Majority of Americans Could Lose Current Health Care Coverage Under New Law

Washington, Jun 14 -

Between 51 and 70 percent of Americans who receive employer-provided health care coverage could lose their plan by 2014 when the new health care law is fully implemented, several federal agencies stated today in proposed regulations.

Despite President Obama’s prior assurances that, “If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan,” the proposed regulations state that between 87 million and 117 million Americans could be forced to change health care plans because of new mandates. The new health care law allowed existing health care plans to be “grandfathered” in with the new regulations as long as those plans met the standards of the new law. However, the regulations unveiled this morning by the U.S. Depts. of Treasury, Labor, and Health and Human Services state most employer-provided plans will not meet the new standards and will lose their protected “grandfather” status.

In addition, a new survey from PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates health care premiums for Americans will increase an another 9 percent on average in 2011, reaffirming a similar cost hike estimate from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office earlier this year.

“This is outrageous. Despite the President’s earlier assurances that Americans could keep their health insurance if they wanted, his own Administration now says most Americans could lose their employer-paid plans once the new health care is fully implemented by 2014,” Manzullo said. “As I stated earlier this year, Americans did not deserve this disaster that threatens to come between them and their doctors. We need to go back in and replace it with bipartisan reforms to make health care more affordable and accessible to Americans without a government takeover that threatens their current coverage while putting even more Americans on the unemployment lines.”