IBD: Meltdown: A health care scholar estimates that if ObamaCare is fully implemented, including the employer mandate, 129 million people will not be able to keep their plans. The train wreck has become a nuclear meltdown.
The never-ending and ever-changing story line emanating from the damage control room at the White House has morphed from you can keep your plan, period, to we said you could keep the plan you liked at the rates agreed upon only if we decide it's not substandard.
That, we were told, would only apply to some 5% of Americans. They would get a better plan whether they liked it or not.
It's as if the government decided the car you drove to work was "substandard" and forced you to drive a "better" car like the government-subsidized Chevy Volt.
ObamaCare is kind of like "cash for clunkers" only with fines and penalties thrown in. We fork over more cash in the form of higher premiums and deductibles and get the clunker known as ObamaCare.
The story has changed again as commentators try to split the hair between "intentional deceit" and "lie."
"Now, if you have or had one of these plans before the Affordable Care Act came into law and you really like that plan, what we said was you could keep it, if it hasn't changed since the law was passed," President Obama said Monday night. Oh, so that was what you meant by "period," Mr. President.
Every insurance plan changes as risk pools and claims vary over time. That's why people have had to renew their policies every year or so.
That is the ultimate Catch-22 of ObamaCare, one that will snare an astounding number of Americans in ObamaCare's tangled web of lies and deceit.
Those who thought their plans were exempted under the "grandfather" clause were sadly mistaken and ignored that phrase throughout ObamaCare — "the Secretary shall determine." Well, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius determined unless your plan was carved in stone tablets for all time, they had to go and changed the regulations.
Now, as the Daily Caller reports, an analysis by health care economist Christopher Conover at the Center for Health Policy & Inequalities Research at Duke University, shows just how wide that web will extend when ObamaCare is fully implemented in 2014.
It also helps explain the delay in the employer mandate — an attempt to cushion the blow.
When ObamaCare is fully implemented, Conover finds, an estimated 129 million people — that's 68% of the 189 million Americans with private health coverage — could lose their previous health coverage due to a combination of factors including the cancellations of existing plans as well as changes and "improvements" to existing coverage that will be required under the new health care law.
