Marcus debunks falsehoods in House health care debate
November 11, 2009 6:39 am ET by Media Matters staff
From Ruth Marcus' November 11 column, "Health scare tactics":
I'm hoping, for your sake, that you didn't spend your Saturday night as I did: watching the House debate health-care reform on C-SPAN.
Pathetic, I know. The outcome wasn't in doubt, and the arguments were as familiar as an old pair of slippers. Moral imperative! Government takeover! Long-overdue protections! Crippling mandates!
[...]The falsehood-peddling began at the top, with Minority Leader John Boehner:
"If you're a Medicare Advantage enrollee . . . the Congressional Budget Office says that 80 percent of them are going to lose their Medicare Advantage."
Not true. The CBO hasn't said anything of the sort. Boehner's office acknowledges that he misspoke: He meant to cite a study from the Medicare actuary estimating that projected enrollment would be down by 64 percent -- if the cuts took effect. Choosing not to enroll in Medicare Advantage is different from "losing" it.
But Boehner wasn't alone.
Kentucky Republican Brett Guthrie: "The bill raises taxes for just about everyone."
Not true. The bill imposes a surtax on the top 0.3 percent of households, individuals making more than $500,000 a year and couples making more than $1 million.
Georgia Republican Tom Price: "This bill, on Page 733, empowers the Washington bureaucracy to deny lifesaving patient care if it costs too much."
Not true. The bill sets up a Center for Comparative Effectiveness Research "in order to identify the manner in which diseases, disorders, and other health conditions can most effectively and appropriately be prevented, diagnosed, treated, and managed clinically."
Are Republicans against figuring out what works? There's nothing in there about cost, and certainly nothing about denying "lifesaving patient care."
Price, again: "This bill, on Page 94, will make it illegal for any American to obtain health care not approved by Washington."
Not true. The vast majority of Americans get their insurance through their employers. The bill envisions setting minimum federal standards for such insurance, in part to determine who is eligible to buy coverage through the newly created insurance exchanges. This is hardly tantamount to making it "illegal" to obtain "health care" without Washington's approval.
Michigan Republican Dave Camp: "Americans could face five years in jail if they don't comply with the bill's demands to buy approved health insurance."
Not true. The bill requires people to obtain insurance or, with some hardshipexceptions, pay a fine. No one is being jailed for being uninsured. People who intentionally evade paying the fine could, in theory, be prosecuted -- just like others who cheat on their taxes.
California Republican Buck McKeon: "I offered two amendments to try to improve this bill -- one to require members of Congress to enroll in the public option like we're going to require all of you to do."
Not true. No one is required to enroll in the public option. In fact, most people won't even be eligible to enroll in the public option or other plans available through the exchanges.
Florida Republican Ginny Brown-Waite: "The president's own economic advisers have said that this bill will kill 5.5 million jobs."
Not true. Christina Romer, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, has estimated that the bill would increase economic growth and add jobs. Republicans misuse Romer's previous economic research on the impact of tax increases to produce the phony 5.5 million number.
You have to wonder: Are the Republican arguments against the bill so weak that they have to resort to these misrepresentations and distortions?
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Come on this is a trick question, right?
Death panels...
Jail if you don't have insurance...
And so on...
The best one that I've seen is the whole, the "bill is too large" argument as to why this shouldn't come about. Here we have a bill, that is going to change around a large part of our economy, and they expect it to be 20 pages long? If they didn't know it, this is a complex issue, and it's going to take more than a few pages of bill writing to get it done.
I see it all the time. We get Global Climate Change deniers who throw out ridiculous things that supposedly debunk the belief that much of the warming is due to humans. You'd think they'd use their best stuff, but it's all nonsense, so either they aren't giving us their best stuff, or their best stuff sucks!
And when Republican Congressmen were challenged to present an alternative plan, they couldn't come up with anything sufficient at all!
Sure, theirs cost less, but ours saved more money, about twice as much, in the long run! So you say, how can that be, that their proposal will cost much less but will end up costing us more?
Because our plan saves a lot more - and that was the whole reason for doing this. The crisis that made Obama tackle this right away? The fact that this entitlement spending had gotten out of control, and was threatening to swallow too much of the federal budget within a generation or so!!!
So, our plan not only covers a lot more people (another aim of healthcare reform) but ends up cutting the deficit at the end of ten years a lot more than their plan does!
And their solutions? Not really solutions at all. Tort reform? It would leave 99.5% of the costs untouched. Selling insurance across state lines? That would allow insurance that's less substantial than one state's mandated coverage to be sold in that state. But aren't Republicans all about state's rights? Why would they want to subvert a state's rules about minimum coverage limits by allowing another state's less restrictive rules to apply?
Because that's the only way to 'claim' that they can reduce the cost of healthcare, that's why.
Dishonest hacks. All around, every opportunity, full of nonsense.