By 2020, 90% of Americans Will Be “Shifted” From Employer-Covered Plans to Obamacare

May 1st, 2014

If you like your plan, you can keep it. Until your employer takes advantage of the great cost savings of canceling your plan, and putting you onto the Obamacare exchanges. And, by 2020, 90% of Americans who once had employer-sponsored plans will lose them.

By 2020, about 90 percent of American workers who now receive health insurance through their employers will be shifted to government exchanges created by the health law, according to a projection by S&P Capital IQ, a research firm serving the financial industry.

It’s not an outlandish notion. Ezekiel Emanuel, an architect of the Affordable Care Act, has long predicted a similar shift.

But the scope and speed of the shift is surprising. So is the amount of money that companies could save. The S&P researchers tried to estimate what it would save the biggest American companies. Their answer: $700 billion between 2016 and 2025, or about 4 percent of the total value of those companies. The total could reach $3.25 trillion for all companies with more than 50 employees.

This simple fact deepens the entrenchment of Obamacare. As I’ve written on this space for some time now, and in Unprecedented, there is no going back.