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Monday, August 10, 2009

Health Care Freedoms to be Lost

Shawn Tully wrote an excellent piece for Fortune late last month titled “5 Freedoms You’d Lose in Health Reform.”

He explains:

In promoting his health-care agenda, President Obama has repeatedly reassured Americans that they can keep their existing health plans -- and that the benefits and access they prize will be enhanced through reform.

A close reading of the two main bills, one backed by Democrats in the House and the other issued by Sen. Edward Kennedy's Health committee, contradict the President's assurances. To be sure, it isn't easy to comb through their 2,000 pages of tortured legal language. But page by page, the bills reveal a web of restrictions, fines, and mandates that would radically change your health-care coverage…

In short, the Obama platform would mandate extremely full, expensive, and highly subsidized coverage -- including a lot of benefits people would never pay for with their own money -- but deliver it through a highly restrictive, HMO-style plan that will determine what care and tests you can and can't have. It's a revolution, all right, but in the wrong direction.


Read the rest of the piece to explore the five lost freedoms.

Raymond J. Keating
Chief Economist
Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council

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