Under the government-proposed public health plan, “people will involuntarily lose their coverage and will be bled into the new plan,” said Heritage’s senior policy analyst for health care Nina Owcharenko at yesterday’s Blogger Briefing.
“They expect they would have their private insurance plans competing with the public plan but at the end of the day the public plan will be the last one standing,” she said.
Owcharenko explained that the legislative process isn’t moving at the rapid pace once anticipated. So far, the Kennedy-Dodd bill is still incomplete. The House has introduced their tri-committee bill that’s some 800 pages long, and is further to the left than the Kennedy-Dodd bill. However, a final compromise has not been reached as we enter the Independence Day recess.
Owcharenko said that the legislature has exposed their inability to come to any agreement or compromise in balancing the cost of health care and making a significant impact on coverage.
“The problem is that the price tag is continuing to increase because special interests are being bought out to support the legislation, resulting in spending cuts elsewhere. This leads us to question what the real impact of this legislation will be if it’s only covering 16 million of the uninsured, which is barely cutting into the true number of those without insurance coverage which some say is up to 50 million.”
To better understand the real impacts of this legislation, The Heritage Foundation has launched its newest micro-site, www.fixhealthcarepolicy.com, as an avenue to locate copies of pertinent legislation, explain what the Congressional Budget Office scores really mean, publish Heritage’s latest research, and to shine some light into the overall process as much of the facts get muddled in popular health care rhetoric.
Following Owcharenko, The Cato Institute has put together a video following the Obama infomercial on ABC last week, dissecting his scripted statements to highlight the absurdities and inaccuracies in a way that makes sense to those of us who have real questions for the administration.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-1ZfFBMf8s[/youtube]
Michael Cannon, Director of Health Policy Studies at Cato suggested that focusing solely on aspects of the public or government run health plan can blind us to the rest of the negative impacts Obama-Care will have.
“The government plan invites a host of additional burdening mandates since the employer mandate will keep 1.6 million jobs in the first 5 years, the individual mandate will require a host of other mandates. Insurance regulations will drive up the costs and will drive people out of the market and will then require even more mandates to drive people back into the market,” said Cannon.
Americans for Prosperity has also launched a petition drive at www.JoinPatientsFirst.com, and will deliver signatures to senators to tell them to keep their hands off your health care.