, nothing said above changes what I said previously. This was a trend that was going to occur anyway. The ACA just provided an alternative. Go figure, business owners are reluctant to drop or change coverage if it means their employees will be left with no insurance.
Let’s also keep in mind why the survey results were what they were.
So the “problem” with the plan is that it provides an “economically rational” option for businesses and their employees?
Once again, in a typical misdirection tactic, Russ attempts to redefine the problem as an insignificant detail: “provides an ‘economically rational’ option …”
Let’s not forget the real problem, which is large and simple but politically difficult to cure:
1. There is no economically rational way to “socialize”, via government programs, a good or service provided by some people to others.
2. Medical treatment at someone else’s expense not only is not a right, it is a violation of the rights of those who are compelled to provide or pay for it. Every part of the Obamacare bill is unconstitutional.
3. The excessive cost of today’s healthcare is primarily due to government meddling in the market. The Obamacare bill will drastically increase the cost and decrease the quality of care. This was known to the people who drafted it and voted for it; therefore they inserted numerous cosmetic gimmicks into the bill in order to game the CBO analysis procedure and make false claims about it.
4. The specific lie, “you can keep your insurance” was crafted through a complex, indirect plan that undermines private insurance without explicitly banning it. Legislators and bureaucrats have gamed the system to get what they want while maintaining formalistic deniability.
“Once again, in a typical misdirection tactic…”
brassband asked a question. I answered it.
If you’re interested in getting back on topic, what I said was that the trend away from ESI was occurring anyway, with or without reform. The only question was whether that meant millions more uninsured.
(btw, Monique, you already pay for uncompensated care whether you realize it or not. And that costs money!)
Sure, if that meaningless drivel is what you call an “answer”.
The correct answer to brassband’s question (which may have rhetorical) is, “Yes, Obama did understand the effect his plan would have on private insurance. His goal has always been to create a nationalized system under government control, if not outright ownership, paid through taxation and debt. This circuitous, indirect route is considered politically necessary because of widespread opposition to his real plan.”
“Sure, if that meaningless drivel is what you call an ‘answer’.”
Sheesh, I suppose it serves me right for thinking I should respond to the taunts from one of the local brownshirts.
As for the rest of it, it’s total nonsense. Glenn Beckeque delusions. Let’s keep in mind who wrote the bill.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/03/health/policy/03healthcare.html
Let me know if you have anything germane to add.
Russ is hopeless, but I trust that other readers are amused to note that he calls a “brownshirt” someone who wants maximum freedom and limited government in accordance with the US Constitution; whereas we all know that the real brownshirts were minions of a totalitarian government. A government very like the one Obama is trying to create here, and which has common heritage going back over a century with the American Left.
But nonsensical insults are a common retort of the little Lefty terrorist wanna-bes who provide us with so much amusement on this site.
As for whether I have correctly described the real aim of Obamacare, time will tell. Certainly nothing Russ can say will refute it.