EDITORIAL: Truth and Obamacare

In tracking the train wreck of Obamacare, some anecdotes sound too far-fetched to be true. Take Richard Pollock’s eye-opening article for the Washington Examiner on Tuesday. Mr. Pollock got health policy experts and independent insurance agents affiliated with the National Association of Health Underwriters to compare Wal-Mart’s health insurance plans with those offered via Obamacare exchanges.

Wal-Mart, the retail titan constantly derided by unions and liberal activists as a bad corporate citizen that sends low-wage employees onto welfare rolls, won out by a mile. The company’s benefits are far more comprehensive and far less expensive than Obamacare plans.

Mr. Pollock reports that Wal-Mart insures individuals for as little as $40 a month and a family of four for $160 a month — a fantastic rate even before the passage and implementation of Obamacare — and that the company plan is the same for all employees, from its cashiers to its CEO. That’s hardly the case for Obamacare, which provides numerous politically motivated exemptions and hits neither the president nor most members of Congress in the way it hammers American taxpayers.

Mr. Pollock also highlighted a Journal of the American Medical Association analysis that shows unsubsidized Obamacare enrollees face monthly premiums that are five to nine times higher than Wal-Mart premiums.

Furthermore, Wal-Mart plans include access to some of the nation’s top hospitals, including the Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Clinic. At these institutions, which Wal-Mart calls “Centers of Excellence,” employees and their dependents can get free heart or spinal surgery. They can also get free knee and hip replacements at four hospitals nationwide. The Mayo and Cleveland clinics, and many other highly rated hospitals, are not part of most Obamacare plans.

One item that was indeed too far-fetched to be true: a “report” that the Little Sisters of the Poor Home for the Aged — which helps the neediest elderly in the Denver area — would unionize in order to better position itself for an exemption from the Obamacare contraception mandate. The satire website ScrappleFace.com “reported” that the nuns would incorporate as the “International Sisterhood of Mercy Workers (Local 316).”

Two humorous stories, to be sure, both highlighting the one certain truth: Obamacare should be repealed and replaced.