President Obama promised that if you like your insurance you get to keep it (as long as it doesn’t change a lick between the day health care reform passed and the day you die). If you were in the process of changing your policy when health reform passed, or you were unemployed and on COBRA and are now insured, or decide you want to control your own health care dollars, then you will lose that insurance in 2014 and get stuck in the health insurance exchange buying a government-defined policy.
Jonathan Cohn thinks this is perfectly fine. If your employer changes insurers or moves to consumer-driven insurance, Cohn says, “You’ve already lost your insurance. Obama didn’t take it away from you. Your employer did.”
Why should insurance purchased up to six years before regulations take effect be considered subject to those regulations? Cohn does not explain.
Cohn’s argument also illustrates one of the great dangers of Obamacare – it allows those who would have government take over health care to blame the victims and accelerate the process. Your insurance premiums went up? Yes, your insurer as to cover more, but they’re just being greedy in raising premiums as much as they did. You can’t keep the policy you like? Your employer’s too blame. Your insurer drops the policy you had available because it couldn’t make changes to the policy? Again it’s the evil insurance companies, and wouldn’t it be better if we just had the government take over?
