HR 3200 Kills the Private Insurance Industry

Obama's talk about his health care plan creating more competition is bunk. It will virtually make private health insurance illegal. If you are self employed like my husband and I are you will not be able to get private health insurance. You will be required to get on the public option. Take a look at this language in HR 3200 under section 102 with the Orwellian title Protecting the Choice to Keep Curent Coverage:

Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day of Y1.

And then there's this:

Subject to paragraph (3) and except as required by law, the issuer does not change any of its terms or conditions, including benefits and cost-sharing, from those in effect as of the day before the first day of Y1.

So, the private insurance companies will have built in price controls on existing customers, yet they won't be able to bring in new customers after Y1 of the health care plan. How do the private insurance companies compete with the government run health care plan? They don't. This bill is designed to kill the private insurance industry and force people onto the government plan.

And if you get your health insurance through your employer, you're not off the hook either:

The Commissioner shall establish a grace period whereby, for plan years beginning after the end of the 5-year period beginning with Y1, an employment-based health plan in operation as of the day before the first day of Y1 must meet the same requirements as apply to a qualified health benefits plan under section 101, including the essential benefit package requirement under section 121.

In other words, if your employer offers health insurance, he has five years to make his plan identical to the public option. So what's the point of remaining with your probably more expensive employer's private health care plan? There isn't any, so once again, the government forces you onto its government run health care system and under its thumb.

Investor's Business Daily expounds further on this language in HR 3200:

So we can all keep our coverage, just as promised -- with, of course, exceptions: Those who currently have private individual coverage won't be able to change it. Nor will those who leave a company to work for themselves be free to buy individual plans from private carriers.

From the beginning, opponents of the public option plan have warned that if the government gets into the business of offering subsidized health insurance coverage, the private insurance market will wither. Drawn by a public option that will be 30% to 40% cheaper than their current premiums because taxpayers will be funding it, employers will gladly scrap their private plans and go with Washington's coverage.

The nonpartisan Lewin Group estimated in April that 120 million or more Americans could lose their group coverage at work and end up in such a program. That would leave private carriers with 50 million or fewer customers. This could cause the market to, as Lewin Vice President John Sheils put it, "fizzle out altogether."

If you don't like sound of this, then you need to get on the horn to your US representative and give him or her an earful.

On a related note, The Politico noticed what it is calling a gaffe that the president committed today, but this isn't a gaffe at all. It's a piece of the truth that managed to sneak out via Freudian slip:

Senator Jim DeMint remarked that Obama's health care reform plan will be his Waterloo if the GOP can successfully stop it, and based upon what's in HR 3200, you better hope the GOP and Blue Dogs are successful. The president responded today in a most ridiculous fashion:

He said this not about him, which we all know is untrue. Everything he does is all about him. He's the most narcissistic, arrogant, unreasonable, selfish, power- hungry president we've ever had. I called him our Veruca Salt president in an AIP column a few weeks back. I was right then and I'm right now. He will do anything to get his way. He will use every scare tactic, every strong arm tactic, and every blackmail tactic to get it passed and when he does, it will be as disastrous as every other program he's pushed through.

Michelle Malkin: 83 million would lose their private coverage.

Posted: Daily Thought Pad