When Barack Obama ran for president, he promised that his health care plan would “lower health-care costs by $2,500 for the typical family.” Now, it turns out that new legislation that he supports creating public-private “co-operatives” will increase the costs of family health insurance by $4,000 by 2019.
And that, in fact, may be the point of his entire ObamaCare package.
A recent Price Waterhouse Coopers report released by America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) stated, “by 2019 the cost of single coverage is expected to increase by $1,500 more than it would under the current system and the cost of family coverage is expected to increase by $4,000 more than it would under the current system.”
The report continues, “This amounts to an additional 18 percent increase in premiums by 2019.” The report states that this average increase is a “composite of increases by market segment”: a 49 percent increase for the individual market, a 28 percent increase for employers with fewer than 50 employees, an 11 percent increase for larger employers, and a 9 percent increase for self-insured employers.
This, of course, is not what Barack Obama promised. But it may be what he actually wants—to radically increase the cost of private insurance so that American families are forced onto government-run health care.
The Baucus bill does precisely that—increasing the cost of private premiums far faster than they would have grown. And as private options become unaffordable to regular Americans, they will be forced on to substandard, below-average, government-rationed health care.
The average cost per individual covered under the Baucus plan is $2,858. That is a staggering $2,000 less than what it actually costs today for a health premium—which means that the coverage will necessarily have to be watered down, and, at times for some, even non-existent.
The Senate Finance Committee yesterday voted 14-9 in favor of the Baucus-led bill just days after AHIP released their devastating findings. In short, faced with the facts, they voted for the fiction.
According to analysis done by the Congressional Budget Office, the Senate bill will also cut Medicare and Medicaid by approximately $404 billion, and include tax increases of $406 billion over ten years. More broken promises by Obama, who has repeatedly promised to protect Medicare and not to increase taxes on those making less than $250,000.
But, again, maybe that’s the point.
Barack Obama wants American families to pay so much for essential services like health care that they are forced into government dependency—and that includes raising the cost of private insurance for families by $4,000 over the next ten years in order to make it unaffordable.
Then, Big Government comes to the “rescue”—and the nation’s number one community organizer can claim credit for creating yet another collective.
Robert Romano is the ALG Senior News Editor.
