With the botched Obamacare rollout going down in flames, headlines like this one have become the new normal. As with most promises liberals make, the very opposite comes true. Unfortunately for millions of Americans—66,000 in Tennessee—this means they cannot keep their health insurance plan, even if they like it.
Of course the insurance company is avoiding the word “cancelled,” and simply telling policy holders they must choose a new plan. But this wasn’t the President’s promise. 66,000 policy holders in Tennessee did not expect to be forced to change plans. They were told they could keep their plans, period. And what makes this recent phenomenon of Obamacare induced massed cancellation even worse, is that the White House knew it was coming.
Why is this happening? Obamacare mandates that insurance plans provide minimum standards of coverage for ten different categories. Among these is maternity care; that means that every policy—even those held by men—must cover maternity care. Put differently, it is illegal for an insurance company to offer a plan to a single adult male that does not provide maternity care. Only Big Government bureaucrats could devise such a ridiculous plan. Kathleen Sebelius was pressed on this issue during a hearing, but had little to say.
Website failures, embarrassingly low enrollment figures, and cancelled plans are only the tip of the iceberg of Obamacare’s wave of destruction. Just wait until all the 20 new or higher taxes kick-in, and the employer mandate takes effect. Layoffs will increase, and the economy will suffer; to top it all off, premiums will increases for families all across America.
Maybe now, Americans will finally realize, once and for all, that big government doesn’t work. Bureaucrats don’t know best, healthcare cannot be centrally planned from Washington. It’s time for real health care reform. Reform that focuses on restoring and strengthening the doctor-patient relationship; real reform requires less bureaucrats, not more. Let’s get government out of the healthcare business.