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You Won’t Be Able to Keep Your Insurance

Once the numbers are crunched, Obama's rhetoric doesn't match reality

By: Robert Bluey (Diary)  |  August 11th, 2009 at 09:52 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

Americans are rightly concerned that a government-run health care plan will lead to changes with their own health insurance. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to draw the conclusion that employers will drop coverage once the government starts meddling with the financial incentives.

This is a problem for the White House, and it’s why President Obama uses every opportunity to tell Americans, “If you have insurance that you like, then you will be able to keep that insurance.”

Unfortunately for Obama, Americans don’t believe him. Why? Maybe because he’s done nothing to back it up. Propaganda czar Linda Douglass’ “reality check” video is comical in that her defense of “You can keep your own insurance” cites nothing but Obama’s own statements as evidence — as if he’s an independent arbiter.

The Heritage Foundation (where I work) last month asked The Lewin Group, a highly respected health care policy and management consulting firm, to examine the impact of H.R. 3200 on private insurance. Lewin reported 88.1 million Americans could be transitioned out of their current plan as employers opt out of continuing their existing coverage. The chart below reveals the consequences for people living in Maine, Montana, Nebraska, New Mexico, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

As you can see, Obama’s rhetoric simply doesn’t add up when the numbers are crunched. It’ll take more than repetition from White House to sway the American people on this one.

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COMMENTS

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  • Rod_Patrick

    Obama in NH just claimed that AARP fully supports the Bill.

    AARP on Fox, on the other hand, backtracked and distanced itself from Obamacare.

    Some rumors say that AARP has been losing enrollees SO FAST in the last few weeks.

    • SteveLA

      R_P

      I’m old enough that I could join the Insurance company called the ARRP but don’t mostly for the way they lobby for left wing causes.

      I’m thinking of a new protest of sending back their prepaid mailers asking me to join with a bit red NOOBAMA CARE written on the material.

      That would make a good protest. Or even better one, get current members to cut their cards up and send them back to AARP with NO OBAMA CARE included.

      • popdaddy

        Ok, it’s juvenile, but I took great pleasure in using the AARP pre-paid return envelopes to include a note why I would never consider giving money to a socialsit democrat front group. It took a few years but someone got the message. I great fun again when my wife turned 50 a couple of years ago!

    • Robert Bluey

      He filed this report for ABC News today:

      The AARP hasn’t endorsed any plan yet.

      The country’s largest advocacy group for Americans over 50 issued a statement after the event saying, “While the President was correct that AARP will not endorse a health care reform bill that would reduce Medicare benefits, indications that we have endorsed any of the major health care reform bills currently under consideration in Congress are inaccurate.”

      • Richard Mullins

        AARP is usually all over the map on things like this and those in the Townhalls saying that they AARP is in Support means that they are off message. I’m sure there is only one thing that AARP is for, it’s bottom line and simply supporting a controversial bill like HR 3200 isn’t good for the bottom line.

  • DerKrieger

    …address the most basic of issues with Obamacare which is its unconstitutionality.

    The 10th Amendment to the US Constitution says:

    “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”…

    and nowhere in the explicit enumeration of federal powers is the power to create a national health care plan.

    At the root of the growing opposition to Obamacare, in my opinion, is the recognition that the federal government has been encroaching on our Constitutional liberties and expanding its power at the expense of the states for generations and Americans are pushing back. Maybe, just maybe we can put this genie back in its Constitutional bottle. If we allow them to ignore the Constitution now, then the document becomes near meaningless. All we’ll be left with is the 1st Amendment to protect strip clubs.

    Progressives do not stop. Ever. So if they manage to get this passed, what’s next? Abolition of 401ks, IRA, private pensions? There must be a line in the sand.

    • izoneguy

      Massachusetts plan was a disaster:

      http://www.forbes.com/2009/07/29/health-reform-massachusetts-opinions-contributors-obama-insurance.html

      Tennessee was a disaster:

      http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110005987

      Oregon is a disaster:

      http://www.oregoncatalyst.com/index.php/archives/635-Rep.-Richardson-Coming-Health-Care-Disaster.html

      Hawaii had a healthcare disaster:

      http://www.nypost.com/seven/10272008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/hawaiis_hard_health_care_lesson_135426.htm

      GOVERNMENTS SHOULD NOT BE IN THE HEALTH CARE BUSINESS

      • Richard Mullins

        were the politicians haven’t done something that stupid.

        • DerKrieger

          …if Obamacare passes?

          Copy Arizona: http://www.azhealthcarefreedomact.com/

          and Florida: http://www.azhealthcarefreedomact.com/article/will-florida-ban-national-health-care

          • Richard Mullins

            but if I get the text of Demint’s senate bill, I’ll email my state rep(Debbie Riddle) and State Senator(Dan Patrick) before 2011. There is no chance for it know since there isn’t another emergency session of the Ledge. I want Texas to be a model to other states.

          • Menlo

            There are people like Dan Patrick and a small handful of house Republicans, but most Republicans in there are well to the left of Perry (and the voters). They bend over backwards for the Democrats and do not support Perry’s effort and actively fight against any conservative proposals. That new RINO house speaker and how he got to power is a perfect example of what’s wrong.

            With regard to the tenth amendment, the house caved (in typical fashion) to a single Democrat’s opposition to affirming support for the tenth amendment. She claimed to be afraid it would bring back slavery and segregation.

          • Richard Mullins

            we can only hope for 2010(no O on the ticket). I lot of of our Republicans in the Ledge want to simply get along(I really miss Tom Craddick as Speaker of the Texas House), When our Republican in the State House get attacked for cutting SCHIP, don’t cave in.

          • izoneguy

            n/t

          • Richard Mullins

            God do I love the State constitution(or maybe Vernon’s Civil Statues).

          • izoneguy

            Perry raises possibility of states’ rights showdown with White House over healthcare

            http://www.star-telegram.com/804/story/1504240.html

            Gov. Rick Perry, raising the specter of a showdown with the Obama administration, suggested Thursday that he would consider invoking states? rights protections under the 10th Amendment to resist the president?s healthcare plan, which he said would be “disastrous” for Texas.

            Interviewed by conservative talk show host Mark Davis of Dallas? WBAP/820 AM, Perry said his first hope is that Congress will defeat the plan, which both Perry and Davis described as “Obama Care.” But should it pass, Perry predicted that Texas and a “number” of states might resist the federal health mandate.

            “I think you?ll hear states and governors standing up and saying ‘no? to this type of encroachment on the states with their healthcare,” Perry said. “So my hope is that we never have to have that stand-up. But I?m certainly willing and ready for the fight if this administration continues to try to force their very expansive government philosophy down our collective throats.”

      • DerKrieger

        I absolutely agree but the states, unlike the federal government, are Constitutionally allowed, or not prohibited, to try.

        The advantage of their trying is that if they fail the impact is limited rather than felt by all of us. If they fail they are likely not so invested in the plan that they refuse to repeal or drastically alter it.

        As Louis Brandeis said the states are the “laboratories of democracy”.

        Another little noticed or discussed consequence of federalism is that it acts as another check on tyranny. If states become oppressive in their taxation or regulation, citizens are free to leave. That alone acts as a check on the excesses of government. The usurpation of the states’ powers by the Fed leaves us no escape.

        I support states trying….and failing due to minimization of collateral damage.

  • hunter

    I for one am tired of team Obama’s claim that their government run health plan will ‘keep the insurance companies honest’.
    If the insurance companies are dishonest, go after them.
    Insurance in the United States is heavily regulated, closely scrutinized, and subject to both civil and criminal penalties.
    Government programs are not heavily scrutinized, their audits are a joke,and they are exempt from nearly all legal recourse.
    Obama is no doctor. He never attended medical school. He does not understand industry. He has never had the responsibility of running anything except campaigns. Obama has no respect for working people. He has never been one.
    Call him out.

  • mcg

    Some lefties have been criticizing the Lewin Group report because they are connected in some way to Big Pharma. I don’t recall the exact connection, but they claim it destroys all credibility the group has, and proves that the Republicans are simply in bed with the medical companies.

    The problem is that the Lewin Group has *also* been commissioned by Democrats, and their studies quoted by Democrats, when doing so advances the cause of universal health coverage. For instance, check these guys out: http://www.healthcareforall.org/studies.html

    I pointed this out to one of my lefty buddies who was screaming about the Lewin Group, and he shut up pretty fast.

    • WarEagle01

      They’re even running ads (“Harry and Louise”) supporting it. Make sure you let your lefty friend know that as well.

  • http://janicecantore.com Janice Cantore

    I just came from a “town hall” in Calif, Adam Schiff, he and his panel of blow hards ALL repeated “If you like your insurance you keep it.” Even when asked about where it says in the bill that you must go to the goverement if your job drops you, Schiff said “That’s not in the bill and I’ve read the bill, if you like youir insurance you keep it.” I felt like I was in an alternate universe. This their taking point, they will keep lying like the liar in chief. Another mantra “This is deficit neutral. Obama care will not raise costs, only keeping things te same will cost more.”
    Just shoot me.