16 Jul 2009 House Health Care “Reform” Bill Bans Sale of Private Health Insurance Policies

Investor’s Business Daily is reporting that page 16 of the House Majority’s health care bill bans new health insurance policies from being sold after the bill becomes law.

The editorial says, in part:

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…

…It took just 16 pages of reading to find this naked attempt by the political powers to increase their reach. It’s scary to think how many more breaches of liberty we’ll come across in the final 1,002.

There’s more in the editorial; for copyright reasons I could only excerpt it. Please go to Investor’s Business Daily and read “It’s Not An Option” immediately. Then ask your friends to do so.

This isn’t merely a smoking gun showing the liberals are making a hard push now for socialized medicine, folks. This is a forest fire.

Addendum, 9:30 AM: A private source is telling me that, under the legislation, individual private insurance policies would still be permitted for sale through the government’s insurance exchange, but the current system for the purchase and sale of health insurance would be shut down. So, as Matt Drudge would say, developing…

Addendum, 11:57 PM: More explanation here.

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Labels: Congress, Government Health Care, Government Power, Government Spending, Health Care, Retirement