The great mystery surrounding the historic health care bill is how the corporations that provide coverage for most Americans -- coverage they know and prize -- will react to the new law's radically different regime of subsidies, penalties, and taxes. Now, we're getting a remarkable inside look at the options AT&T, Deere, and other big companies are weighing to deal with the new legislation.Internal documents recently reviewed by Fortune, originally requested by Congress, show what the bill's critics predicted, and what its champions dreaded: many large companies are examining a course that was heretofore unthinkable, dumping the health care coverage they provide to their workers in exchange for paying penalty fees to the government.
That would dismantle the employer-based system that has reigned since World War II. It would also seem to contradict President Obama's statements that Americans who like their current plans could keep them. And as we'll see, it would hugely magnify the projected costs for the bill, which controls deficits only by assuming that America's employers would remain the backbone of the nation's health care system.
Hence, health-care reform risks becoming a victim of unintended consequences. Amazingly, the corporate documents that prove this point became public because of a different set of unintended consequences: they told a story far different than the one the politicians who demanded them expected.
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That's what makes this so diabolical. The very smart liberals and the very smart conservatives know that people will just pay the fine. They won't buy insurance until they are sick. Employers will just pay the fine and maybe pass some of the savings on to employees who will wait to buy insurance until they are sick. This will put private insurers out of business and people will all fall into government programs. You just have to have a rudimentary understanding of Econ 101 to understand that this is where it's going.
This is why conservatives oppose it. This is why libs are ok with a plan that looks on the surface to be a watered down public option. It's a pathway to total government monopolization of every last health decision we will make in this country.
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