Posted by
Always To The Right on Tuesday, December 30, 2008 10:23:19 PM
President-elect Barack Obama cannot possibly keep his health care campaign promises, explains Heritage expert Robert Moffit.
On the campaign trail, Moffit says, the candidate
"promised--repeatedly--that Americans who already had health insurance
would not face any changes in their coverage and that their costs would
go down, saving the typical family $2,500 annually in premiums."
But under the president-elect's proposed health care reforms,
"millions of Americans will indeed lose their existing coverage, and
the promised premium savings are unlikely to materialize."
What's more, the programs amount to "a Trojan horse for government
control and the progressive destruction of Americans' private health
insurance coverage."
The incoming administration has suggested a number of radical health care changes:
- Establishing a new federally-run national health plan financed by the taxpayers;
- Imposing a mandate on employers to offer health insurance to their employees; and
- Creating national health insurance exchange in which the public
health plan would compete -- unfairly -- with private health insurance.
Because the government's health care plan would likely be less
costly up front to consumers, "the result would be a massive crowd-out
of private health insurance coverage, especially employer-based
coverage."