The President’s Empty Health Care Promises

The White House has on its website an article titled, “The President’s Proposal puts American families and small business owners in control of their own health care.”

According to the Washington Policy Center, the President’s plan is fundamentally the same as the House and Senate bills.” In particular, the president’s plan overlaps the House and Senate bills in:

• Individual mandate to purchase health insurance or pay a tax.
• Employer mandate to provide health insurance for employees or pay a tax.
• Government controlled health insurance exchange.
• Taxpayer subsidies for families earning up to 400% of the federal poverty level ($88,000 for a family of four) to purchase health insurance.
• Delay tax on high priced health insurance plans for five years (at union request).
• The “Nebraska Kickback” for all states – expand indefinitely the federal contribution for Medicaid to 90% for all states.
• Delay tax on insurance companies for four years.
• Delay tax on drug companies for one year.
• Delay tax on medical device manufacturers for three years.
• Three of the eleven pages spent on eliminating waste, fraud and abuse in government programs (all of which could be done now).

But the President’s plan only gets worse.

The President places more federal regulation on insurance company pricing. This would lead to government price control of the insurance industry and would force many companies out of business.  Obviously, as more people are forced out of private insurance, the enrollment in the government plans would skyrocket.

The group Americans for Tax Reform estimates (here) the President’s plan would add an addition $629 billion in taxes over the next ten years and would bring the total cost of this proposed health reform to well over $1 trillion.