Lewin on Baucus
If you like the plan you have, you may not be able to keep it:
- 19.1 million will lose their employer coverage
- 11.8 million others will gain employer coverage
- 14.1 million will newly enroll in Medicaid
- 17.1 million will be insured through a managed-competition style exchange
That is an enormous number of people who are going to lose their employer plans.
This makes a total joke out of Obama’s claim that if you like the plan you are in you can keep it.
OTOH, nearly everyone with existing employer group plans would have lost them under the McCain and Coburn proposals. With no tax differential the group plans could not continue to exist. But I guess the point here was Obama’s unsupportable claims rather than the loss of employer coverage per se.
It is disingenuous to say “if you like what you have, you can keep it.” I like my HSA because I can benefit financially for prudent use of my health care dollars. Yet, I represent the group of insured individuals that reformers want to redistributing funds from so health care is “affordable” for people.
Why aren’t more commentators talking about how many people are going to lose their employer-provided health plan?