A week ago, we finally broke radio silence and began posting again about ObamaCare. In the coming series of posts, we will begin to methodically dissect the fallout from the passage of this ‘law’ and do our best to add to the discourse. We will admit upfront that approaching this first post, we had a tie for most ‘important’. The repeated promises by Mr. Obama and company about the average persons ability to keep their health insurance and the provision in the bill to ‘find’ fraud and waste in the current system. This latter topic known as “RAC Auditing” will be dealt with shortly. It has the most potential to wreak havoc with actual care in the short term– in fact, there is ample evidence that such a thing is a real isssue right now.

However, we will warm up with a simpler issue: is it true? Will the average person be able to just keep what they have despite the tempest in a teapot that the bill promises to unleash? You will recall, dear reader, that based on basic, grade-school logic, we at TBM were dubious of this fact. In a post from mid-debate (August 2009) we argued that if we accept as fact Mr. Obama’s contention that the system is bereft of value and should be scrapped and replaced with the vision embodied in his plan(s)– how does it make any sense then to allow Joe The Plumber to keep his little slice of shit? It of course does not make any sense at all. How did it turn out? This is of course the issue.

Time magazine is not the first to open the kimono on this issue– it is simply the first to do so in such a main-stream, widely read medium. What do they say? Well, as a gentle reminder, our President has, over the last year or so, repeated dozens — perhaps hundreds — of times that his health-care ”reform” would allow you to keep your existing insurance plan. It’s quite apparent now that this was false. Time writes:

Now that regulations about existing employer-sponsored plans have been issued, it’s becoming clear that many of the 160 million Americans with job-based coverage will not, in fact, be able to keep what they currently have.

It continues:

“The truth is that employer-based plans, which many assumed would easily be categorized as grandfathered, will be subject to the full regulatory thrust of the new law if they are altered in ways that are standard practice in the industry. Plans that increase the percentage of costs patients must pay out of pocket — known as co-insurance — lose their grandfathered status. The same is true for plans that significantly decrease the percentage that employers contribute to premiums or those that significantly increase deductibles or co-payments. An employer that switches health-insurance providers also loses its grandfathered status. These kinds of changes are common year to year in the current marketplace, since employers are constantly looking for ways to limit their expenses in the face of rising costs.”

The “keep your plan” promise is simply false. Worse, it appears looking at the evidence, Mr. Obama knew it to be so and in fact counted on this grandfathering issue to ‘force’ or compel many onto the public rosters. This may or may not be good medicine– but it is good policy if the goal is to enact a large-scale social medical system. We do know that such a thing was the goal of Mr. Obama– we and others posted on it numerous times.

Lets stop here. Ideally we will dissect more of these things over the coming weeks and see where that gets us. Our concerns are not political- just our means. The real issue here is not policy, or even possible fibbing, its what this all means to how we do our day jobs. Despite the anger, sadness and fear, we still have doctoring jobs that pay the bills and we still like those jobs. The question for us is how long this state of affairs can last…