King Hussein Flatly Admits He's Not Familiar With House Bill

Recently King Hussein held a conference call with leftist bloggers having them to urge them to to pressure congress to pass socialized medicine as soon as possible.

"During the call, a blogger from Maine said he kept running into an Investors Business Daily article that claimed Section 102 of the House health legislation would outlaw private insurance. He asked: “Is this true? Will people be able to keep their insurance and will insurers be able to write new policies even though H.R. 3200 is passed?” President Obama replied: “You know, I have to say that I am not familiar with the provision you are talking about.”

This is a truly disturbing admission by the President, especially considering that later in the call, Obama promises yet again: “If you have health insurance, and you like it, and you have a doctor that you like, then you can keep it. Period.” How can Obama keep making this promise if he is not familiar with the health legislation that is being written in Congress?

As was written in the post, Healthcare Update - Private Health Insurance Outlawed, the House bill effectively regulates private individual health insurance out of existence. "The House bill does allow private insurance to be sold, but only “Exchange-participating health benefits plans.” In order to qualify as an ?Exchange-participating health benefits plan,? all health insurance plans must conform to a slew of new regulations, including community rating and guaranteed issue. These will all send the cost of private individual health insurance skyrocketing. Furthermore, all these new regulations would not apply just to individual insurance plans, but to all insurance plans. So the House bill will also drive up the cost of your existing employer coverage as well. Until, of course, it becomes so expensive that your company makes the perfectly economical decision to dump you into the government plan."

King Hussein may not care to look at how many people will lose their current health insurance if his plan becomes law, but like most Americans, I certainly do. That is why The Heritage Foundation partnered with the Lewin Group to study how many Americans would be forced into the public “option” under the House health plan. Here is what they found:

-Approximately 103 million people would be covered under the new public plan and, as a consequence, about 83.4 million people would lose their private insurance. This would represent a 48.4 percent reduction in the number of people with private coverage.

-About 88.1 million workers would see their current private, employer-sponsored health plan go away and would be shifted to the public plan.

-Yearly premiums for the typical American with private coverage could go up by as much as $460 per privately-insured person, as a result of increased cost-shifting stemming from a public plan modeled on Medicare.

It is truly frightening that the President of the United States is pressuring Congress in an all-out media blitz to pass legislation that he plainly admits he has not read and is not familiar with. President Obama owes it to Americans to stop his Orwellian tactic of making promises about what his health plan will or will not do until he has read it in its entirety, and can properly defend it in public, especially in a debate, to his own supporters. (HT The Heritage Foundation):

Heritage Foundation: Obama Admits He’s “Not Familiar” With House Bill