Obamacare: The promises PART ONE

In this post, I'll be commenting on this video found at www.whitehouse.gov:

"Here are the details that every American needs to know about this plan. First if you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance, nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or doctor you have."

This is true, you won't have to change your plan, just like you don't have to accept other government funding. Unfortunately the government will provide incentives that not only make the public option more appealing to each individual marginally, it will provide negative financial incentives to have private insurance because:

"Under this plan it will be against the law for insurance companies to deny you coverage because of a preexisting condition... As soon as I sign this bill, it will be against the law for insurance companies to drop your coverage when you get sick or water it down when you need it most."

This will increase the cost for everyone who buys private insurance because forcing them to provide coverage to those individuals with preexisting conditions ultimately raises premiums for everyone, a negative incentive for buying private insurance. And insurance companies cannot just drop your coverage when you are sick (see John Stossel's six part "Sick in America"), they usually do this when you lie about preexisting conditions (Stossel's example is of a man who went to see a doctor about a lump in his leg a few days before he bought insurance), so providing insurance for people who cheat the system again raises the premiums for the contract abiding citizens.

"They will no longer to be able to place a cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year or in a lifetime. We will place a limit on the amount you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses, because in the United States of America, no one should go broke because they get sick. And insurance companies will be required to cover, with no extra charge, routine checkups and preventative care -- like mammograms and colonoscopies -- because there's no reason we shouldn't be catching diseases like breast cancer and colon cancer before they get worse."

Again these are regulations that will increase the cost of individual premiums or at the very least make the minimum coverage plan a lot more expensive for those who can afford it least. This will drive more people to the public option by increasing the amount of people that cannot afford a minimum health insurance premium. The forced coverage of preventative healthcare will increase the cost of everyone's premiums yet again. Also, see the uproar over mammograms and "expert opinion and consensus" in the LA Times, my particular favorite is their observation that "even the most careful scientific evaluations cannot always provide definitive answers on what works best for all patients."