5 Freedoms You’d LOSE in Obama’s Health Care Reform…
Fortune 500 Editor Breaks With CNNers On ObamaCare; Details Freedoms Lost, Inevitable State Control
(ht/)Tom Blumer
August 10, 2009 –
Someone forgot to send the CNN health care kool-aid over to the office of Fortune editor at large Shawn Tully in the days leading up to July 24. Tully in turn forgot to toot his own horn, and ObamaCare opponents forgot to take a peek inside what is normally enemy lines to find it.
CAN IT BE ANY PLAINER THAN THIS?:
If you read the fine print in the Congressional plans, you’ll find that a lot of cherished aspects of the current system would disappear.
In promoting his health-care agenda, President Obama has repeatedly reassured Americans that they can keep their existing health plans — and that the benefits and access they prize will be enhanced through reform.
A close reading of the two main bills, one backed by Democrats in the House and the other issued by Sen. Edward Kennedy’s Health committee, contradict the President’s assurances. ….
page by page, the bills reveal a web of restrictions, fines, and mandates that would radically change your health-care coverage.
If you prize choosing your own cardiologist or urologist under your company’s Preferred Provider Organization plan (PPO), if your employer rewards your non-smoking, healthy lifestyle with reduced premiums, if you love the bargain Health Savings Account (HSA) that insures you just for the essentials, or if you simply take comfort in the freedom to spend your own money for a policy that covers the newest drugs and diagnostic tests — you may be shocked to learn that you could lose all of those good things under the rules proposed in the two bills that herald a health-care revolution.
In short, the Obama platform would mandate extremely full, expensive, and highly subsidized coverage — including a lot of benefits people would never pay for with their own money — but deliver it through a highly restrictive, HMO-style plan that will determine what care and tests you can and can’t have. It’s a revolution, all right, but in the wrong direction.
Tully then lists and discusses the five freedoms lost under ObamaCare:
- Freedom to choose what’s in your plan
- Freedom to be rewarded for healthy living, or pay your real costs
- Freedom to choose high-deductible coverage
- Freedom to keep your existing plan
- Freedom to choose your doctors
The following paragraphs from Tully about Point 4 should be enough to shut down the nonsensical claim that ObamaCare won’t ultimately end up being state-controlled and state-run, whether you’re currently in an ERISA (i.e., company-sponsored) plan or not:
The bill gives ERISA employers a five-year grace period when they can keep offering plans free from the restrictions of the “qualified” policies offered on the exchanges. But after five years, they would have to offer only approved plans, with the myriad rules we’ve already discussed. So for Americans in large corporations, “keeping your own plan” has a strict deadline. In five years, like it or not, you’ll get dumped into the exchange. As we’ll see, it could happen a lot earlier.
The outlook is worse for the second group. It encompasses employees who aren’t under ERISA but get actual insurance either on their own or through small businesses. After the legislation passes, all insurers that offer a wide range of plans to these employees will be forced to offer only “qualified” plans to new customers, via the exchanges.
The employees who got their coverage before the law goes into effect can keep their plans, but once again, there’s a catch. If the plan changes in any way — by altering co-pays, deductibles, or even switching coverage for this or that drug — the employee must drop out and shop through the exchange. Since these plans generally change their policies every year, it’s likely that millions of employees will lose their plans in 12 months.
Wow. After reading Tully’s column, even those who have deeply imbibed the kool-aid won’t be able to say they weren’t warned. They too should drop their hypocritical masks and call Obama’s HC Plan what it is-
DECEPTIVE, UNCONSCIONABLE and UNACCEPTABLE to the American People!
—Tom Blumer is president of a training and development company in Mason, Ohio, and is a contributing editor to NewsBusters
Newsbusters Link
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Pumas Unleashed 
This just in:
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OBAMA CAUGHT IN A LIE WHILE SELLING SNAKE OIL
Rachel Martin and Jake Tapper report:
President Obama today suggested that the health care reform legislation for which he’s pushing has been endorsed by the American Association of Retired Person.
“We have the AARP on board because they know this is a good deal for our seniors,” the president said.
At another point he said: “Well, first of all, another myth that we’ve been hearing about is this notion that somehow we’re going to be cutting your Medicare benefits. We are not. AARP would not be endorsing a bill if it was undermining Medicare, okay?”
THE PROBLEM?
The AARP hasn’t endorsed any plan yet.
The country’s largest advocacy group for Americans over 50 issued a statement after the event saying, “While the President was correct that AARP will not endorse a health care reform bill that would reduce Medicare benefits, indications that we have endorsed any of the major health care reform bills currently under consideration in Congress are inaccurate.”
What about the 40 million currently uninsured people in the U.S.? What choice do they currently have for a health care plan?