Correcting Obama’s Health Care Speech (1)

In his speech last night the President declared:

First, if you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance through your job, Medicare, Medicaid, or the VA, nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have.  Let me repeat this:  nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have.

This promise is, at best, deceptive.   You won’t have a federal bureaucrat knock on your door to force you to change. But that doesn’t mean the legislation won’t force your insurance company to stop selling the policy you now have.

Standard procedure is for government to force citizens to comply with the will of the elite by imposing higher costs or penalties or restrictions on companies that produce and/or sell products or services.  For example, you will soon be forced to use new, politically correct light bulbs in your home, not by an enforcement officer who comes to your door, but by the store where you buy bulbs.  It will be illegal for them to sell the bulbs you have used all your life.

AT the bottom of this post is an excerpt from the text of the House of Representatives version of ObamaCare, HR 3200.

In plain language this excerpt says the company may continue to offer an existing policy under the following restrictions:

1. The company may continue to insure you and other existing customers, but it may not sell the same coverage to any new customers.  All new customers must be sold  policies that comply with new, uniform specifications  that will be dictated by the government.
   
2. The company may not make any changes to it to the policy.
   
3. The company may not increase the premium for any customers without increasing the premium for all customers in the same “risk group” by the same percentage.

As anyone who purchases health insurance for employees knows, insurance companies routinely make minor changes annually on the anniversary of the policy. The worlds of medicine, insurance, and I.T.  continuously evolve and companies have to be able to make adjustments in policy language to keep up.   If they cannot make even minor adjustments   companies will have no option but to discontinue policies after a year or two or three.

The Bottom Line

President’s promise is a sham.  The legislation is intended to eventually drive existing insurance policies out of the marketplace to be replaced by new policies that comply with government standards and regulations.

Excerpt from HR 3200

SEC. 102. PROTECTING THE CHOICE TO KEEP CURRENT COVERAGE.

(a) Grandfathered Health Insurance Coverage Defined- Subject to the succeeding provisions of this section, for purposes of establishing acceptable coverage under this division, the term `grandfathered health insurance coverage’ means individual health insurance coverage that is offered and in force and effect before the first day of Y1 if the following conditions are met:

• (1) LIMITATION ON NEW ENROLLMENT-

• • (A) IN GENERAL- 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.

• (2) LIMITATION ON CHANGES IN TERMS OR CONDITIONS- 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.

• (3) RESTRICTIONS ON PREMIUM INCREASES- The issuer cannot vary the percentage increase in the premium for a risk group of enrollees in specific grandfathered health insurance coverage without changing the premium for all enrollees in the same risk group at the same rate, as specified by the Commissioner.