The Heritage Foundation and The Lewin Group released an analysis of the House health bill which Speaker Nancy Pelosi says she has the votes to approve (um, not quite). This analysis showed that if the public plan component became law:
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Approximately 103 million people would be covered under the new public plan and as a consequence about 83.4 million people would lose their private insurance. This would represent a 48.4 percent reduction in the number of people with private coverage.
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About 88.1 million workers would see their current private, employer-sponsored health plan go away and would be shifted to the public plan.
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Yearly premiums for the typical American with private coverage could go up by as much as $460 per privately insured person, as a result of increased cost-shifting stemming from a public plan modeled on Medicare.
Another reason to kill this bill and start over, but no let’s rush it.
