By Deroy Murdock
*‘**N*o matter how we reform health<http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OWQ4MDI5ZDU0YjAxNmM5MzEzYzc1NjM0ZDkyNDRlYWE=#>care, we will keep this promise,” President Obama told <http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wirestory?id=7878025&page=1> the American Medical Association last June. “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.”
Unfortunately, Obama’s oft-repeated vow is as flimsy as assuring a ten-year-old: “If you like your hometown, you can stay there.” Surprise! Daddy gets a new job and hauls the family from Santa Barbara to Dallas.
Obama’s pledge is hollow, mainly because most Americans do not own their health plans. Unlike their auto<http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=OWQ4MDI5ZDU0YjAxNmM5MzEzYzc1NjM0ZDkyNDRlYWE=#>, home, or apartment insurance — which is their private property — 159 million<http://ehbs.kff.org/?page=charts&id=2&sn=23&ch=1111>non-elderly Americans enjoy employer-controlled group coverage <http://ehbs.kff.org/?page=abstract&id=2>. Employees may love their insurance, but their bosses can change it the moment they become disenchanted, just as easily as companies switch from Coke to Pepsi in office vending machines. Employers also can drop coverage altogether.
“The administration’s claims that no one will lose their current coverage are patently false,” says the Galen Institute <http://galen.org/>’s Grace-Marie Turner. Here are some ways this could happen.