Washington, D.C. (November 19, 2013) — As President Obama continues to face intense scrutiny from both ends of the political spectrum and from the American people at large for his broken promise that Americans who like their healthcare plan may keep it under the new Obamacare regulations, recent legal documents from the Obama administration have blown open – and confirmed media reports – that the administration knew all along that millions of Americans would lose their “grandfather” protection by 2013.
Remarkably, the admission comes by way of the Obama administration’s defense of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) “contraception mandate” in a federal lawsuit filed by the American Freedom Law Center (AFLC), a national nonprofit Judeo-Christian law firm, on behalf of Priests for Life and several of its employees, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s niece, Dr. Alveda King. In this case, Priests for Life is challenging the recently announced regulations that require certain non-exempt religious employers to provide insurance plans that promote and facilitate the use of contraceptive services, which violates Priests for Life’s sincerely held religious beliefs.
On October 17, the Department of Justice filed a brief in defense of the mandate, asserting the following:
[Obamacare’s] grandfathering provision’s incremental transition does not undermine the government’s interests in a significant way. Even under the grandfathering provision, it is projected that more group health plans will transition to the requirements under the regulations as time goes on. Defendants have estimated that a majority of group health plans will have lost their grandfather status by the end of 2013.
Former federal prosecutor and AFLC Advisory Board Member Andrew C. McCarthy joined Megyn Kelly last night on Fox News’ television program The Kelly File to discuss the Justice Department’s brief, pointing out that this admission is demonstrable proof of Obama’s “sinister” lie to the American people. Moreover, according to McCarthy in an article published yesterday in National Review Online, “Obama’s claim that unwelcome cancellations are confined to the individual-insurance market is another brazen lie . . . . [F]or over three years, the Obama administration’s internal estimates have shown that most Americans who are covered by ‘employer plans’ will also lose their coverage under Obamacare. Mind you, 156 million Americans get health coverage through their jobs.”
McCarthy, who has served on the American Freedom Law Center’s Advisory Board since its inception, continued, citing to AFLC’s litigation: “During all these years, while Obama was repeatedly assuring Americans, ‘If you like your health-insurance plan, you can keep your health-insurance plan,’ he actually expected as many as seven out of every ten Americans covered by employer plans to lose their coverage. For small business, he expected at least one out of every two Americans, or as many as four out of every five, to lose their coverage.”
Robert Muise, AFLC Co-Founder and Senior Counsel, commented: “The Obama administration’s startling admission of its full knowledge that the insurance coverage of tens of millions of Americans would be terminated in 2013 is further proof that Obamacare is a train wreck. From the outright lies to the abominable violations of constitutionally-protected religious liberties, the President’s ‘signature’ achievement will go down as one of most egregious cases of government tyranny.”
David Yerushalmi, AFLC Co-Founder and Senior Counsel, commented: “What President Obama is doing to the uniquely American constitutional republic—a nation of laws not of charismatic charlatans—appears nearly irreversible. But, at long last and thankfully, the American people are waking up to the atrocity that is Obamacare and are accordingly holding President Obama and his army of liberal, progressive bureaucrats accountable for their destructive policies and lies.”
Yerushalmi concluded: “Our American liberties will not go silently in the night because of the vigilance of fighters for faith and freedom like Andy McCarthy and the American Freedom Law Center. Still, while President Obama is retreating with his tail under his legs, the fight is not over.”
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