[StBernard] Fact-Checking Obama's Health Care

[Westley Annis]

THE CONSERVATIVE REVIEW - September 29, 2009

Fact-Checking President Obama's Health Care Talking Points
by John Boehner

"If you misrepresent what's in this plan, we will call you 
out," President Obama warned in his health care address to 
Congress earlier this month. 

Fair enough. But the President himself has made numerous 
claims during this debate that don't meet the straight-
face test. 

When the President says that health care reform will not 
require anyone to drop their current coverage, he fails 
to account for an independent analysis by the Lewin Group 
showing that as many as 114 million Americans could lose 
their current coverage and instead end up on a government-
run plan under House Democrats' proposal (H.R. 3200.) Even 
the most conservative estimates say millions could be 
shifted to a government-run plan. 

When the President pledges that reform will not add to the 
deficit, not even a little, he neglects to mention that 
House Democrats' plan would increase the deficit by $239 
billion over 10 years, according to the non-partisan 
Congressional Budget Office. 

What's worse, when the President insists that middle-class 
families won't see a tax increase - as he did repeatedly 
during his recent appearance on ABC's This Week - it's as 
if he failed to read the health care bills altogether. 
On page 167 of H.R. 3200, the title of section 401 reads: 
"TAX ON INDIVIDUALS WITHOUT ACCEPTABLE HEALTH CARE 
COVERAGE." The Associated Press didn't mince words when 
it began a fact check piece, "Memo to President Obama: 
it's a tax." 

If the President read these bills, he'd also find that his 
pledge to protect seniors' Medicare benefits rings hollow. 
According to the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, 
House Democrats' plan cuts Medicare Advantage programs by 
more than $172 billion. 

As a result, six million seniors will be denied access to 
an affordable Medicare Advantage (MA) plan, including three 
million who will lose the plan they currently have, accord-
ing to an analysis completed by Republicans on the House 
Ways & Means Committee. And that's just the beginning. The 
House Democrats' bill includes a total of more than $500 
billion in Medicare cuts, meaning reduced benefits and 
fewer choices for seniors. 

To be fair, there are areas in which the President has 
sought to make up for the shortcomings of Democrats' costly 
government takeover of health care. It was encouraging when 
the President's pledge to Congress that "no federal dollars 
will be used to fund abortions" was followed by a meeting 
at the White House with pro-life activists. It turns out, 
however, that the Administration would not commit to insert-
ing a provision that explicitly excludes abortion from 
health care reform. 

Thus, the status quo remains: House Democrats' health care 
legislation would allow the U.S. Secretary of Health & 
Human Services to include abortion as a benefit in the 
government-run health care option. 

It was also encouraging when the President assured law-abid-
ing taxpayers that illegal immigrants should not and will 
not be covered under the Democrats' health care plan. The 
non-partisan Congressional Research Service has confirmed, 
however, that there is no mechanism included in the House 
bill to verify that individuals are U.S. citizens or legal 
immigrants before they receive government benefits. 

House Republicans offered two amendments in the committee 
process to correct this: the first would have prevented 
illegal immigrants from being automatically enrolled into 
Medicaid and the second would have required better screen-
ing for applicants for federally-subsidized health care 
to ensure they are actually citizens or legal immigrants. 
Both were rejected by Democrats. 

These are just a couple of the many ideas House Republicans 
have offered to improve Americans' health care. For 
instance, why not allow small employers to group together 
through national associations so they can buy health 
insurance for their employees like big companies and 
unions can today? Why not allow the American people to buy 
health care plans across state lines? Why not get serious 
about ending junk lawsuits and more importantly the costly 
defensive medicine that doctors are forced to practice? 

We outlined these proposals in a letter to the President 
back in May and asked to sit down with him and discuss 
them. The response we received essentially said 'Thanks, 
but no thanks.' 

For his part, the President has talked about a "whole 
series of Republican ideas" being included in health care 
reform. This is just another myth perpetuated by the 
President, whose rhetoric simply doesn't match the reality 
of congressional Democrats' government-run health care 
proposals. 

This isn't about calling out President Obama for the sake 
of doing so. The American people deserve to know the 
unvarnished truth about the potential consequences of this 
costly government takeover of their health care. The 
President's failure to meet this common-sense standard is 
yet another indication it's time to hit the reset button 
and start over in a bipartisan way to achieve health care 
reforms hard-working Americans can support and afford.