Obamacare’s Biggest Legacy? More Welfare Beneficiaries.

Once upon a time, in the darkest, most putrid bowels of the White House, the diabolical creators of the worst piece of health legislation in American history connived to completely uproot one-sixth of the economy by convincing the populace this was first, necessary, and second, a boon to the country.

The Obamacare architects knew that there weren’t that many Americans truly locked out of health insurance, and certainly not in the numbers that would justify such a massive overhaul. Yet they, with the help of the lapdog media, touted completely bogus numbers of 45 MILLION!, 47 MILLION!, and 50 MILLION! (depending on the source) to get your attention.

It worked, didn’t it? And we all felt bad to learn this, didn’t we? Half of the country was covered by company plans and we thought it was unconscionable that people hoping to purchase their own health insurance couldn’t afford to.

We were told in 2010, by Jonathan Gruber’s CBO, that the Obamacare insurance exchanges would cover 22 million more Americans by this year (which is, you’ll note, less than half of the purported 50 million uninsured. Some “universal coverage” plan!).

We were also told that insuring these long-suffering individuals would actually save us money!

“$2500 per family per year!”

Employers “would see premiums fall by as much as three-thousand percent, which means they could give you a raise!”

Eureka, Big Daddy Government will deliver us from ever-increasing health care costs!!! We’re on board!

Now, of course, we realize that the middle-class is taking this law directly on the chin. Workers with health insurance benefits are seeing their out-of-pocket costs skyrocket — while many in the individual market have decided to take their chances as they abandon expensive Obamacare policies with unreachable deductibles. 

Meanwhile, as the Congressional Budget Office churns its new Obamacare numbers, we find that the 2009-2010 CBO — Jonathan Gruber’s CBO — was remarkably off-base in its projections. In short, this year’s CBO report shows that the enrollment numbers are roughly half the 21-22 million 2016 exchange customers CBO had consistently forecast in years past, even as recently as March 2015. 

 

Get this: For all the sacrifice
the American people are making,
only 10 million people
are expected to be enrolled
in the exchanges by year’s end.

 

So what happened? 

Well, what happened was that an unexpectedly large number of Americans were folded into Medicaid, the worst coverage in the entire country, instead of signing up for Obamacare plans.

As the Weekly Standard’s Jeffrey Anderson points out, “In 2013, the CBO projected that, in the absence of Obamacare … 34 million people would have been on Medicaid or CHIP” in 2016.

What are the Medicaid/CHIP numbers now? 

Sixty-eight million. 

That’s right. Sixty-eight million American human beings are now on (lousy) Medicaid. Let that sink in.

Even better news for Progressives: CBO also believes that slower wage growth in the future will qualify even more Americans for the welfare programs.

What’s ironic for Obamacare proponents is that increased Medicaid enrollment also poses an existential threat to the exchanges. Take it from CBO itself, which projects that “as more people become eligible for Medicaid coverage, enrollment in coverage through the marketplaces will decline.”

Dentons, a global legal firm, maintains that this is already happening:

“Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) cover 17 million more people in 2016 than projected, while private insurance through the non-group market, including exchanges … covers 10 million fewer people. Millions of young, healthy people are enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP, rather than in private insurance offered through the exchanges.”

Before a 2012 Supreme Court ruling made Medicaid expansion optional for the states, CBO assumed all Americans with incomes at or below 138 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL) would receive Medicaid. Nineteen states are currently opting not to expand, so a smaller pool of Americans are Medicaid-eligible.

Still, as Dentons notes, “in the past six years Medicaid and CHIP enrollment has nearly doubled from the 2010 baseline.”

We’ve repeatedly been told that state legislatures opting not to expand their Medicaid programs are “greedy, selfish and uncaring.” Yet it is in Medicaid expansion states that Obamacare enrollment and risk pools suffer the most.

In non-expansion states, low-income, young, able-bodied Americans can purchase highly-subsidized exchange policies and help to balance out the costs of older, sicker enrollees. In expansion states, those same young, able-bodied Americans at or below 138 percent FPL are FORCED into Medicaid — as in:

“Sorry, you can’t have a real insurance policy.
You’re too poor.”

In the nation as a whole, insurers need about 40 percent of Obamacare enrollees to be 18- to 34-year-olds. Meanwhile, over at healthcare.gov, only “26 percent of the individuals who selected, or were automatically reenrolled in, a 2016 Marketplace plan are ages 18 to 34.” 

Where’d they go?
Medicaid, anyone??

The Wall Street Journal reports the reason the young and healthy are needed in the exchanges: to “hold down premium rates by balancing out the greater medical spending of older enrollees.” Insurers are already dismayed over the greater-than-expected costs of their current Obamacare populations and are threatening to raise 2017 premiums by double digits. As a result, reports of adverse risk selection and death spirals are proliferating.

It wasn’t enough that Progressives like Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, and Nancy Pelosi put the exchanges at risk by insisting on a Cadillac Tax delay — which thus postpones the incentive for employers to dump workers in the Obamacare “exchanges, whether they like it or not.”

Now we see that their failed Medicaid policies have doubled down on the damage.

The Obamacare exchanges are doomed,
and Progressives have only themselves to blame.

Obamacare’s “Wage Growth” Hoax

Families across the country are facing escalating out-of-pocket health care costs and, as a result, less disposable income, thanks to Obamacare’s Cadillac Tax. A major funding mechanism for the law, the 40 percent excise tax forces employers to cut back on health benefits, leaving workers increasingly subject to higher deductibles and copayments.

(Note: See here, here, and here for more details on the Cadillac Tax.)

The drive-by media originally maintained the Cadillac Tax was merely a justified penalty on unusually expensive gold-plated plans — such as those owned by Goldman-Sachs executives — that theoretically encourage over-utilization of medical care. 

However, we now know that the tax was designed to eventually target every employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) plan. We’re talking about 158 million Americans.

Since employers have already begun reducing the generosity of their plans to prepare for the tax’s 2018 implementation, even the drive-by media has had to pay attention to a flurry of reports — from sources like Forbes, The Los Angeles Times, Bloomberg, the Institute for Policy Innovation, The Wall Street Journal, and more — on soaring employee cost-sharing.

Completely blindsided by these revelations, Progressives are now referring to copayment and deductible victims as “underinsured” and calling for action, including government requirements that insurers lower deductibles. Some are even demanding a repeal of the Cadillac Tax.

This situation shouldn’t have been a surprise to anyone. This is, as they say, a feature, not a bug, of the law; the Cadillac Tax was always intended to discourage patients from consuming health care. This is Obamacare’s promised “cost control.”

Law professor (and big-time Cadillac Tax fan) Edward Zelinsky explains:

 “Those who drafted the Cadillac Tax presumed that this tax…would be passed on to the employer and that the employer, in turn, would transfer this additional cost to its employees. In this indirect fashion, the Cadillac Tax should sensitize employees to the high costs of their health care coverage.”

Steve Wojcik of the National Business Group on Health described the policy’s intention:

“If employees have more cost sharing…then they’re more mindful when they access health care to choose a more efficient provider or say, ‘You know, I don’t need to go to the doctor every time I have a cough.’” 

America, you were conned from the very start. Not only did politicians lie — including Obama, dozens of times — in maintaining we could keep our plans, period, but so did Progressive reporters, who insisted that job-based coverage would be untouched.

Young Jonathan Cohn explained that for most of those with employer-sponsored insurance, Medicare, or Medicaid, 

“Very little about their health plans are changing because of the law,
at least outwardly.” 

America’s alleged wunderkind and intellectual giant Ezra Klein told us: 

“For most companies, the Affordable Care Act won’t bring much change at all.” 

And Ryan Lizza  assured readers that:

“About eighty percent of Americans are more or less left alone by the health-care act—largely people who have health insurance through their employers.” 

To prove that most people wouldn’t be affected by Obamacare, the liberals even paraded a pie chart, because apparently, in their view, “stupid” Americans understand colorful pictures more clearly than words. 

Even now, in the midst of this massive shift to higher employee cost-sharing, at least one of the law’s engineers is still perpetrating the fable that Obamacare isn’t affecting company plans.

Why did Obamacare’s designers aim to abuse American workers this way? Why was it necessary that Americans lose their policies to make Obamacare work?

To rake in more federal money, of course. The tax was devised to undercut the IRS provision that allows workers to receive tax-free company benefits. Policy experts estimate the government is robbed of $250 billion per year through this arrangement. 

And Progressive lawmakers rationalized that as employers scaled back or eliminated tax-free plans, they’d offset the loss with pay raises — in other words, taxable wages.

Here’s then-Senate Finance Committee chair Max Baucus explaining your raise.

Progressive politicians — backed by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) — predicted that the excise tax itself would raise relatively little, since companies would have no choice but to bring plan costs below the tax’s threshold. Obamacare crafter Jonathan Gruber is quoted to say, “I would be surprised if [the IRS] even collect[s].’” 

Most of the $201.4 billion revenue over 2013-2019 was predicted to result from payroll and income taxation of, yes, your raises.

Are you following? America’s gonna get a raise, any day now.  There’s even an econo-wonk term for this phenomenon — the “Wage Growth” effect.

So what about this “Wage Growth?” And who was the genius predicting with absolute certainty how companies would react to any savings on benefit costs?

Let’s flip the calendar back to 1993-94, when Hillary Clinton and Friends were busily at work trying to accomplish a very similar government takeover of America’s health care sector. 

“Wage Growth” was a major assumption in the Clinton bill: employers were expected to “shift to wages” any savings or costs they experienced due to the employer mandate to offer insurance. Those offering ESI for the first time were predicted to offset costs by reducing wages; companies that had previously offered ESI would receive government subsidies and were expected to pass along those savings to employees. 

The proponent of the Wage Growth hypothesis was 28-year-old Jonathan Gruber — yes, that Jonathan Gruber — who explained it to a health reform group in December 1993, and in testimony before a House committee five days later. When testifying before a Senate committee in July 1994, he again maintained the legitimacy of his unproven assumption.

Gruber was successful in persuading the 1994 CBO to accept the same premise: “employers facing an increase in their premiums would probably shift most of the added cost to their workers by reducing cash wages” and “employees of firms that would pay less would receive higher wages.” CBO’s evidence? Two research papers (one of which was still “forthcoming”) written by Jonathan Gruber.

Fifteen years later, in the midst of the Obamacare battle, Gruber was again peddling Wage Growth, offering professional papers and articles attempting to prove that Wage Growth would materialize with Obama’s reform package as well. Gruber, then more heavily involved with the CBO, influenced the body to repeatedly make the same Wage Growth assumption with Obamacare. (That’s for a subsequent post.)

For now, remember that it was critical that CBO find that Obamacare would pay for itself, as Obama promised and demanded a reform package that didn’t increase the deficit by a dime. Also remember that CBO analysis killed HillaryCare when it found the proposal increased the deficit by $74 billion. 

Obama and his Progressive Senate buddies couldn’t endure such an outcome. And government control of one-sixth of the economy couldn’t wait. 

So Jonathan Gruber rode in to save Obama by convincing just about everyone who mattered that the plan was deficit-friendly. Gruber then effectively went “on tour” to sell his claim to the American people, citing the support of the “independent CBO” — that’s right, the CBO that relied upon his Wage Growth hypothesis. 

Why is this important now, six years later? Because a wage increase has not occurred, despite ever-increasing benefit cuts, and was known to be improbable before Obamacare was passed. In a December 2009 Mercer employer survey, only 16 percent of respondents said they’d convert any cost savings into pay raises. In Towers Perrin’s September 2009 survey, a paltry nine percent said they’d increase wages.

It’s less than clear that even Jonathan Gruber believed in the Wage Growth hypothesis, since he appears to have solely relied on his analysis of wage and health insurance trends in the late-90s. And he doesn’t appear entirely convinced he hadn’t overlooked some confounding variables.

Gruber told The New York Times in January 2010, “‘There are many academic studies showing that when health costs rise, wages fall,’ he said. ‘In the mid- and late-1990s, when we got health costs under control, wages rose nicely.’ But he added that other factors could have also lifted wages during that period.” (More on that later, too.)

Additionally, liberal economist Lawrence Mishel, a critic of Gruber’s Wage Growth hypothesis, wrote on January 12, 2010, that ”Gruber clearly overreached with the argument about health care driving wage trends and has acknowledged that to me privately (yesterday).”

Given this, one must wonder: would Obamacare have passed if not for the false narrative of deficit reduction? Even in Gruber’s 2011 comic book, he admits this about the law:

“There are risks.  But we have the benefit of
the independent projections of the CBO
…to suggest that this should work out.” 

Now we’re discovering that those CBO projections were not very “independent” and instead were biased by Gruber’s assumptions.

Stay tuned. A subsequent post will explain how Jonathan Gruber manipulated economic research to advance his Wage Growth hoax.

Reprehensible Republicans Ruin Medicare

Do you remember reading this from the Associated Press in mid-April? 

Suddenly, bipartisanship has broken out on Capitol Hill.

We were supposed to feel so proud of our Congress! They worked together, reached across the aisle, and enacted a permanent repeal of Medicare’s reviled SGR Fix (or Doc Fix)! 

Well, the Drive-By Media didn’t tell the rest of the story. What happened is this:

212 House Republicans and 46 Senate Republicans
joined the Democrats in radically changing the way
Medicare providers are paid
— and controlled —
by the federal government.

That’s right. The same GOP leaders vowing to repeal Obamacare just grafted it Big Time onto Medicare.

We expect this from the progressive members of Congress. But weren’t we supposed to expect a Republican Congress to lessen the size and scope of government? Didn’t last November’s election results reflect “a mandate to pass sensible legislation?”

And they wonder why we don’t take them seriously.

So who’s gonna pay for this knucklehead move? Eventually, you. 

Thanks to Congress, it’ll soon be very difficult to find a health care professional who’ll accept your Medicare card, since MACRA (Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act) applies Obamacare’s experiments to the whole program.

It wasn’t as if Medicare was untouched before MACRA, despite what HuffPo’s Jeffrey Young thinks. Thanks to Obamacare, pay-for-performance schemes like Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) began in Medicare in 2012, and they’ve produced less than impressive results thus far. That didn’t stop our 2015 Republican “leaders” from expanding them.

What are ACOs? Think of the Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) of the 1990s, an idea that proved so wildly unpopular that patients revolted in near-universal protests about limited provider networks and rationed care. 

Still, the Obamacare Congress thought it was wise to apply HMO 2.0 to Medicare patients, but with an additional feature: patient satisfaction scores. That means ACO providers are financially rewarded for limiting care and procedures, but also have to make the patient feel happy about it!

(Never mind that payment for satisfaction is associated with higher health care expenses and a greater likelihood of hospitalization and death. The Obamacare Congress knows best.)

MACRA essentially forces all Medicare providers into Obamacare’s experimental ACOs. This spells the end to private independent healthcare practices, as providers must align themselves with a huge health system to survive.

Well, to be fair, doctors do have a choice. They can continue in traditional fee-for-service care, but anti-Obamacare warrior and ophthalmologist Kris Held explains the dangers of this route:

Government bureaucrats and committees will call the shots for Medicare patients. The law actually creates Alternative Payment Models (APMs) and a Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) which require physicians to follow a government rubric on which we will be graded in grade school fashion. Physicians, now defined as “eligible providers,” will get grades from 0-100 as determined by the Secretary of Health and Human Services. The grade for doing what the Secretary prescribes is called the Composite Performance Score. The score is publicly posted on the Physician Compare Internet Website of CMS, and the Secretary of HHS assigns each physician a payment adjustment factor based on this score. The payment adjustment factor will be positive, 0, or negative. Based on how well a doctor “performs” for the Secretary, the pay could be adjusted 9% up or 9% down, meaning the Secretary’s most compliant doctors will be paid 18% more than those who don’t perfectly make her wishes our commands. What will doctors put up with, and what will we do or not do for patients in order to be paid 18% more than those government deems “less quality” doctors and to avoid public humiliation on the government website? This is indeed chronic and continued abuse taken to a higher, institutionalized level.

That’s right. In either scenario, doctors will be scrutinized by federal bureaucrats aiming to reduce Medicare expenses by dictating care according to one-size-fits-all treatment protocols.

Since the passage of MACRA, many doctors are considering resignation from Medicare. “Opt out providers” will still treat you, but you’re gonna have to pay privately, outside Medicare’s supervision and reimbursement mechanisms.

This has one obvious disadvantage for the typical Medicare patient, since, depending upon the arrangement negotiated, costs may be higher to see these opt-out doctors. 

But it also means Creepy Uncle Sam won’t be in the exam room, and you’ll have care that is tailored to the individual, not forced onto you by Washington DC bean counters.

And it’s likely to be far more affordable than you may think, since health care professionals who opt out of arrangements with government and private insurance have reduced overhead costs. These doctors can charge less than their hand-cuffed peers, who can’t reduce fees for cash patients without violating government and insurance contracts.

As the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons pointed out when MACRA was passed, “opted-out physicians are able to charge a mutually agreeable fee (sometimes lower than the Medicare copayment), drastically reduce administrative overhead, give their patients the time that they need, keep records confidential, and prescribe according to their best judgment rather than a government-approved protocol.”

It’s reasonable to expect that, due to the “rising misery index” and increasing retirement rates among physicians, there will be far fewer of them in coming years. Among those that remain, a growing number will opt out of The System.

And you’ll know who to blame. This time, Republicans are the ones who apparently didn’t bother to read the bill.

Medicare providers wishing to learn how to opt out can visit here.

Americans wishing to do business with liberty-minded physicians can find them here.

Citizen Journalist v. Citizen Cohn: Obamacare Is All About Redistribution

This morning Huffington Post’s Jonathan Cohn let the cat out of the bag, admitting that Obamacare was a redistribution scheme.

@CitizenCohn @Josephriskgmt @AmSpec Maybe we should just cut to the chase and everyone admit the ACA is about Redistribution.

— Rich Weinstein (@phillyrich1) April 13, 2015

@phillyrich1 @Josephriskgmt @AmSpec Not afraid to admit! It's a transfer from healthy to sick, rich to poor.

— Jonathan Cohn (@CitizenCohn) April 13, 2015

@CitizenCohn @Josephriskgmt @AmSpec Could you point me to an article you wrote that makes that point BEFORE the law was passed.

— Rich Weinstein (@phillyrich1) April 13, 2015

Touché, Mr. Weinstein.

Do you remember anyone — journalist or politician — divulging that information before the law was passed? How about when Obama was running for reelection? Of course not. The policy would have been as unpopular as the Cadillac Tax is now becoming.

It’s unclear when Jonathan Cohn learned Obamacare was a redistribution tool, but he admits he was pretty cozy with the Obamacare architects during the law’s creation, especially with Jonathan Gruber.

And remember when Jonathan Gruber told his guests that Obamacare was written in a “tortured way” so as to deceive voters, especially as regards its redistributive mechanisms? 

In terms of risk-rated subsidies, if you had a law which said that healthy people are going to pay in — you made explicit that healthy people pay in and sick people get money? — it would not have passed. Lack of transparency is a huge political advantage.

Where was the American press on this nugget? Oh, that’s right. They weren’t interested in doing any investigative journalism on the law. That discovery was left to a financial advisor in Philly, an ordinary American who tried for well over a year to get the incurious press’ attention.

But Obamacare doesn’t only redistribute wealth. It also redistributes health.

In his January, 2015, Forbes piece titled “Is Obamacare Squeezing The Middle Class?” John Goodman explains:

Poor, long-uninsured patients are getting Medicaid through Obamacare and finally going to the doctor’s office for care. But middle-class patients are increasingly staying away…Gallup polling shows what has been happening over time: Even though more people are insured today than in quite some time, more people are putting off medical treatment because of cost than has been the case in the past eight years.”

Even The Los Angeles Times had to agree:

[T]he law hasn’t provided much relief to American workers either, according to a new study of employer-provided health benefits. Workers continue to be squeezed by rising insurance costs, eroding benefits and stagnant wages, the report from the nonprofit Commonwealth Fund found…”Workers are paying more but getting less protective benefits,” the report’s authors noted. 

Last December, The New York Times’ survey showed the impact of health care expenses on Americans, concluding that:

Affording medical care is more of a hardship.
Out-of-pocket expenses have gone up.

It’s an axiom of economics (and common sense): when you increase the costs of a commodity, in this case health care, you reduce demand for it. And so middle-class Americans, hammered by rising expenses, are avoiding care, even if that doesn’t bode well for their long-term physical and emotional health.

This will be a story that plays out over coming years.

But the concepts of health and wealth redistribution should have been put before the American public, by lawmakers and journalists like Jonathan Cohn, before the law was passed — and then cemented by Obama’s reelection.

It’s likely, however, that they thought we were too stupid to understand how amazingly awesome Obamacare would be for us. Progressive elitists always think they know what’s best for the unwashed masses, and if they have to lie to get their policies through, they will. To Obama and his ilk, the ends always justify the means.

How Obama Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Obamacare Bomb

Last fall Duke University research scholar Chris Conover wrote a powerful piece titled “Obamacare’s Three-Legged Stool of Deception,” in which he explained the covert way Obamacare crafters aimed to eliminate job-based health insurance through the Cadillac Tax.

• The first leg is that the Cadillac tax is paid by insurance companies, when in reality it is paid by employees. 
• The second leg is that the Cadillac tax is aimed at “lavish” high cost plans, when in reality it is designed to eventually hit virtually every employer health plan (even those with lower-than-average costs). 
• The third leg is that the Cadillac tax is functionally equivalent to a reform long championed by conservatives: a cap on the tax exclusion for employer-sponsored health insurance. 

Dr. Conover hit a home run in detailing the duplicitousness of the law’s architects, and his piece is probably the best exposé of the Cadillac Tax you’ll find.

But who designed the Cadillac Tax, and how did Obama come to love it?

In his first presidential campaign, Obama repeatedly maintained that he was dead-set against taxation of health insurance benefits. He even chastened his opponent, Senator McCain, for proposing that Americans receive tax credits instead of tax-free insurance benefits.

“This is your plan, John: for the first time in history,
you will be taxing people’s health care benefits.”

Ezekiel Emanuel, special advisor for health policy during the law’s creation, gives us important insights into how, in the summer of 2009, Obama decided campaign promises weren’t as important as was more money in the federal coffers.

Zeke describes a “hot Friday July afternoon” in the White House when he says the “core health team” was working on Obamacare. After about an hour, he recalls, the president walked in, “in his shirt sleeves with his cuffs rolled up. He was there to give us a sort of uplift.” After pleasantries were exchanged,

“I raised with the President one of the issues that had been burning up the staff — the issue of something called the Tax Exclusion.”

In both videos linked above, Zeke describes the issues he and others had with tax-free employee benefits: 

“The big argument we were having was, people on what was called the economic part of the health team…we wanted to do something about the tax exclusion because it’s inflationary, it’s regressive, it’s a lot of money.”

One obstacle? Obama wasn’t clear on his stance: 

“We got into some weeds, and he would say, ‘What did we say about that? What was my position on that? ‘Cos the people should know I stand by my position.’” 

And since David Axelrod, his senior advisor, pointed out that he’d spent $100 million running ads against McCain’s position, the Campaigner-in-Chief stalled, worried that he’d be contradicting his promises.

“David Axelrod, as part of this debate internally, created a montage of all the ads that President Obama had run against John McCain attacking McCain’s proposal — which was basically to get rid of the tax exclusion and give people a tax credit instead to buy health insurance.”

Eventually the economic team won Obama’s heart by showing him how much power and money ($250 billion per year) the Cadillac Tax would grant him.

“I said, you know, Mr. President, as President, you can control a lot related to the public provision of health care insurance — Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, veterans health benefits — but you don’t have a lot of power over the private side. And that, after all, is the bigger side. It’s most of the money, covers half the American population.” 

That “hot Friday” was July 17, 2009, when the Washington, D.C., temperature soared to 90.9º.

“(O)ver the course of the next few days, this was Friday, then Monday and Tuesday we had meetings around this, the idea began to hold that we should do something about it, we shouldn’t roll it back, but we should modify it.”

The following Monday and Tuesday were July 20 and July 21, 2009. White House visitor logs show an “Economics Team” indeed met the morning of the 20th. (White House visitor logs also indicate that the beloved Jonathan Gruber was in attendance!)

So why did THIS happen, on Thursday, July 23, 2009, in Shaker Heights, Ohio?

“First of all, in terms of taxing benefits, I said I oppose the taxing of health care benefits that people are already receiving, so that’s not a proposal that I’m supportive of…But what I said and I’ve taken off the table would be the idea that you just described, which would be that you would actually provide — you would eliminate the tax deduction that employers get for providing you with health insurance, because, frankly, a lot of employers then would stop providing health care, and we’d probably see more people lose their health insurance than currently have it.”

Dear President Obama, wasn’t that exactly the goal? That we lose our plans and have to join your lousy exchanges?

It’s very odd that Obama repeatedly characterizes his views using terms like “what I’ve said is,” rather than “what I believe is.” 

But it’s more than disappointing to learn that Obama lied to his Shaker Heights audience — and America — mere days after he fell in love with the bomb that will blow up job-based insurance.

H/T Citizen researcher Kathy in Alabama

April Fools’ Bracket: Who Wins? The Cannon or The Gruber?

Financial services company Sun Life is again hosting its Wake Up Summit. Its last webinar explored the effect of Obamacare on the nation, and Jonathan Gruber, MIT economist and Obamacare architect, was a speaker in the keynote address and a contributor to one panel discussion (registration required to view). 

The conference could have been described as boringly collegial.

This year’s webinar occurs on April Fools’ Day and may prove more provocative. Wake Up Summit 2015 will again feature Jonathan Gruber, but this time alongside Michael Cannon, the Cato Institute’s director of health policy studies and, with legal scholar Jonathan Adler, one of the masterminds of the so-called Obamacare “subsidies cases.” The informed reader will recall King v. Burwell as the case most recently heard at the Supreme Court.

If you’re free at 2:00 p.m. on Wednesday, you can register to watch it live here. Click the RSVP button on the right side of the page.

You can also make the event more lively. Sun Life is inviting questions before the event. 

You may have a variety of questions of your own for Mr. Gruber. But you could also pose questions like these, for either participant:

1. Everyone’s heard that “if you like your plan, you can keep your plan.” Would you please explain how the ACA affects those who receive health insurance from their employers?”
2. When Senator Obama ran for office he promised not to eliminate the tax exclusion for job-based insurance. But doesn’t the Cadillac Tax achieve the same goal over an extended time frame?
3. Don’t you think the Cadillac Tax is mislabeled since it appears to eventually impact most if not all job-based plans?
4. Why does the Cadillac Tax cap grow at CPI or CPI +1? Won’t that assure that most if not all plans become Cadillac Tax plans?
5. What do you think of S&P Capitals’ recent prediction that by 2020 90% of those with job-based coverage will be shifted to the ACA exchanges?
6. Do you agree with Medicare chief actuary Richard Foster’s prediction that “essentially all Americans” will over time get their private coverage through ACA exchanges?
7. Exactly how does the ACA cause “wage growth” for workers?
8. The CBO scores the ACA as improving the deficit more in the out years than in the first ten years. Why is that?
9. Do you think the ACA is more like Romneycare or Hillarycare?
10. If states do not establish their own exchanges, what role do states really have with regard to the ACA?
11. Is a “single payer“ health system more likely if the ACA fails or if the ACA succeeds?

Of course, you’re also free to ask not-so-serious questions of either Mr. Gruber or Mr. Cannon, questions like these:

1. Why aren’t you, Mr. Gruber, still hiding under a rock?
2. Are you, Mr. Gruber, capable of feeling shame?
3. Mr. Gruber, would you like to clarify your “falling off a building” prediction for workers losing job-based insurance?
4. Mr. Gruber, why were your Obamacare models so wrong?
5. Have you, Mr. Gruber, apologized to your family for publicly humiliating them?
6. Has MIT placed any sanctions on you, Mr. Gruber, given your damaging effects on its reputation?
7. Mr. Gruber, when will you turn over your “research assistants’” records?
8. Mr. Cannon, how did you become so flipping awesome?

Feel free to offer your questions in the comments section below. But it’s far more important that you send them to Sun Life.

Of course, as Mr. Cannon points out, Mr. Gruber may not show up at all. 

Either I will be sharing a stage with Jonathan Gruber 4/1, or I am about to become the victim of the most awesome April Fools prank ever.

— Michael F. Cannon 🇮🇪🇺🇸 (@mfcannon) March 26, 2015

John Kerry Is No More Trustworthy Than The Disgraced Jonathan Gruber

In summer of 2009, as Obamacare crafters were assembling their plan to destroy the U.S. health care industry, they faced several problems, and most of them involved financing.

Over twenty years ago, Mrs. Clinton’s health reform plan died when the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) determined it would cost too much. 

Learning from her failure, White House officials knew they had to create a plan the CBO could score as budget-neutral. But where, oh, where, would they find the money to not only subsidize insurance purchases but also fund an “unknowable” number of new agencies, boards, commissions, and task forces? 

It was at that point in late-July that Obama’s economic team advocated that the plan eliminate the tax exemption for job-based insurance. What was later dubbed the Cadillac Tax would result in an estimated federal tax grab of $250 billion per year. 

But, as Jonathan Gruber told a Boston audience, any plan that ended the tax exclusion would have been a political hot potato. “Economists have called for 40 years to get rid of the regressive, inefficient and expensive tax subsidy provided for employer provider health insurance…It turns out politically it’s really hard to get rid of.”

That’s where then-Senator John Kerry became Gruber’s “Massachusetts hero” by introducing a scheme to trick Americans. “No, no,” Gruber quotes Kerry, “we’re not going to tax your health insurance. We’re going to tax those evil insurance companies!” 

 “When we all know it’s a tax on people who hold those insurance plans.”

An ordinary person responsible for such duplicity might have experienced regret, even shame. But not Kerry, who, like Gruber, aimed to exploit Americans’ “lack of basic economic understanding.”

Less than six months later, Kerry doubled down on his deceit, penning a January 2010 Huffington Post piece explaining his support for the Cadillac Tax.

It will help control future health care costs without — I repeat without — directly taxing employees.

Notice the word “directly?” By this he means the tax on insurance companies will be borne by the worker, but certainly not clearly or directly. It was intended that Americans blame insurance companies and employers for jacking up premiums, deductibles, and copayments. (In fact, Harvard faculty members are already blaming the university for out-of-pocket cost increases.) Later, they hope, we will curse our bosses for eliminating job-based insurance altogether.

The excise tax included in the Senate-passed health care bill will affect only a small portion of the very highest cost health plans.

Not according to the American Health Policy Institute, who projects the tax will “hit 17 percent of all American businesses, and 38 percent of large employers” in 2018. And as Gruber explained, the method establishing the yearly tax threshold means that eventually all plans will be subject to the Cadillac Tax. 

For the small sub-set of plans that are affected, the likely impact will be to increase workers’ wages. MIT economist Jon Gruber recently found that the excise tax included in the Senate bill would lead employers to raise wages by $223 billion between 2010 and 2019. In 2019, wages for those affected by the provision will be higher by about $660 per household. I repeat — raise wages.

Did anyone think to ask Kerry how a tax on insurance companies naturally produces higher pay for America’s workers? That’s a curious connection, isn’t it?

Well, you see, Secretary Kerry conveniently omitted the “Employers-Kill-Your-Health-Plan” factor in his analysis. What he failed to mention is his apparent belief that, as employers shrink insurance benefits or dump employees in Obamacare exchanges, they’ll compensate them with higher wages. 

(By the way, this is an assumption based on Gruber modeling, the same model predicting that our health insurance premiums would fall under Obamacare.) 

Finally,

After spending years and years hearing from workers tired of seeing their unions forced to spend all of their energy at the bargaining table just to hold on to health care instead of negotiating for better wages, we now have a way to help increase wages and improve health care simultaneously.

If Kerry believed union workers would gleefully skip off to the Obamacare exchanges, he was wildly uninformed.

Let’s not forget: this is the same John Kerry currently negotiating a nuclear agreement with Iran. 

More than likely, Iran’s mullahs will fare better than Americans have with Obamacare. 

But they may have to sign the deal to find out what’s in the deal.

Jonathan Gruber Cutely Likens Obamacare Victims to Those “Falling Off A Building”

When the “Gruber-gate” story broke last fall, TIME’s Kate Pickert explained that the scandal represented no more than a “flash of candor.” 

Both sides lied, she said. 

Supporters of the law did, in fact, do their best to obscure unpopular provisions—like new taxes. But Republican opponents were just as deceptive in their efforts to exaggerate the law’s potential negative effects.

Journalists, she claimed, “focused more on the politics of the bill than its policies,” and therefore didn’t explain Obamacare well enough. 

And that’s why Americans weren’t aware that the law aimed — through the Cadillac tax — to eliminate 156 million workers’ job-based health insurance.

Pickert summarized a few secrets Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber shared in his now-controversial speeches:

• In one video, Gruber says that if the public had really understood that the law would require healthy people to pay for sick people, it wouldn’t have passed. 
• He also says that the penalty for eschewing health insurance is a “tax,” though Democrats avoided that word because it would have made the law politically unfeasible. 
• In another video, Gruber explains that a new ACA tax on high-cost health plans supposedly levied on insurers would actually be passed through to consumers.

Pickert confesses that she knew the inner workings of Obamacare, since Gruber had talked with her “many times over the past six years.” 

In one conversation she found worthy of sharing, Gruber reportedly described the Cadillac tax with an analogy reminiscent of the fate of 9/11 victims in the Twin Towers:

In pitching the ACA, Democrats had been adamant that the law would support and sustain the employer-based system, not erode it. But Gruber knew better and he told me so, likening workers being kicked off job-based health plans to people “falling off a building,” an outcome that architects of the ACA knew was likely and had planned for.

People falling off a building. 

Isn’t that adorable?

Ms. Pickert apparently believes Gruber’s openness with his private audiences is refreshing. She fails to address why the American public wasn’t privy to Gruber’s secrets.

But, you see, if America had known Obamacare would kill job-based coverage, Obama would have lost his bid for reelection.

And in the world of Kate Pickert and her ilk, that would have been a far worse outcome than falling off a building.

At Least Eighty-Eight Democrats Lied to You About Obamacare

President Obama wasn’t the only politician to qualify for Politifact’s “2013 Lie of The Year.” Many members of Congress also assured their constituents that Obamacare would leave health insurance plans intact.

Now we know that “the vast majority” of Americans would lose their 2010 health insurance coverage and that the Cadillac tax will eliminate employer-sponsored insurance for many in coming years. Since another wave of cancellations is occurring, it’s worthwhile to expose the Congress members who caused this harm.

In late-2013, when millions learned their policies were being canceled, Senator Mitch McConnell’s office compiled a list of 27 senators who’d pledged that Americans could keep their coverage.

Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV): “In fact, one of our core principles is that if you like the health care you have, you can keep it.” (Sen. Reid, Congressional Record, S.8642, 8/3/09)

Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL): “We believe — and we stand by this — if you like your current health insurance plan, you will be able to keep it, plain and simple, straightforward.” (Sen. Durbin, Congressional Record, S.6401, 6/10/09)

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY): “If you like your insurance, you keep it.” (U.S. Senate, Finance Committee, Bill Mark-Up, 9/29/09)

Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA): “Again, if you like what you have, you will be able to keep it. Let me say this again: If you like what you have, when our legislation is passed and signed by the President, you will be able to keep it.” (Sen. Murray, Congressional Record, S.6400, 6/10/09)

Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT): “That is why one of the central promises of health care reform has been and is: If you like what you have, you can keep it. That is critically important. If a person has a plan, and he or she likes it, he or she can keep it.” (Sen. Baucus, Congressional Record, S.7676, 9/29/10)

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA): “One of the things we put in the health care bill when we designed it was the protection for consumers to keep the plan they have if they like it; thus, the term ‘grandfathered plans.’ If you have a plan you like — existing policies — you can keep them. … we said, if you like a plan, you get to keep it, and you can grandfather it in.” (Sen. Harkin, Congressional Record, S.7675-6, 9/29/10)

Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI): “Under the bill, if you like the insurance you have now, you may keep it and it will improve.” (Rep. Baldwin, Press Release, 3/18/10)

Sen. Mark Begich (D-AK): “If you got a doctor now, you got a medical professional you want, you get to keep that. If you have an insurance program or a health care policy you want of ideas, make sure you keep it. That you can keep who you want.” (Sen. Begich, Townhall Event, 7/27/09)

Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO.): “We should begin with a basic principle: if you have coverage and you like it, you can keep it. If you have your doctor, and you like him or her, you should be able to keep them as well. We will not take that choice away from you.” (Sen. Bennet, Press Release, 6/11/09)

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.): “So we want people to be able to keep the health care they have. And the answer to that is choice of plans. And in the exchange, we’re going to have lots of different plans, and people will be able to keep the health care coverage they need and they want.” (Sen. Boxer, Press Release, 2/8/11)

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH): “Our bill says if you have health insurance and you like it, you can keep it…” (Sen. Brown, Congressional Record, S.12612, 12/7/09)

Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD): “For the people of Maryland, this bill will provide a rational way in which they can maintain their existing coverage…” (Sen. Cardin, Congressional Record, S.13798, 12/23/09)

Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA): “ If you like what you have, you like the plan you have, you can keep it. It is not going to change.” (Sen. Casey, Congressional Record, S.8070, 7/24/09)

Sen. Kay Hagan (D-NC): “People who have insurance they’re happy with can keep it. We need to support the private insurance industry so that people who have insurance they’re happy with can keep it while also providing a backstop option for people without access to affordable coverage.” (“Republicans Vent As Other Compromise Plans Get Aired,” National Journal’s Congress Daily, 6/18/09)

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA): “If you like the insurance that you have, you’ll be able to keep it.” (MSNBC’s Hardball, 12/16/09)

Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT): “[I]f you like the insurance you now have, keep the insurance you have.” (CNN’s “Newsroom,” 10/22/09)

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ): “If you like what you have, you get to keep it” “Menendez is a member of the Senate Finance Committee, which is expected to release a bill later this week. He stressed that consumers who are satisfied with their plans won’t have to change. ‘If you like what you have, you get to keep it,’ he said.” (“Health Care Plan Would Help N.J., Menendez Says,” The Record, 6/19/09)

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR): “[E]nsuring that those who like their insurance get to keep it” “The HELP Committee bill sets forward a historic plan that will, for the first time in American history, give every American access to affordable health coverage, reduce costs, and increase choice, while ensuring that those who like their insurance get to keep it.” (Sen. Merkley, Press Release, 7/15/09)

Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD): “It means that if you like the insurance you have now, you can keep it.” (Sen. Mikulski, Press Release, 12/24/09)

Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV): “I want people to know, the President’s promise that if you like the coverage you have today you can keep it is a pledge we intend to keep.” (U.S. Senate, Finance Committee, Hearing, 9/23/09)

Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI): “If you like the insurance you have, you can choose to keep it.” (Sen. Reed, Town Hall Event, 6/25/09)

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT): “‘If you have coverage you like, you can keep it,’ says Sen. Sanders.” (“Sick And Wrong,” Rolling Stone, 4/5/10)

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH): ‘if you have health coverage that you like, you get to keep it’ “My understanding … is that … if you have health coverage that you like you can keep it. As I said, you may have missed my remarks at the beginning of the call, but one of the things I that I said as a requirement that I have for supporting a bill is that if you have health coverage that you like you should be able to keep that. …under every scenario that I’ve seen, if you have health coverage that you like, you get to keep it.” (Sen. Shaheen, “Health Care Questions From Across New Hampshire,” Accessed 11/13/13)

Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI): “As someone who has a large number of large employers in my state, one of the things I appreciate about the chairman’s mark is — is the grandfathering provisions, the fact that the people in my state, 60 percent of whom have insurance, are going to be able to keep it. And Mr. Chairman, I appreciate that. That’s a strong commitment. It’s clear in the bill…if you have your insurance you can keep it. That’s the bottom line for me.” (U.S. Senate, Finance Committee, Bill Mark-Up, 9/24/09)

Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT): “‘If you like your coverage, you’ll be able to keep it,’ Tester said, adding that if Medicare changes, it will only become stronger”. (“Tester In Baker To Discuss Health Care,” The Fallon County Times, 11/20/09)

Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM): “Some worried reform would alter their current coverage. It won’t. If you like your current plan, you can keep it.” (“What I Learned: About Health Care Reform This Summer, By Your Lawmakers In Congress,” Albuquerque Journal, 9/8/09)

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI): “…it honors President Obama’s programs and the promise of all of the Presidential candidates that if you like the plan you have, you get to keep it. You are not forced out of anything.”(Sen. Whitehouse, Congressional Record, S.8668, 8/3/09)

And the senators weren’t alone. At least 60 House members misled their constituents as well.

Rep. G.K. Butterfield (D-NC): “For North Carolinians who already have health insurance, the only changes you will see under the Affordable Care Act are new benefits, better protections from insurance company abuses, and more value for every dollar you spend on health care. If you like your plan you can keep it, and you don’t have to change a thing due to the health care law.” (“Health Care Resources,” as seen on 10/24/2013)

Rep. Tony Cárdenas (D-CA): “If you have insurance right now, your plan stays the same. This means if you get your health insurance through work, if you have Medicare or if you are a member of California Healthy Families, you keep that coverage.” (“What Valley Residents Need to Know about Health Care Reform”)

Rep. Kathy Castor (D-FL): “…If you like your health insurance, you can keep it. Keep your current doctor as you see fit.” (“What Does Health Insurance Reform Mean for You?”) “Nothing in this bill will force you to drop your current coverage. Rest assured, if you like your health insurance, you can keep it.” (Press Release, 7/31/2009)

Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-NY): “IF YOU HAVE HEALTH INSURANCE…You can keep your doctor and your plan.” (“What Health Care Reform Means for You”)

Rep. William Clay (D-MO): “Under the legislation, individuals and families with employer-based coverage can keep the health insurance coverage they have now, and it will get better.” (Congressman Clay’s Capitol Hill Report, 11/10/09)

Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO): “I am committed to a health care plan that covers every single American, reduces the cost of care, allows people to keep their insurance if they like” (Press Release, 8/20/2009)

Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA): “I already have insurance through an employer, a union, Medicare, Medicaid, TriCare, the VA, COBRA, or a retirement plan. Do I need to do anything? No. If you have coverage from any of these sources, you can keep it. Nothing in the Affordable Care Act requires you to change plans.” (Obamacare FAQ)

Rep. John Conyers (D-MI): “Your premiums and other costs will not increase as a result of health care reform and if you like the coverage you have now, you’ll be able to keep it. In fact, you’ll get some additional help paying for premiums and out-of-pocket costs.” (“How Will Obamacare Affect Me?” Questionnaire)

Rep. Jim Costa (D-CA): “I currently have an insurance plan that works. How will the new health care law affect me? Health reform protects existing coverage, and encourages employers to maintain it. It also improves current coverage by strengthening consumer protections.” (Obamacare FAQ)

Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-NY): “Our health care plan provides stability and security for those who have health insurance.  If you like what you have, you can keep it.” (Press Release, 11/7/2009)

Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-T): “Keep your doctor, and your current plan, if you like them.” (Health Care Reform Summary, prepared by House Democratic Leadership, 8/10/2009)

Rep. Danny Davis (D-IL): “It protects current coverage allowing individuals to keep the insurance they have if they like it and preserves choice of doctors, hospitals, and health plans. It achieves these reforms through…” (Health Care Reform Summary)

Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-OR): “The legislation is not a government takeover of health care. It will not get between anyone and their doctor. If you have insurance, you can keep your current plan.” (Press Release, 3/24/2010)

Rep. Diane DeGette (D-CO): Not a quote attributed to her, but part of a news article she posted on her website: “Mr. Obama has said repeatedly, as he told the American Medical Association in June: “If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.” These assurances reflect an aspiration, but may not be literally true or enforceable.” (In the News, 8/10/2009)

Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL): “If you have job-based health insurance you like, you can keep it.” (Health Care FAQ)

Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX): “If you already have coverage through your employer, Medicare, TRICARE, or some other source, you can keep that insurance and you are not required to buy additional coverage.” (The Affordable Care Act)

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn): “If you like the insurance you have, you can keep it. Don’t listen to that stuff you heard in the last hour, Mr. Speaker. The truth is, you get to keep your health insurance if that’s what you want.” (Floor Speech)

Rep. Eliot Engel (D-NY): “This is a great day for all Americans from all walks of life – seniors, youth, the sick and the healthy. If you have health insurance, you can keep your doctor and your health plan. You like it, you keep it. It’s that simple.” (Press Release, 11/9/2009)

Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA): “Q. My employer already provides coverage for me and my family and I like my plan. Do I need to do anything differently? A. No. You just keep the coverage you have.” (Press Release, as seen on 10/22/2013)

Rep. Sam Farr (D-CA): “If you have job-based health insurance you like, you can keep it. You’re considered covered. You may be able to change to Marketplace coverage if you prefer.” (Obamacare FAQ)

Rep. Chakah Fattah (D-PA): ““This plan means that those who are satisfied with their current coverage and doctor can keep their plan and their physician.  However, if they aren’t happy with their coverage then this plan will help them find and afford quality healthcare.” (Press Release, 7/14/2009)

Rep. John Garamendi (D-CA): “Just six months after our historic health insurance reforms were signed into law, important consumer protections are going into effect.  These protections mean that never again will your insurance run out or be taken away from you when you need it the most.” (Press Release, 10/20/2010)

Rep. Gene Green (D-T): “If you have job-based health insurance you like, you can keep it. In fact, with new regulations and standards, the insurance you currently have will include new consumer protections like no lifetime limits, minimum coverage standards, and limits on administrative costs.” (Obamacare FAQ)

Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ): “No one is forced to do anything. The entire premise of this legislation is to build on what works in today’s system. If you have employer sponsored health care today – as do most insured people – than little to nothing will change, except that your premiums will no longer subsidize coverage for the uninsured. If you are covered in the individual insurance market, you can keep your plan permanently and it will count as acceptable coverage even if it doesn’t meet those terms under the new law.” (Obamacare FAQ)

Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL): “Individuals who already have health insurance through their employers or are self-insured will keep their insurance. There is absolutely no provision within the ACA that would remove existing coverage from individuals and families. Furthermore, the law will make existing plans more secure and affordable.” (Obamacare FAQ)

Rep. Mike Honda (D-CA): “Under the bill, if you are covered by a large employer, you are not likely to see many changes to your healthcare coverage.” (Blog Release, 4/5/2010)

Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD): “We need to build upon the current system of employer-sponsored care, with a system that provides patients their choice of insurance coverage and their choice of doctors. In other words, if you like what you have, you should be able to keep it.” (Town Hall Meeting, 4/21/2009)

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY): “But I’m happy with my health care.  What does this change for me? Nothing. You can keep the plan you have.” (Obamacare FAQ)

Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA): “It is important to note that nothing will change for those who are happy with the insurance they already have from their employer, seniors on Medicare, TRICARE or people on Medicaid.” (E-Newsletter, 7/24/2013)

Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX): “If you have health insurance you like, I want you to be able to keep it,” she continued.” (Telephone Townhall, 5/6/2009)

Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH): “The goal is to try to get you into a plan that you pick, where you feel you have very carefully monitored care, that you participate in, so nobody’s left out, nobody’s rejected and you have choices. That sounds like a much better system than we have today for so many people. If you like what you have, you keep it…” (Press Release) “The whole intention of the law is to relieve some of the worries that seniors face,” Congresswoman Kaptur said.  And, “you keep the insurance that you have if you like it.” (Telephone Townhall)

Rep. Joseph Kennedy (D-MA): “If you have job-based health insurance you like, it is not necessary to change your plan. You may be able to change to Marketplace coverage if you prefer. Any job-based health plan you currently have qualifies as minimum essential coverage.” (Obamacare FAQ)

Rep. Ron Kind (D-WI): “In order to increase access to affordable coverage we must make sure no one is denied coverage, specifically due to pre-existing conditions.  Reform seeks to build on the existing system so that if you like your employer sponsored health insurance, you can keep it.” (Press Release, 7/22/2009)

Rep. Jim Langevin (D-RI): “Keep your doctor, and your current plan, if you like them.” (Newsletter, 8/10/2009)

Rep. Rick Larsen (WA): “This bill will give the power back to the American consumer. It preserves choice and creates competition in the insurance market. If you like your plan, you can keep your plan. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.” (Press Release, 3/21/2010)

Rep. John Larson (CT) “I am committed to health care reform that allows you to keep your current plan if you like it, reform that puts you and your doctor in charge of your care.” (Press Release, 8/24/2009)

Rep. Sandy Levin (D-MI): “If you like your current health plan, you will be able to keep it.  But it is clear that our nation wants us to fix what’s not working by reducing costs, increasing prevention, improving quality, and covering uninsured Americans,” said Rep. Levin.” (Press Release, 6/9/2009)

Rep. John Lewis (D-GA): “This bill does not replace employer-sponsored coverage, it actually adds to the choices people have. If people like their insurance, they can keep it.” (E-Newsletter, 10/10/2009)

Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-NM): “If you are already receiving coverage through eligible employer-sponsored insurance, eligible individual insurance, grandfathered health plans, and federal programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, VA Health Care, CHIP and others, you do not need to purchase new health insurance.” (Blog Post, 11/6/2013)

Rep. Doris Matsui (D-CA): “If you are insured and already have a ‘qualified’ health insurance plan through your employer, nothing changes.  You can keep your plan.  You can keep your doctor.” (Obamacare FAQ)

Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-CA): “Reforming health care is a fiscally responsible course of action that will build on the best of the American system by making sure people can keep their current insurance if they like it and choose what doctors they want see.” (Press Release, 3/22/2010)

Rep. Miller, George (D-CA): “If you get insurance through your job or have Medicare, you don’t need to do anything — you can keep your insurance.” (Blog Post, 9/30/2013)

Rep. Rick Nolan (D-MINN): “If you like the plan you have, you can keep it.” (ACA Resources)

Rep. Frank Palone  (D-NJ): “Our health plan fulfills commitments made by this Congress and President Obama to reform health care. The plan…Keeping your doctor and your plan if you like them.” (Press Release, 7/19/2009)

Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI): I have health insurance from my employer, and I like the plan that I have. Do I get to keep it? “You can keep the plan you have.” (ACA FAQ)

Rep. Jared Polis (D-CO): “If you are currently insured and like the plan you have, you’ll likely be able to stick with your current plan.” (“Obamacare Enrollment Begins Today,” 10/1/2013)

Rep. David Price (NC): “Just as in the past, if you like your doctor, you can choose to stay with your doctor.” (Constituent Mailing, 7/14/2013)

Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL): “Allows you to keep your coverage and doctor if you like them.” (Press Release, 8/20/2009)

Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY): “This plan tells every American – if you have coverage and a doctor you like, keep it…If you like your doctor and current plan you can keep them” (Press Release, 7/15/2009)

Rep. John Sarbanes (D-MD): “Keep your doctor, and your current plan, if you like them…If you like your doctor and your current plan, you can absolutely keep them” (Health Care Reform E-Newsletter, 8/12/2009)

Rep. Allyson Schwartz (D-PA): “If you already have health coverage you like, you can keep it.” (ACA: Update)

Rep. Albio Sires (D-NJ): “If people like their current plans, they will be able to keep them.” (Mailing)

Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA): “If you have employer-provided health insurance, public program insurance such as Medicare, or are a veteran receiving VA health care, you are considered covered and can keep your current plan.” (ACA FAQ)

Rep. Niki Tsongas (D-MA): “The legislation takes significant steps towards covering all Americans, while enabling anyone happy with their current plan to keep it.” (Press Release, 3/21/2010)

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD): “If you like your doctor and your plan, you can keep them.” (Press Release, 7/14/2009)

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL): “Let me be clear: if you like your current plan, you’ll be able to keep it. Rather, we will build on our current system, so we can give you the freedom to choose what works best for you and your family. If you like your doctor, keep your doctor. If you like your current plan, keep your current plan.” (Press Release, 7/1/2009)

Rep. Mel Watt (D-NC): “Under the ACA, those who already have health insurance coverage under the following plans will continue to enjoy their coverage without interruption and without taking any action: Employer-sponsored plans.” (Obamacare FAQ)

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA): “If you like your doctor and your current plan, you keep them.” (Press Release, 3/21/2010)

Rep. Peter Welch (VT): “Under the legislation, individuals with insurance can keep the coverage they have now, and it will get better.” (Obamacare FAQ)

Rep. John Yarmuth (D-KY): “Keep your doctor, and your current plan, if you like them.” (Obamacare FAQ)

If Americans had been told the truth about Obamacare’s impact on their health insurance, would President Obama have been re-elected?

UPDATE, 3.18.15: 

Seven additional lying liars have been located. That brings us to at least 95 Congress members who deceived Americans about Obamacare.

Rep. Bruce Braley (D-IA): “If you’re covered and you like your insurance, you can keep it.”

Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI): ObamaCare would “allow Americans to maintain their choice of health insurance.”

Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AK): ObamaCare would “protect and expand an individual’s choice of doctors and insurance plans.”

Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE):  “If you have job-based health insurance you like, you can keep it.”

Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI): “If you like your health care coverage, you can keep it.”

Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA): “Under our proposal, if you like your current health-care plan, you can keep it.”

Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA): “I’m not going to support a healthcare reform plan that’s going to take away the healthcare you’ve got right now or a healthcare plan that you like.”

Ninety-five members of Congress. Wow. At this point, it may be easier to catalogue those who didn’t lie to you than those who did.