“We are familiar with the passage IBD sites, and as we wrote last week, the House bill does not outright outlaw private individual health insurance, but it does effectively regulate it out of existence. The House bill does allow private insurance to be sold, but only “Exchange-participating health benefits plans.” In order to qualify as an “Exchange-participating health benefits plan,” all health insurance plans must conform to a slew of new regulations, including community rating and guaranteed issue. These will all send the cost of private individual health insurance skyrocketing. Furthermore, all these new regulations would not apply just to individual insurance plans, but to all insurance plans. So the House bill will also drive up the cost of your existing employer coverage as well. Until, of course, it becomes so expensive that your company makes the perfectly economical decision to dump you into the government plan.”

FYI, here’s how Heritage dealt with the IBD story “in real time” – July 16th, 2009 at 12.06pm:

http://blog.heritage.org/2009/07/16/does-the-house-plan-outlaw-private-insurance/

As I wrote the other day, bottom line, IBD screwed up. No doubt about that. When you quote actual bill language you can’t paraphrase, you can’t overlook the context.

The Heritage take does however lay my mind to rest regarding the IBD op-ed’s inference that they had “vetted” the info with congressional staff. I’m guess that “journalistic shorthand” ran straight smack into “legislative shorthand” and that somehow the “clarification” regarding this whole business of “an Exchange-participating health benefits plan” got (wrongly… mistakenly… take your pick) “edited” out of the piece in a (wrongheaded) attempt to “get to the point” and make the piece more “readable,” perhaps give it a bit more “effect.”

Again… IBD screwed up… but I’m less inclined today (after reviewing the matter further) to assume bad faith on IBD’s part.

BILL