"If You Like Your Insurance, You Can Keep It" - If Only that Were True.

"If you like your insurance, you can keep it." So says Mr. Obama and the other supporters of the current health care legislation, soon to be voted on by the Senate.

Conservatives and others with reasonable math skills have disputed this claim. Their argument goes that private employers will cease to provide health insurance to their employees in the event that the health care bill currently before the Senate passes. The question that needs to be answered before the Senate takes up the bill is: Who is telling the truth?

Businesses, you see, exist to make money. Health insurance is a part of an employee's pay. A business has no legal obligation to provide it and an employee cannot demand that the employer provide it. An employee may choose to work only for a business that provides it, thus creating an incentive for other employers to offer it, but they may not compel their employer to provide it. Employers may find that they can only attract and keep good employees by offering health insurance and that also creates an incentive for businesses to do so. That's a free market system. That, aside from some poorly crafted regulations driving up costs and restricting competition among insurers and health care providers, is where we are now.

With this bill, the government is proposing to enter the field of health care. The government wants to regulate the kind of health insurance businesses may offer to their employees. They wish to fine businesses who do not provide that coverage. The fines will be less than the cost of the currently provided insurance coverage for many of the businesses who provide that coverage.

Now the question is: What will those businesses, who currently offer such coverage to their employees do? I have that answer, at least for me. At their quarterly business meeting, the employer who currently provides health coverage to my family announced that they are most likely to stop offering that coverage if the health care bill passes the Senate.

I like my current coverage, I'd like to keep it. I, therefore, encourage my senators, Mr. Kohl and Mr. Feingold from WI to kindly vote "NO".


"We looked for peace, but no good came; and for a time of health, and behold trouble!" ~ Jer 8:15