Sebelius: Obamacare Not the Cause of Drop in Employer-Sponsored Health Care

Feb 28, 2012

As Bloomberg reported in September of last year, "Sixty percent of employers said they offered medical benefits this year, a decrease from 69 percent in 2010." Yet today, in testimony on Capitol Hill, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said that Obamacare is not the reason there's been a drop in employer-sponsored health care coverage:



This was the question asked by Illinois congressman Peter Roskam: "How about when the president said you can keep your health care coverage if you like it? And yet, the reality is, according to Bloomberg at least, 9 percent fewer businesses are offering medical coverage than in 2010. There the rhetoric didn’t meet the reality, did it?"

Sebelius responded, "Well again, Congressman, what you’re seeing – It wouldn’t have mattered if we had passed the Affordable Care Act or not. The private market is in a death spiral."

Sebelius's testimony directly contradicts a McKinsey study released last year. "At least 30 percent of employers are likely to stop offering health insurance once provisions of the U.S. health care reform law kick in in 2014, according to a study by consultant McKinsey," Reuters reported. "McKinsey, which based its projection on a survey of more than 1,300 employers of various sizes and industries and other proprietary research, found that 30 percent of employers will 'definitely' or 'probably' stop offering coverage in the years after 2014, when new medical insurance exchanges are supposed to be up and running."

SOURCE: DANIEL HALPER -WEEKLY STANDARD