‘Limiting choices and killing business opportunities’

And that’s putting it mildly, what the proposed health care plan will mean to Americans and American businesses, according to Investor’s Business Daily.

It didn’t take long to run into an “uh-oh” moment when reading the House’s “health care for all Americans” bill. Right there on Page 16 is a provision making individual private medical insurance illegal.

When we first saw the paragraph Tuesday, just after the 1,018-page document was released, we thought we surely must be misreading it. So we sought help from the House Ways and Means Committee.

It turns out we were right: The provision would indeed outlaw individual private coverage. Under the Orwellian header of “Protecting The Choice To Keep Current Coverage,” the “Limitation On New Enrollment” section of the bill clearly states:

“Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day” of the year the legislation becomes law.

So we can all keep our coverage, just as promised — with, of course, exceptions: Those who currently have private individual coverage won’t be able to change it. Nor will those who leave a company to work for themselves be free to buy individual plans from private carriers.

The word on this is just starting to circulate, fortunately, since the president promised transparency and citizen participation in pending legislation before it’s enacted. This is sure one that needs citizen participation.

IBD points out that until now, the concern over a ‘public option’ (government-provided, taxpayer-funded) insurance coverage as considered by the adiminstration would drive the private insurers out of business.

What wasn’t known until now is that the bill itself will kill the market for private individual coverage by not letting any new policies be written after the public option becomes law.

But there’s more.

The legislation is also likely to finish off health savings accounts, a goal that Democrats have had for years. They want to crush that alternative because nothing gives individuals more control over their medical care, and the government less, than HSAs.

IBD says

A free people should be outraged at this advance of soft tyranny.

Free people should be outraged at this proposal alright, but beyond page 16, there’s plenty of evidence that it represents a tyranny that’s by no (rational) measure soft.