Name:By JEFFREY H. ANDERSON | Posted Wednesday, July 08, 2009 4:20 PM PT
The Obama administration might like to "spread the wealth around," but its proposed "health care reform" wouldn't spread consumer choice around. Rather, it would constrict consumer choice substantially — except for the very rich.
That's the great irony of President Obama's ambitious health care agenda: His administration, which seems to feel little empathy for the rich, is paving the way to a two-tiered system in which only the very rich would have a choice.
Under ObamaCare, the rich would continue to get the care they want — whether here or abroad — by paying for it out of their own pockets. The rest of us would stand in line and wait for rationed care.
Most Americans want consumer freedom. They want to be able to shop for health care value — for the best care, at the best prices. They'd like to have a lot more freedom to shop for such value than they currently have. That's why Democrats are couching their proposed expansion of government-run health care in the language of competition and choice.
Listen to the president as he pitches the centerpiece of that agenda — a "public option," a form of Medicare for all. He says it's merely a way to give Americans another choice: People can buy private health insurance, just like now, or they can instead choose the government option.
But millions of middle-class Americans who are happy with their employer-provided insurance would soon find the choice isn't theirs to make.
The government would make it cheaper for employers to contribute to the government-run option than to keep providing private insurance.
Millions of employers would do the math and pick the government option. The "public option" would provide a choice — for millions of employers, against the wishes of millions of employees. [emphasis mine]
PLEASE, if you care about what's about to happen to your own health care, read the fine print and the projections of the "unintended" consequences. I put "unintended" in quotes because this is exactly what Obama intends but just doesn't want us to know it. Yet.
In ObamaCare, Middle Class Gets The Shaft
Labels: Health, ObamaNation, Social Observation
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