The Obama administration’s inept handling of the oil leak foreshadows what will happen when hapless government bureaucrats begin administering our healthcare. 

One of Obamacare’s major selling points was that nobody would be forced to change their insurance policies or doctors. “If you like your health care plan,” Obama told the American Medical Association, “you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.”

But as Obama’s team drafts the regulations for implementing this massive government takeover of the healthcare industry, it’s becoming evident that the president and his supporters misled the American people.

It was recently reported that 1.5 million Americans may lose their health coverage this year due to Obamacare regulations. Now we’re learning that new regulations may force tens of millions to lose their employer-provided healthcare plans.

That’s because, come 2014, the federal government is going to dictate what kind of coverage you must have. We were told that the federal mandates would apply only to policies sold in the new federal healthcare “exchanges.” Polls found that large majorities of Americans (75%) with health insurance were happy with the coverage they have now. So Democrats reassured a nervous public that employer-provided plans would be “grandfathered in” or exempted from the new requirements. But that’s not what the latest draft regulations from the Department of Health and Human Services suggest.

James Gelfand, health policy director at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said, “These rules are extremely strict. Almost no plan is going to be able to maintain grandfathered status.” Here’s why: According to the New York Times, “An employer would also lose its exempt status if it increased co-payments for doctor’s visits to $45, from $30 – a 50 percent increase – while medical inflation was 8 percent.”

So, if an employer attempts to offset the increased costs of health insurance by adjusting the co-payments in the policy, it will likely lose its exemption and be forced to cancel the policy entirely. Where’s the incentive for employers to continue to offer health insurance if they can’t protect their bottom lines? There isn’t any. In fact, Obamacare gives businesses an incentive to drop whatever coverage they do provide, exactly what many conservatives warned it would do.  Read more.....