"The welfare of humanity is always the alibi of tyrants" - Albert Camus

Monday, June 14, 2010

What Was that Again Regarding Keeping Our Plans, Mr. President?



Ahhh the gullible ones who bought the obvious lie that they could keep their health plan if they liked it!  Only if they applied an ounce of critical thinking, they too would have seen the absolute disaster we are headed in to.

According to internal administration draft document on regulations for implementing the new health care reform law that was leaked to congressional Republicans and posted by Congressman Bill Posey, up to 51% of employers may have to relinquish their current health care coverage because of ObamaCare.  Here is the graphical illustration of the findings of the 83 page HHS, IRS, and the Labor Department's study:


Under the new health law, current employer-based health plans will be grandfathered — that is, they will not have to follow many Obama-Care provisions that take effect on Jan. 1, 2014. These include benefit mandates, caps on out-of-pocket expenses and limits on age-based premiums.
But they forfeit that grandfathered status if they make changes to the plans by 2014. If so, firms may have to adopt new plans or drop coverage and pay the penalty.

Under the regulations in the document, a plan is no longer considered to be grandfathered if:
• It eliminates benefits related to diagnosis or treatment of a particular condition.
• It increases the percentage of a cost-sharing requirement (such as co-insurance) above its level as of March 23, 2010.
• It increases the fixed amount of cost-sharing such as deductibles or out-of-pocket limits by a total percentage measured from March 23, 2010, that is more than the sum of medical inflation plus 15 percentage points.
• It increases co-payments from March 23, 2010, by an amount that is the greater of: medical inflation plus 15 percentage points or medical inflation plus $5.
• The employer's share of the premium decreases more than 5 percentage points below what the share was on March 23, 2010.
Analyzing data on employer-provided plans from 2008 and 2009, the report stated: "Many employers who made changes between 2008 and 2009 that would have caused them to relinquish grandfather status did so based on exceeding one of the cost-sharing limits."
In total, 66% of small businesses and 47% of large businesses made a change in their health care plans last year that would have forfeited their grandfathered status.

"These rules will ensure that up to 69% of employees — and 80% of workers in small business — will lose their current plan within three years," said Rep. Phil Gingrey, R-Ga., a physician. "The reality is this: 58% of Americans want ObamaCare repealed because they fear they will lose their health care — and even their jobs — once this law is fully implemented."

Furthermore, last month the Congressional Budget Office released a revised cost estimate of the new health care reform law upping the total cost by $115 billion thereby virtually eliminating the earlier estimated cost savings that was touted by the Majority when the bill passed in March. We all know that even the trillion dollar price tag is a sham since it does not include the critical costs of the Medicare physicians fix, double counts savings since the half trillion from Medicare is going in to Medicaid, and take in to account the favorible impact of factoring 10 years worth of revenues against only six years of costs.
Did anyone honestly think the summonning of the CBO chief to the White House early last year - an unprecedented move by any President till the Chicago Gang - was for a simple social gathering?

Possibly up to half the people losing their plans and much higher costs than originally reported!  And progressive "useful idiots" still think that this was not designed to get us to a single payer system as many Democrats, including the President, openly admitted

Well, at least one Democrat was honest regarding this whole mess:  Nancy Pelosi when she said "We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it"

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