Media skip disclosure of paid Obamacare shill
MIT professor Jonathan Gruber, who had a closed-door meeting with President Obama in Boston last week to discuss Obamacare, has resurfaced to defend the Affordable Care Act; but neither he nor the media that have given him a platform disclosed the $400,000 he was paid by the Department of Health & Human Services in 2009.

Gruber, who was on CNN, MSNBC, FOX News and was the subject of an article in the New Yorker this past week, has emerged as the go-to-voice for reporters looking for an academic view on Obamacare in recent years.

None of these news organizations disclosed Gruber’s ties to HHS.

Gruber’s HHS contract was not incidental to once paid for “technical assistance in evaluating options for national healthcare reform,” according to a copy of his contract from the General Services Administration. The government paid Gruber a cool $297,600 in that contract, and he made $95,000 from another HHS contract that same year....

Expert: At least 129 million will ‘not be able to keep’ health care plan if Obamacare fully implemented
If Obamacare is fully implemented, 68 percent of Americans with private health insurance will not be able to keep their plan, according to health care economist Christopher Conover.

Conover is a research scholar in the Center for Health Policy & Inequalities Research at Duke University and an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. In an interview with The Daily Caller, he laid out what he estimates the consequences of Obamacare’s implementation will ultimately be.

“Bottom line: of the 189 million Americans with private health insurance coverage, I estimate that if Obamacare is fully implemented, at least 129 million (68 percent) will not be able to keep their previous health care plan either because they already have lost or will lose that coverage by the end of 2014,” he said in an email. ”But of these, ‘only’ the 18 to 50 million will literally lose coverage, i.e., have their plans entirely taken away. This includes 9.2-15.4 million in the non-group market and 9-35 million in the employer-based market. The rest will retain their old plans but have to pay higher rates for Obamacare-mandated bells and whistles.”...

Obama’s health-care promise that people can keep their insurance comes back to haunt him
...Rather than straightforwardly acknowledging that the regulations will help drive coal plants out of business — and arguing that the damage to the industry will be outweighed by environmental and public health benefits — administration officials have insisted that these are achievable standards that will maintain the nation’s diverse energy mix.

Obama’s reassuring sales pitch on health care represented an effort to avoid the political pitfalls that others encountered when trying to overhaul the system in the past.

In 1994, for instance, the Clinton administration’s effort to insure the 15 percent of the population lacking coverage foundered because of the fear that the proposal generated in the 85 percent who had insurance.

Obama “was sort of overlearning the lessons of Hillary Clinton’s time on health care. What destroyed Hillary Clinton’s plan was that people became convinced they were going to lose their health care,” said Elaine Kamarck, who was a White House aide at the time and now heads the Brookings Institution’s Center for Effective Public Management.

“The one lesson that was learned about messaging was that you had to guarantee people that nothing will change,” she said....

Text: Obama’s Speech on Health Care Reform
...Published: June 15, 2009

So let me begin by saying this: I know that there are millions of Americans who are content with their health care coverage – they like their plan and they value their relationship with their doctor. And that means that no matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what. My view is that health care reform should be guided by a simple principle: fix what's broken and build on what works....

Obama promised on Sept. 26 that people in individual market would keep their plans
...And so today, I want to speak plainly, clearly, honestly, about what it means for you and for the people you care about.

Now, let’s start with the fact that even before the Affordable Care Act fully takes effect, about 85 percent of Americans already have health insurance -– either through their job, or through Medicare, or through the individual market. So if you’re one of these folks, it’s reasonable that you might worry whether health care reform is going to create changes that are a problem for you — especially when you’re bombarded with all sorts of fear-mongering.

So the first thing you need to know is this: If you already have health care, you don’t have to do anything. ...

Obamacare works by chaining Americans to local providers
...The Obamacare-compliant health benefit plans usually only pay for services within each citizen’s local region, said Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former government health care official and an expert at the American Enterprise Institute.

Throughout 2014, the small regions will help regulators and executives narrow the variety, quality, number and cost of medical services available to at least three million Americans who already had plans on the individual market and are now being forced into Obamacare.

“They’re very narrow plans, they’re a throwback to the 1980s-style HMOs,” Gottlieb said.

“The majority of plans do not offer care beyond their regions,” said Yevgeniy Feyman, an expert at the New York-based Manhattan Institute.

“What this effectively does is limit the quality of care that some people are able to get,” Feynman said. “The more rural you get, the worse it is going to be,” he added....