Health Care Choices? That’s Not What the Bill Says…

Posted by Lorren on August 13, 2009

President Barack Obama has said in recent statements that he wanted people to be able to have health care choices. That if we were happy with our current health care, we should be able to keep it. However, he fails to mention one little thing about the new health care bill:

If you don’t have health insurance, or have your health coverage dropped, it will be illegal for you to obtain new coverage that is not government-based.

Of course, he doesn’t want you to know that, because that might make you dislike his program. But it’s right there in the bill:

HR 3200 Sec. 102 (c) (1) IN GENERAL- Individual health insurance coverage that is not grandfathered health insurance coverage under subsection (a) may only be offered on or after the first day of Y1 as an Exchange-participating health benefits plan.

In other words, forget about private health insurance if you don’t keep what you have from now until your death. And your kids can forget about private health insurance as well.

The bill is currently under deliberation, and could change, but if you want to see the text for yourself, you can look up HR 3200 at thomas.loc.gov.

Whatever happened to choice? What if we don’t want to be part of the government system? What if we want to buy private insurance? I’ve seen too many cases where health insurance was denied to people in other countries, even if they had the money to pay for it, because it was illegal. In Canada, a dog doesn’t have to wait for an MRI, but a person does. Dogs get better care because their owners pay out of pocket, and aren’t funded through the government.

I suppose that we’ll all have to go to Mexico if we want decent health care coverage in the future and we don’t have to wait. Not that Mexico is known as the health care capital of the world, but at least people are allowed to pay for the treatment that they want.