house democrats

Courtesy of Investor’s Business Daily, via CoyoteBlog, comes this gem from the House Democrats’ health care bill:

“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.

I suppose that’s the last nail in the coffin of President Obama’s increasingly empty promise that, “if you’ve got health insurance, you like your doctors, you like your plan, you can keep your doctor, you can keep your plan.  Nobody is talking about taking that away from you.”

Well, sure …  As IBD points out, “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.”

Obama told Dianne Sawyer in an interview last month that, “I can’t pass a law that says, ‘I’m sorry, employers, you can never make changes to the health care plans that you provide your employees’.“  But, apparently, the House Democrats can pass a law that says — more or less — ‘I’m sorry, insurers, you can never make changes to the plans you provide to individual enrollees.  In fact, you can’t even enroll any more individuals — ever.”