So what would happen to you if President Barack Obama succeeds in passing a health care bill that includes a public option? Law professor Hugh Hewitt explains how others’ decisions will impact you quicker than you might think:
Some of my law firm’s clients and some executives in my broadcast audience are quietly preparing for the necessary analysis that will follow the passage of Obamacare by asking their personnel departments the obvious question: Will it make economic sense to discontinue health care coverage for my employees and instead push them into the government plan?
These employers –manufacturers, builders, entrepeneuers of all sorts– cannot yet get an answer to this question because they don’t have any specifics about costs from which they can make an informed decision.
But they all know they will have to “do the math” if the “government option/public plan” makes it into law. They cannot not do so for they owe shareholders and investors an objective assessment of what will improve their bottom lines.
If the “government option/public plan” costs $300 per employee per month and private sector insurance costs $350 per employee per month, the choice to push their workforce into the waiting arms of President Obama’s new bureaucracy will make itself.
Hewitt is dead-on. Selling his health plan to the American Medical Association, President Obama promised the American people: “No matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people. If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. 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.”
This is just not true. The day after ObamaCare becomes law, if it includes a public “option,” your employer will make this decision for you. The number of Americans that will be forced into the public plan depends on how Congress structures it. Heritage analyst Greg D’Angelo explains:
If the public plan were opened to only small employers, enrollment in the public plan would reach 42.9 million, and 32 million Americans would lose their private coverage. However, if the public plan is opened to all employers, enrollment in the public plan increases dramatically to 131.2 million, and 119.1 million Americans would lose their private coverage. In this particular case, of the 171.6 million people who currently have private coverage, about 70 percent of them would lose the coverage that they have today.
More specifically, of the estimated 157.4 million Americans who have private employer coverage, up to 107.6 million people could lose their private employer coverage, even if they like it and would prefer to keep it.
The left likes to call their plan the “public option.” But remember, it is not your option.
