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Morning Bell: Obama Admits He’s “Not Familiar” WithHouse Bill

Posted July 21st, 2009 at 9.16am inHealth Care.With the public’s trust in his handling of health care tanking (50%-44%

of Americans disapprove), the White House has launched a new phaseof its strategy designed to pass Obamacare:all Obama, all the time.Aspart of that effort, Obama hosteda conference call with leftist bloggersurging them to pressure Congress to pass his health plan as soon aspossible.During the call, a blogger from Maine said he kept running into anInvestors Business Daily articlethat claimed Section 102 of the Househealth legislation would outlaw private insurance. He asked: “Is thistrue? Will people be able to keep their insurance and will insurers beable to write new policies even though H.R. 3200 is passed?” PresidentObama replied: “You know, I have to say that I am not familiar with theprovision you are talking about.”(quote begins at 17:10)This is a truly disturbing admission by the President, especiallyconsidering that later in the call, Obama promises yet again: “If youhave health insurance, and you like it, and you have a doctor that youlike, then you can keep it. Period.” How can Obama keep making thispromise if he is not familiar with the health legislation that is beingwritten in Congress? Details matter.We are familiar with the passage IBD sites, andas we wrote last week,the House bill does not outright outlaw private individual healthinsurance, but it does effectively regulate it out of existence. The Housebill does allow private insurance to be sold, but only “Exchange-participating health benefits plans.” In order to qualify as an ?Exchange-participating health benefits plan,? all health insurance plans mustconform to a slew of new regulations, including community rating andguaranteed issue. These will all send the cost of private individual healthinsurance skyrocketing. Furthermore, all these new regulations wouldnot apply just to individual insurance plans, but to all insurance plans.So the House bill will also drive up the cost of your existing employercoverage as well. Until, of course, it becomes so expensive that your

company makes the perfectly economical decision to dump you into thegovernment plan.President Obama may not care to study how many people will lose theircurrent health insurance if his plan becomes law, but like mostAmericans, we do. That is why we partnered with the Lewin Group tostudy how many Americans would be forced into the government“option” under the House health plan. Here is what we found:Approximately 103 million people would be covered under the newpublic plan and, as a consequence, about 83.4 million people wouldlose their private insurance. This would represent a 48.4 percentreduction in the number of people with private coverage.About 88.1 million workers would see their current private,employer-sponsored health plan go away and would be shifted tothe public plan.Yearly premiums for the typical American with private coveragecould go up by as much as $460 per privately-insured person, as aresult of increased cost-shifting stemming from a public planmodeled on Medicare.It is truly frightening thatthe President of the United States is pressuringCongress in an all-out media blitzto pass legislation thathe flatly admitshe has not read and is not familiar with.President Obama owes it to theAmerican people to stop making promises about what his health planwill or will not do until he has read it, and can properly defend it inpublic, to his own supporters.

Quick Hits:

Thanks to a steep drop from conservative and moderate Democrats,a plurality of Americans (49%-47%) now disapprove of PresidentObama’s handling of the economy.