- President Barack Obama at today's press conference
You trusted this guy to redesign American's healthcare system from top to bottom?
Actually, he's lying again. Obamacare was designed to complicate insurance so as to make sure that most Americans lost their existing coverage - they needed to be able to get the unsubsidized policyholders to pay more in order to fund those who would be getting the subsidies. And it is not just the 5% at risk of losing coverage, consisting of individual policyholders, that he mentioned today - he's lying about that also. The chart below is from the Federal Register of June 17, 2010 and is the estimate by the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) of the percentage of employer (not individual) policies which would lose grandfather status under the rules proposed by HHS. [Update: I may have been too harsh in my characterization of certain statements as "lies"; according to yesterday's NY Times the preferred nomenclature for this type of statement by the President is "incorrect promise" - I think they were serious when they wrote this.]
The mid-range HHS estimate is that by 2013, 51% of employer plans would lose grandfather status, with the low estimate being 39% and the high estimate 69%. What is happening is not a surprise but it is the reason effective implementation of Obamacare was delayed until after the 2012 election.
The fundamental design of Obamacare, and indeed, of the overall policy of this Administration, can best be understood if you think of America as being governed by the tenured faculty of a liberal arts college which guides its young and impressionable students and when it requires more funds sends another tuition bill to the parents.
Dead on!!!!!
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