A major part of President Obama’s sales pitch for his signature health care bill was the claim that those Americans who currently have health insurance would be able to keep it. Now it seems that’s unlikely to be the case.

Starting in 2014, the new law will impose various mandates and additional costs on employer-sponsored insurance (ESI) that are likely to make health benefit plans uneconomical for many businesses. Consequently, a large percentage of employers are planning to drop coverage altogether after the law goes into effect, leaving their employees to rely instead on the federal government’s newest entitlement program.

In June, the prestigious McKinsey & Co. released the results of a survey of more than 1,300 employers, conducted to discover the likely effects of Obamacare on ESI. The findings were not good:

• “Overall, 30 percent of employers will definitely or probably stop offering ESI in the years after 2014.
  
• Among employers with a high awareness of reform, this proportion increases to more than 50 percent, and upward of 60 percent will pursue some alternative to traditional ESI.
  
• At least 30 percent of employers would gain economically from dropping coverage even if they completely compensated employees for the change through other benefit offerings or higher salaries.
  
• Contrary to what many employers assume, more than 85 percent of employees would remain at their jobs even if their employer stopped offering ESI, although about 60 percent would expect increased compensation.”

Contrast those findings with the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate that a mere seven percent of employees would be forced out of their current coverage, and it becomes obvious that Obamacare was imposed on the public under false pretenses.

It was simply disingenuous for President Obama to claim to speak for thousands of employers across the country before his health care law had even passed. Just as central planners can never have sufficient knowledge of the marketplace to efficiently run an economy, the president should not pretend to know the millions of factors which influence individual business decisions.

Unfortunately, McKinsey’s survey of more than a thousand men and women who must actually make those decisions shows that Obamacare’s impact on health care in America may be even worse than many had initially feared.