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The Foundry
Morning Bell: Obama Admits He’s “Not Familiar” With
House Bill

Posted July 21st, 2009 at 9.16am in Health 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 phase
of its strategy designed to pass Obamacare: all Obama, all the time. As
part of that effort, Obama hosted a conference call with leftist bloggers
urging them to pressure Congress to pass his health plan as soon as
possible.

During the call, a blogger from Maine said he kept running into an
Investors Business Daily article that claimed Section 102 of the House
health legislation would outlaw private insurance. He asked: “Is this
true? Will people be able to keep their insurance and will insurers be
able to write new policies even though H.R. 3200 is passed?” President
Obama replied: “You know, I have to say that I am not familiar with the
provision you are talking about.” (quote begins at 17:10)

This is a truly disturbing admission by the President, especially

considering that later in the call, Obama promises yet again: “If you
have health insurance, and you like it, and you have a doctor that you
like, then you can keep it. Period.” How can Obama keep making this
promise if he is not familiar with the health legislation that is being
written in Congress? Details matter.

We are familiar with the passage IBD sites, and as we wrote last week,
the House bill does not outright outlaw private individual health
insurance, but it does effectively regulate it out of existence. The House
bill 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 must
conform to a slew of new regulations, including community rating and
guaranteed issue. These will all send the cost of private individual health
insurance skyrocketing. Furthermore, all these new regulations would
not apply just to individual insurance plans, but to all insurance plans.
So the House bill will also drive up the cost of your existing employer
coverage as well. Until, of course, it becomes so expensive that your
company makes the perfectly economical decision to dump you into the
government plan.

President Obama may not care to study how many people will lose their
current health insurance if his plan becomes law, but like most
Americans, we do. That is why we partnered with the Lewin Group to
study 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 new

public plan and, as a consequence, about 83.4 million people would
lose their private insurance. This would represent a 48.4 percent
reduction 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 to
the public plan.
Yearly premiums for the typical American with private coverage
could go up by as much as $460 per privately-insured person, as a
result of increased cost-shifting stemming from a public plan
modeled on Medicare.

It is truly frightening that the President of the United States is pressuring

Congress in an all-out media blitz to pass legislation that he flatly admits
he has not read and is not familiar with. President Obama owes it to the
American people to stop making promises about what his health plan
will or will not do until he has read it, and can properly defend it in
public, 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 President
Obama’s handling of the economy.
 The Mayo Clinic on the House health bill: “Although there are some
positive provisions in the current House Tri-Committee bill … the
proposed legislation misses the opportunity to help create higher-
quality, more affordable health care for patients. In fact, it will do
the opposite. … The real losers will be the citizens of the United
States.”
According to Wall Street Bailout watchdog Neil Barofsky, the
Obama Treasury Department has refused to give, or seek, answers
about the use of bailout funds, while the total bailout commitment
of the federal government has risen to $23 trillion.
Thanks to Obama’s “sweeping agenda,” the lobbyists on K Street
are “awash in cash.”
The Senate health bill gives the Health and Human Services
secretary the authority to develop ?standards of measuring gender?
— as opposed to using the traditional “male” and “female”
categories — in a database of all who apply or participate in
government-run or government-supported health care plans.

Author: Conn Carroll

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Tagged with Obama Health Care Plan

3 Comments

July 21, 2009 BOYD BILBO, NEWPORT BEACH, CA. writes:

I AGREE TOTALLY. THANKS. PS: THE WORD IN PARAGRAPH

III AFTER, “IBD” SHOULD BE, “CITES”, NOT, “SITES”.
July 21, 2009 Alex Neff Phoenix, AZ writes:

Could there finally be truth coming out of Washington?

President Obama replied: ?You know, I have to say that I am not
familiar with the provision you are talking about.?
I don’t think any of them know what provisions they’re voting on!

July 21, 2009 Eileen F. Jackson, Clifton Park, NY writes:

I am absolutely amazed that President Obama took more time in

considering what breed of dog to get for a family pet than the time he is
allowing Congress to consider this HUGE National Health Care bill.

His audacity is absolutely amazing.

I pray it fails…….big time.

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Does the House Plan Outlaw Private Insurance?Obama Admits He’s “Not
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