The promises made about health reform suffered two more hits this week as more and more troubling truths about the impact the Democrats’ recently enacted health care overhaul will have on the American people were revealed – health care costs are continuing to skyrocket and more than half of all Americans with employer-provided health insurance could lose their current health coverage. Those disturbing details are contained within a survey from Pricewaterhouse Coopers and new regulations from the Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Labor, and Department of the Treasury.
Buried deep within the new regulations that will govern employer-provided health coverage is the startling estimate that by 2013, under the most likely scenario, 87 million Americans (1 out of 2 Americans with employer coverage) will no longer be able to retain the health plan they have and like. According to that same regulation, this number could be as 7 out of 10 employers that offer coverage being forced to change health plans. And these numbers could be higher if the Obama Administration’s assumptions and estimates turn out to be overly optimistic.
So much for the President’s claim that, “If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.” Even the New York Times reported, “the rules appear to fall short of the sweeping commitments President Obama made while trying to reassure the public in the fight over health legislation.”
As if that were not enough, echoing estimates by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) showing that health insurance premiums for millions of families would actually increase under the Democrats’ health care law, PricewaterhouseCoopers reveals that employers and employees will see a nine percent increase in their medical costs in 2011. For the average employee, this increase in medical costs could be as much as $1,200 in 2011 alone.1
No wonder the majority of Americans continue to oppose the health law. It spends one-trillion dollars, increases taxes, cuts Medicare to fund a new entitlement program, increases the cost of health insurance, and forces Americans out of the health plan they have and like.
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1 See Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Educational Trust (HRET), Employer Health Benefits Survey (2009) (calculating average impact of a 9% increase in medical cost using $13,375 average total employer premium).