Obama: Don’t Blame Me, I Didn’t Make Them Do It

Every time President Obama spoke about his proposed healthcare plan, one of the drums he relentlessly beat was, “No matter how we reform healthcare, we will keep this promise to the American people, If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what. If you like what you're getting, keep it. Nobody is forcing you to shift."

He must not think anyone has seen the video of him speaking to an AFL-CIO meeting where he talked about his goal being a single-payer system, but that they may not get it immediately; it might take a little time. No, while he was spouting his sales pitch for Obamacare, what he really was saying was that the government would not “force” a change. What he didn’t say was that the way they’d set things up, he’d be able to sanctimoniously assert his hands were clean and he’d be able to feign his innocence as the country moved towards a single-payer system.

He didn’t bother to mention that a person’s employer can force a change and that the legislation that he was peddling was specifically designed to get them to stop coverage and force the employees to move to the exchanges with the ultimate goal being an eventual single-payer government-run healthcare system.

Of course, the bill doesn’t say specifically that its object is for corporations to drop their employees’ coverage. The creators of the bill didn’t have to be that obvious. They were betting on a sure thing. Corporations always consider the cheaper option, and Obamacare raises the cost of providing healthcare to employees to the point where it makes it cheaper for companies to pay the fine for not providing insurance than continue to offer healthcare insurance.

You remember when Henry Waxman’s head almost exploded when companies started announcing that they were taking huge write-downs because of Obamacare? He was furious and demanded not only documents relating to the write-downs, but every document the companies produced that discussed what the healthcare bill would do to their healthcare costs.

Henry and his committee no sooner finished reading the 1,100 pages of documents that AT&T, Verizon, Caterpillar, and Deere submitted than they abruptly cancelled the hearings. On April 14 the committee issued a statement that declared the write downs were “proper and in accordance with SEC rules.”

But, the spin doctors had been working overtime. The statement also declared the submissions were generally positive concerning the new legislation, claiming they showed that “the overall impact of health reform on larger employers could be beneficial.” The committee’s report failed to point out that the benefit entailed all four companies carefully looking at the costs and benefits of dropping their coverage.



Those internal documents confirmed what the critics had predicted and the Democrats in Congress chose to ignore: large companies are exploring a course of action that pre-obamacare would have been unthinkable. They are actually looking at dumping the healthcare coverage they provide for their workers and pay the penalty fee.

AT&T actually produced a PowerPoint slide entitled “Medical Cost Versus No Coverage Penalty” that projected dropping healthcare coverage and forcing employees over to the Obamacare Statewide exchanges would save the company $4.1 billion a year after paying the fine.

Similarly, a report produced for Verizon stated, “Even though the proposed assessments [on companies that do not provide healthcare] are material, they are modest when compared to the average cost of healthcare.” The report goes on to say that, “ . . . employers may consider exiting the healthcare market and coverage and send employees to the Exchanges.” [Under Obamacare employees who lose their coverage will purchase healthcare through state-run exchanges.] Who can blame these companies? They have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders that they can’t ignore.

Obamacare will not only dismantle the employer-based system that has been in place since World War II, it seems like a sure bet it will massively increase the projected costs, which, we were told, will control deficits. What a joke! That claim was based on the assumption that employers would remain the essential provider of the nation’s health care system. Yet, Obamacare has been designed specifically to ensure employers will opt out of providing health care.

There is absolutely no way that Obama and the Democrats in Congress didn’t know this would be the result. Our deficit is expanding at a record pace and this little gem will only accelerate the process. If just half of all the people who are covered by company plans get dropped and move to the exchanges, it will raise the price tag of Obamacare by $160 billion a years.

Greece is going down the drain and analysts are projecting that Portugal is next with Great Britain on its heels. This is just another step that the Progressives have made to ensure that Greece, Portugal, and Great Britain will have our company on that trip.
Posted by LG 5-08-2010