'Criminal investigation' of Obamacare sought

Faced with a revolt in his party because of the disastrous rollout of Obamacare, Barack Obama repeatedly has argued that only people who buy insurance individually are losing their policies, which is about 5 percent of the market.

However, much like his promise that people can keep their plans if they like them, that statement, too, appears to be a lie.

The Obama administration warned in 2010 in the Federal Register that up to 69 percent of all employer-sponsored health care policies would disintegrate by the end of 2013 because of Obamacare, reported John Hinderaker at the Powerline blog.

The June 17, 2010, entry in the Federal Register, under "Estimates of the Cumulative Percentage of Employer Plans Relinquishing Their Grandfather Status," said as many as 80 percent of "Small Employer Plans" would be ended by Obamacare.

National Review Institute Senior Fellow Andrew C. McCarthy, a former U.S. prosecutor who handled the cases against the terrorists involved in the first World Trade Center bombing, put the prognostication in perspective in a commentary, noting 156 million Americans receive health care coverage through their employment.

"That is to say: 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 10 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.'

McCarthy, a board member of the American Freedom Law Center, the AFLC, called for a criminal investigation by the U.S. House of Representatives.

"A criminal investigation should be opened. Obviously, the Obama Justice Department will not do that, but the House of Representatives should commence hearings into the offenses that have been committed in the president's deception of the American people," he said.

The AFLC said the Obama administration even doubled down on its estimate that tens of millions of Americans who have employer-sponsored health-care coverage would lose it because of Obamacare.

That came in a lawsuit the organization brought on behalf of Priests for Life and several workers, including Alveda King, Martin Luther King Jr.'s niece.

The case challenges the Obamacare regulations that require certain non-exempt religious employers to provide insurance plans that include abortifacients.

On Oct. 17, according to AFLC, the Obama Department of Justice filed a brief in defense of the mandate, stating 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," the brief said. "Defendants have estimated that a majority of group health plans will have lost their grandfather status by the end of 2013."

McCarthy told Megyn Kelly on the Fox News' television program "The Kelly File" that the admission is demonstrable proof of Obama's "sinister" lie to the American people.

Robert Muise, AFLC co-founder and senior counsel, said 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," he said.

David Yerushalmi, who founded AFLC with Muise, said that 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," he said.

"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," said Yerushalmi.

Hinderaker said the only reason that it is not tens of millions of Americans receiving cancellation notices of their employer-sponsored policies is that for political reasons the Obama administration delayed the application of Obamacare to employers for one year.

But he said the administration's move doesn't solve the problem.

"At most, it pushes the cancellations back by one year (although for many, it is likely already too late). Presumably the Democrats are just trying to quiet the furor over Obamacare until they get past the next election."

McCarthy said that "while the president has been telling us that, under the vaunted grandfathering provision, all Americans who like their health-insurance plans will be able to keep them, 'period,' his administration has been representing in federal court that most health plans would lose their 'grandfather status' by the end of this year."

It's not just the "5 percent" of individual-market consumers, he said, but close to all consumers, he pointed out, including well over 100 million American workers who get coverage through their jobs, who are expected to "transition to the requirements under the [Obamacare] regulations."

"That is," he explained, "their health-insurance plans would be eliminated. They would be forced into Obamacare-compliant plans, with all the prohibitive price hikes and coercive mandates that 'transition' portends."