Update: You too can keep your doctor…

… but your doctor does not have to keep you. As an update to my original post, Jim Lindgren over at the Volokh Conspiracy reminds us that employers could effectively push employees out of the employer sponsored plans and into the government option.

But if the Obama plan is enacted, a substantial portion of employers will cut their health subsidies — raising their employees’ share of contributions to the company plan — in order to drive some of the employees into the government exchange and the public option. Other employers may drop their plans altogether — after all, workers could buy their own coverage in the government exchange — or simply fund part of their workers’ participation in the exchange.

Read his full post.

What Lindgren did not consider is Obama adding a requirement for employers to provide a certain benefit level similar to what they are providing now. I’m not sure employers could easily stop paying benefits or cut them substantially, but it certainly is possible.

Yup – I’m willing to bet that the government will force employers who already provide benefits to provide a certain level of service and quality to employees – therefore at a higher price – that the government will not have to do.

I got a kick out of Obama’s line at the AMA conference…

And one of these options needs to be a public option that will give people a broader range of choices and inject competition into the health care market so that force waste out of the system and keep the insurance companies honest.

Hah! There’s no competition now? If there was a market for plans similar to what Obama wants to provide and there was the promise of a possible 5 to 10 percent profit in those plans – the private sector would be there in a heartbeat.

Of course, the government can run their program at a huge loss…