Today in Washington, D.C. - April 12, 2010: ObamaCare Broken Promises: Can't Prevent Premium Hikes; Congress May Lose Its Health Plan

Last night, the Senate voted 60-34 to invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to H.R. 4851. So, the Senate will resume post-cloture consideration of the motion to proceed to H.R. 4851, a bill to extend unemployment benefits that expired at the end of March, financed with deficit spending. In the afternoon, all post-cloture time on the motion will be yielded back, and the Senate will proceed to the unemployment extension bill so senators can offer amendments. Votes on amendments are possible today.

Prior to the two week recess, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell offered an extension that was paid for with unspent stimulus money (S. 3153). Democrats voted it down 59-40. Democrats also rejected an amendment from Sen. Chuck Grassley to the health care reconciliation bill (H.R. 4872) that would have done the same thing.

It hasn’t even been a month since President Obama signed his unpopular $2.6 trillion health care takeover into law, and yet almost every day there’s a new story about how the bill isn’t and won’t live up to the promises made by Democrats in Congress and the White House in their attempts to sell it to a presciently skeptical American public.

Today, the Los Angeles Times reports, "Public outrage over double-digit rate hikes for health insurance may have helped push President Obama's healthcare overhaul across the finish line, but the new law does not give regulators the power to block similar increases in the future. And now, with some major companies already moving to boost premiums and others poised to follow suit, millions of Americans may feel an unexpected jolt in the pocketbook. Although Democrats promised greater consumer protection, the overhaul does not give the federal government broad regulatory power to prevent increases."

But at the beginning of March, Obama pledged in a speech that his bill would “end the worst practices of insurance companies. . . . No longer would they be able to arbitrarily and massively raise premiums like Anthem Blue Cross recently tried to do in California -- up to 39 percent increases in one year in the individual market.  Those practices would end.”

That’s apparently not the case, according to the LA Times: "At least in the short term, regulators will be able to do little more than require insurers to publicly explain why they want to raise rates. Consumer advocates think that will not be an effective deterrent against premium increases such as the 39% hike that Anthem Blue Cross sent some California customers last year."

Those who watched the debate play out surely recall repeated assurances from the president that "If you like your plan, you can keep your plan.  If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor." (Incidentally, that quote is from the same March speech.) Obama already had to walk that promise back last June though he eventually returned to making it, over and over again.

Today, though, The New York Times reports that members of Congress and their staff may not even be able to keep their health care plans under the new health care bill. "In a new report, the Congressional Research Service says the law may have significant unintended consequences for the ‘personal health insurance coverage’ of senators, representatives and their staff members. For example, it says, the law may ‘remove members of Congress and Congressional staff’ from their current coverage, in the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program, before any alternatives are available."

“The confusion raises the inevitable question,” the Times writes, “If they did not know exactly what they were doing to themselves, did lawmakers who wrote and passed the bill fully grasp the details of how it would influence the lives of other Americans?”

Considering just the last few weeks of news coverage, it’s clear they did not. From costs to major employers of up to $1 billion for prescription drug coverage, to small business owners across the country being socked with new taxes, to young adults facing premium increases of up to 17%, to communities in many states facing job losses, news reports are just scratching the surface of the apparently unintended consequences of passing this massive health care bill.

Americans were rightly skeptical of such a project, with the overwhelming majority rejecting this bill since last summer. But Democrats refused to listen and passed the bill anyway and now ordinary Americans will suffer the consequences while their children and grandchildren are stuck with the bill. The health care bill needs to be repealed and replaced.

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Tags: Washington D.C., US Senate, Obamacare, broken promises
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