Are You Feeling Lucky, Punk?

Rory Cooper / July 16, 2009

President Obama and his liberal counterparts in the Congress continue to falsely promise that their health care plan wouldn’t affect Americans who don’t crave change. However, all conventional wisdom points the opposite direction. In fact, the Lewin Group has estimated that if a public plan was made available at Medicare payment levels, approximately 119 million Americans would be forced into the government plan. Currently, there are roughly 160 million Americans who have private health insurance. So this figure represents more than two out of three privately insured Americans. Are you going to be the lucky one out of three?

Turns out, luck has nothing to do with it. Even if the private insurance doesn’t “fizzle out” completely after most of its customers are forced into a government program, the federal government is going to slowly kill private insurance through their legislation. On page 16 of the $1.3 trillion Democrat House bill is a little-seen provision that moves to eliminate the private insurance market altogether. It says: (more…)