Fox News reports that hundreds of protesters lined Obama’s parade route as he was going to his town-hall rally of the faithful to promote his health-care take-over. Organized by local talk-show host Jerry Bader, the crowd was there to warn about the consequences of government-monopoly medicine, like Canada has imposed. These protests are critical to puncture the illusion, repeated ad nauseum by the president and his apologists, that a so-called “public option” for health insurance is no threat to employer-based health benefits. In fact, an independent analysis by the The Lewin Group anticipates 119 million people would lose their employer-health benefits, because the perpetual taxpayer bailouts and cost-shifting to private plans (which is already high because of Medicare and Medicaid) would cause a death spiral.
President Obama’s and Secretary Sebelius’s claims that people who prefer to keep their current coverage will be able to do so are completely disingenuous. Both are on record (here and here) supporting a government-monopoly, single-payer, health-care regime. Let’s hope citizens will keep calling him out on it.
— John R. Graham is director of Health Care Studies at the Pacific Research Institute.