Myths and Facts about Obamacare

Last week NBC News released a poll showing that while 36% of Americans believed President Barack Obama’s health care plan was a “good idea,” 42% of Americans believed it was a “bad idea.” NBC’s explanation for this inconvenient truth? “[M]isperceptions about the president’s plans for reform … that nonpartisan fact-checkers say are untrue.” Specifically NBC found that 55% of Americans believed Obamacare “will give health insurance coverage to illegal immigrants,” 54% believed it “will lead to a government takeover of the health care system,” 50% believed it “will use taxpayer dollars to pay for women to have abortions,” and 45% believed it “will allow the government to make decisions about when to stop providing medical care to the elderly.”
The President has since copied NBC’s diagnosis, devoting his Saturday Weekly Address to debunking these “phony claims.” The problem for NBC News, and the White House, is that every one of these concerns has rock solid foundation in fact.
Obamacare Will Provide Health Benefits to Illegal Immigrants: The President is correct when he says that the idea to provide illegal immigrants with health insurance “has never been on the table.” The problem is that the American people also know that despite the fact that our immigration laws did not intend it, there are 12 million persons illegally in the United States. The issue is enforcement and the provisions in H.R. 3200 are completely inadequate to ensure that illegal immigrants do not illegally obtain health care through the bill. In the House Ways and Means mark up of H.R. 3200, Rep. Dean Heller (R-NV) introduced an amendment that would use two citizenship status verification systems, the Income and Eligibility Verification System (IEVS) and Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) programs, to establish an individual’s eligibility to obtain the bill’s proposed affordability credits or enroll in the public insurance option. Both programs are currently used to determine citizenship status and eligibility for other public assistance programs. Safeguards to guarantee that only citizens can access federal health care benefits are necessary, considering that the US Census Bureau currently estimates that 9.6 million of the uninsured are not US citizens. The Heller amendment failed on a straight party-line vote.
Obamacare Will Lead to a Government Takeover of The Health Care System: Whether it’s a “public option”, individual mandate, employer mandate, the expansion and federalization of Medicaid, or the creation of a new health czar, the provisions in the health bills being pushed by the Obama administration call for more government regulation and intrusion in the American health care system. The nonpartisan, independent Lewin Group found that an estimated 56 percent of Americans would lose their current insurance under the House bill.
Obamacare Will Use Taxpayer Dollars to Pay For Women to Have Abortions: In all four mark-ups of health care legislation (three in the House and one in the Senate), Conservatives have offered amendments that would specifically prohibit federal funds from being used to cover abortion. None of them passed. Instead, the House Energy and Commerce Committee passed an amendment by Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA) that actually requires at least one insurance plan to cover abortion in every geographical region and requires the newly-created public plan to cover all abortion services. How can the President and NBC News possibly claim that Obamacare will not direct taxpayer money to pay for abortions? They’ve employed a complete accounting fiction, claiming that beneficiary premiums will pay for abortions, not federal subsidies. Since neither the federal government nor any insurance company will be required to create separate “abortion” and “non-abortion” general funds (and since the President explicitly promise Planned Parenthood his health care plan would cover “reproductive services“), Americans have every right to believe that the existing legislation will funnel their tax dollars to abortion.
Obamacare Will Allow Government to Ration Health Care: Both the House and Senate bills call for an increased role for Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER) to determine which medical procedures are most effective at treating specific ailments. Although this provision is based on perfectly sound policy, many Americans are concerned that federal officials could use CER to make treatment, coverage, or payment decisions. Three Senators offered amendments that would have prohibited the use of CER to mandate coverage, deny care, or ration. CER, if used as a rationing tool, would obviously interfere with the traditional doctor-patient relationship. All three amendments failed on straight party-line votes.
These are just some of the very real fears Americans have about Obamacare. And as we have decisively demonstrated, all have sound basis in fact. But they do not even touch on another very real fear Americans have about Obamacare: the cost. This Friday, the Obama administration leaked news that they will be forced to raise their 10-year budget deficit forecast to about nine trillion dollars, up about two trillion from the previous forecast. Considering that all best estimates point to at least a $1 trillion price tag for Obamacare, it is a wonder just 42% of Americans believe Obamacare is a “bad idea.”

From the Heritage Foundation

President Obama's 'Wild Misrepresentations'

President Obama hosted a townhall meeting yesterday afternoon that seemed more scripted than some of the soap operas that his broadcast was competing with. Not surprisingly, the meeting was carefully choreographed--so much so that the President couldn't find a single person to disagree with him. Apparently his was the only townhall in the entire country where there wasn't at least one voter opposed to a government takeover of health care. Unlike the millions of concerned citizens packed into local gymnasiums and city halls, this event was replete with a select group of White House cheerleaders. Even the little girl, who famously asked why the other side is so "mean," turned out to be the child of an Obama donor, who is important enough to have already met the First Family and Vice President Joe Biden at a previous fundraiser. Coincidence? As Michelle Malkin pointed out, there are no coincidences in this administration. What was more amazing than all this premeditation is how the President accused groups like FRC of engaging in "wild misrepresentations" while engaging in a series of incredible distortions himself.

The whoppers he told ranged from fudging the plan's list of supporters to the details of the plan itself. At one point he told the crowd, "We have the AARP on board because they know this is a good deal for our seniors." That was news to the AARP, who disputed the endorsement immediately after the townhall concluded. Tom Nelson, AARP's chief operating officer, told reporters, "Indications that we have endorsed any of the major health care reform bills... are inaccurate." The President also claimed, "Under the reform we're proposing, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan." But an independent study commissioned by the Heritage Foundation actually found that 88.1 million people would be shifted out of their current employer-based plan.

As part of his pitch, the President also tried to compare his health care overhaul to the competition between FedEx and the U.S. Post Office. He said, "If you think about it, UPS and FedEx are doing just fine, right? No, they are. It's the Post Office that's always having problems." It's a false comparison for several reasons, but mainly because the U.S. Postal System is heavily regulated and, as a result, it's weighed down by federal mandates--just as the President's health plan would place burdensome new regulations on private insurance companies. That's why his statement is so revealing about why a government takeover of health care is not the solution. The American people are outraged because they don't want health care delivered with the empathy of the IRS, the efficiency of FEMA or the mismanagement of the Post Office. The Post Office lost $ 2.8 billion last year while giving a $ 135,000 "performance bonus" to its top executive. And because the USPS is federally run and funded monopoly, it is unaccountable for its perpetual fiscal mess--just like Medicare. That's not the kind of change the American people are hoping for.

Of course, the President's biggest misrepresentation was his insistence that he doesn't back a single-payer system. "I have not said that I was a single-payer supporter," he told yesterday's audience. Maybe he hasn't said it as President, but last August, candidate Obama told an Albuquerque townhall, "If I were designing a system from scratch, I would probably go ahead with a single-payer system." The bottom line, Mr. President, is that if you portray yourself as an honest man, it helps if you keep your facts straight.

APA and Media Play Mind Games over Ex-Gay Therapy

Promoting the belief that people are "born gay" and cannot change is crucial to the homosexual agenda of equating sexual orientation with race and the identification of homosexual conduct with the civil rights movement. Unfortunately for them, facts--like the existence of thousands of "ex-gays"--are stubborn things. Politically correct attacks on the ex-gay movement continued yesterday with the American Psychological Association's adoption of a resolution discouraging what they call "sexual orientation change efforts (SOCE)."

This led to a predictable round of headlines today saying things like "Gay Therapies Unsound" and "Psychologists Reject Gay Therapy." The APA's actual scientific findings were much more modest, however, declaring, "There are no studies of adequate scientific rigor to conclude whether or not recent SOCE do or do not work" [emphasis added]. Ironically, it is largely the pro-homosexual forces in the APA which have prevented "studies of adequate scientific rigor" to make more definitive conclusions. Claims that such therapy is actually harmful, meanwhile, are supported by only anecdotal rather than scientific evidence.

Yesterday's report could have been worse, since some homosexual activists want sexual reorientation therapy to be flatly declared unethical--something the APA declined to do. Instead, the APA should re-affirm the profession's traditional ethical commitment to letting every client, including those unhappy with their homosexuality, set their own goals for therapy. The Left's growing problem with professional ethics and valid medical standards continues to grow.

Judgment Day

With just one day left on the summer schedule and public unrest threatening to sink the party's health care plan, Senate liberals hoped to leave town on a high note. For them, that meant confirming the President's highly controversial Supreme Court nominee, Sonia Sotomayor. Despite a spotty record that shows her tendency to legislate from the bench, nine Republicans--including Senators Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), Kit Bond (R-Mo.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), Mel Martinez (R-Fla.), Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), and George Voinovich (R-Ohio)--helped to put her confirmation over the top in a 68-31vote.

While the overall outcome was disappointing, FRC applauds the nearly unprecedented unity displayed by the 31 Republicans who stood united against her confirmation on the grounds that she is a judicial activist. The conservative leadership in the Senate, led by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), is to be commended for their noble effort to protect the Constitution.