Tuesday, July 21, 2009

YOU WILL NOT BE ABLE TO KEEP YOUR CURRENT HEALTH CARE PLAN:READ BELOW

One by one, President Obama’s health-care promises are being exposed by the details of the actual legislation: Costs will explode, not fall; taxes will have to soar to pay for it; and now we are learning that you won’t be able to “keep your health-care plan” either.
The reality is that the House health bill, which the Administration praised to the rafters, will force drastic changes in almost all insurance coverage, including the employer plans that currently work best. About 177 million people—or 62% of those under age 65—get insurance today through their jobs, and while rising costs are a problem, according to every survey most employees are happy with the coverage. A major reason for this relative success is a 1974 federal law known by the acronym Erisa, or the Employee Retirement Income Security Act.
Erisa allows employers that self-insure—that is, those large enough to build their own risk pools and pay benefits directly—to offer uniform plans across state lines. This lets thousands of businesses avoid, for the most part, the costly federal and state regulations on covered treatments, pricing, rate setting and so on. It also gives them flexibility to design insurance to recruit and retain workers in a competitive labor market. Roughly 75% of employer-based coverage is governed by Erisa’s “freedom of purchase” rules.
Goodbye to all that. The House bill says that after a five-year grace period all Erisa insurance offerings will have to win government approval—both by the Department of Labor and a new “health choices commissioner” who will set federal standards for what is an acceptable health plan. This commissar—er, commissioner—can fine employers that don’t comply and even has “suspension of enrollment” powers for plans that he or she has vetoed, until “satisfied that the basis for such determination has been corrected and is not likely to recur.”
In other words, the insurance coverage of 132 million people—the product of enormously complex business and health-care decisions—will now be subject to bureaucratic nanomanagement. If employers don’t meet some still-to-be-defined minimum package, they’ll have to renegotiate thousands of contracts nationwide to Washington’s specifications. The political incentives will of course demand an ever-more generous “minimum” benefit and less cost-sharing, much as many states have driven up prices in the individual insurance market with mandates. Erisa’s pluralistic structure will gradually constrict toward a single national standard.
Yet a computer programming firm, say, and a grocery store chain have very different insurance needs, and in any case may not be able to afford the same kind and level of benefits. Innovation in insurance products will also be subject to political tampering. Likely casualties include the wellness initiatives that give workers financial incentives to take more responsibility for their own health, such as Safeway’s. Some politicians will claim that’s unfair. High-deductible plans with health savings accounts are also out of political favor, therefore certain to go overboard. If you have one of those and like it, too bad.
The new Erisa regime will be especially difficult to meet for businesses that operate with very slim profit margins or have large numbers of part-time or seasonal workers. They may simply “cash out” and surrender 8% of their payroll under the employer-mandate tax. A new analysis by the Lewin Group, prepared for the Heritage Foundation, finds that some 88.1 million people will be shifted out of private employer health insurance under the House bill. If those people preferred their prior plan, well, too bad again.
The largest employers—though not all—may clear the minimum bar, at least at first. But in addition to the “health choices” administrative burden, the cost of labor will rise because the House guts another key section of Erisa. Currently, lawsuits about employee benefits are barred under the law, allowing large employers to avoid the state tort lotteries in disputes over coverage. No longer. As a gratuity to the trial bar, Democrats will now subject businesses to these liabilities in the name of health “reform.”
So when Mr. Obama says that “If you like your health-care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health-care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what,” he’s wrong. Period. What he’s not telling the American people is that the government will so dramatically change the rules of the insurance market that employers will find it impossible to maintain their current coverage, and many will drop it altogether. The more we inspect the House bill, the more it looks to be one of the worst pieces of legislation ever introduced in Congress.

Please liberals, please explain this...these are actual facts, not the bumper sticker slogans and meaningless words of empty suit Obama...the actual meat and potatoes that goes into what actually happens...

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

Source?

jhbowden said...

The broader situation is worse.

One, Obama & his socialist posse are going to combine the worst elements of capitalism and socialism by creating an oligopoly of government approved plans. The government is going to help the big guys bankrupt the little guys through various means, such as preventing smaller providers from taking new customers.

Secondly, Obama and his posse of socialist Neanderthals are going to make it illegal for the government approved plans to price premiums on the basis of risk factors such as age or pre-existing conditions. They call this increasing competition. This will result in overprovision for the healthy and and underprovision for the sick, since the plans with greater specialization will lose money. For instance, I might pick the plan with lower deductibles until I get a catastrophic illness, and then switch to the specialized plan after the fact. Those who specialize are going to find themselves quickly losing money. As a result, instead of the status quo-- a lot of specialists and few general practitioners-- we're going to look more like Europe and Canada, where almost everyone is a general practitioner and no one is a specialist. This is why they have queues and lower survival rates for serious illness.

jhbowden said...

Let's not forget that Medicare right now is financially insolvent. These clowns are going to bankrupt the Republic.

Anonymous said...

Psst, Bowden -- we're already bankrupt thanks to unnecessary wars and absurd tax cuts for the top 0.01%.

The Game said...

just to refute one of your stupid comments:

In 1980, when the top income tax rate was 70%, the richest 1% paid only 19% of all income taxes, not they pay 35%

In 2000 the top 25% of income earners paid 84% of all federal income tax, now its 86%...

God are you stupid anon...here are some more facts to make you look even more dumb

Overall, we find that America's lowest-earning one-fifth of households received roughly $8.21 in government spending for each dollar of taxes paid in 2004. Households with middle-incomes received $1.30 per tax dollar, and America's highest-earning households received $0.41. Government spending targeted at the lowest-earning 60 percent of U.S. households is larger than what they paid in federal, state and local taxes. In 2004, between $1.03 trillion and $1.53 trillion was redistributed downward from the two highest income quintiles to the three lowest income quintiles through government taxes and spending policy.

Anonymous said...

Where'd you copy that from? Your brain obviously did not process that...

Scorpion said...

Gee anon..if you only had a brain..
you could be as entertaining..laughable and"jumbled" as Jim....

Andy said...

Very true Scorpion. If only we all believed an obvious cut and paste job as fact....

Scorpion said...

Believable is the incredibly bad decisions being made...no imagination or"pasting" in that...

The Game said...

I don't even know what Andy is talking about...but I do understand when you lose an arguement you try and get people to focus on something else

jhbowden said...

Anon, Medicare right has has 89 trillion in unfunded liability. That dwarfs the cost of the Iraq War. The first step to get out of a hole is to stop digging.

Andy said...

What argument did I lose? I simply asked you to attribute your sources to allow us to judge the "truthiness" on our own.

This is common in academia, a world that is clearly foreign to you.

Ron said...

.but I do understand when you lose an arguement you try and get people to focus on something else

the most blatant act of projection I have seen yet on this blog.

Ron said...

. A new analysis by the Lewin Group, prepared for the Heritage Foundation,

Problem here....The heritage foundation is a right wing think tank that is in the business of skewing life to the right.

Second the Lewin Group is a wholly owned subsidiarity of United Healthcare company. Google the two names and see for yourself.
blahblahblahblahblah

Ron said...

Jason, your amazing intelligence and ability to fortune tell astounds me. Most of what I have been following has been changing in negoatiations on a daily basis. Many plans have come out of various committees. Yet you have the ability to tell us what the finished bill is all about. You are soooooooo smart! I'm impressed!

The Game said...

wow was that a waste of time..well, Ron is one of the only liberals in the country trying to defend this turd bill...now we can see why