President Obama will be visiting the St. Louis area Wednesday to garner support for his health reform plan. As Washington prepares for a final bare-knuckled battle this month, the stakes could not be higher. With Republicans united in opposition, Democratic leaders are planning to enact a sweeping health overhaul that the American people continue to say in the every way possible that they don’t want.
While the president can make a compelling case for action, his assertions about his plan are not backed by facts. Based upon his most recent health reform statements, the president will continue to make arguments refuted by the facts and independent analyses when he visits Wednesday. Here are just a few examples:
President Obama said at the White House on March 3 that his plan will “bring down the cost of health care for millions – families, businesses, and the federal government.”
But the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says health insurance premiums will continue their steady upward climb under the Senate bill. Families purchasing insurance in the individual market would see an increase of $2,100 in the year 2016, over and above increases they already will be facing. That means those families would be paying $15,200 in 2016 for health insurance if the Senate bill passes, and $13,100 if it doesn’t.
His legislation will do nothing to slow the steady climb of health costs. Families who get health insurance through small businesses will be paying $19,200 in six years, and those working for large firms, $20,100, according to CBO.
And the Obama administration’s own Chief Medicare Actuary estimates that, under the Senate bill, “Federal expenditures would increase by a net total of $279 billion” between 2010 and 2019.
So it would cost families, businesses, and taxpayers more, not less, if his plan passes.
President Obama: “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan.”
He claims no one will have to change plans, but at the health reform summit, the president acknowledged that the Senate bill could take away the current health insurance coverage for eight to nine million Americans.
The steep cuts in Medicare Advantage that President Obama supports would mean at least one-third of seniors in Missouri, Illinois and 45 other states likely could lose their comprehensive Medicare Advantage coverage as their plans are forced to withdraw from the program, cut their benefits, or raise premiums (three states received sweetheart deals to protect their seniors from the cuts). In addition, about 10 million people with employer-sponsored insurance could lose their current coverage, according to the CBO.
President Obama says his plan “brings down our deficit.”
No one believes this to be true and for good reason. The president and congressional leaders employed trillion-dollar budget gimmicks to make this assertion. CBO, the budget scorekeeper, was cynically given a bill with ten years of tax hikes and Medicare cuts to pay for only six years of new entitlement subsidies. The IRS would throw ordinary Americans in jail if they used this type of accounting.
So just on these three examples – keeping your current coverage, lowering costs, and reducing the deficit – the president’s assertions are wrong. One hopes his St. Louis speech will not employ what we’ve seen from President Obama throughout this debate: using the same arguments that have been proven as inaccurate by independent studies and analyses, and hoping that maybe, just maybe, this time the speech will work.
Thursday’s much-hyped health “summit” seemed mainly designed to show the president telling Republicans, “Those are all legitimate points.” Democrats admit it was a setup to pass their $2 trillion plan.
Not long before the president assembled Democrats and Republicans at the Garden Room of Blair House for a health care powwow, Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y., let it all hang out on the House floor, roaring that “every single Republican I have ever met in my entire life is a wholly owned subsidiary of the insurance industry.”
Civility was the cool thing during the grand gathering, but the real purpose behind this televised event was cutthroat.
A Politico story by Mike Allen made that clear, reporting that according to a Democratic official the summit was meant to “give a face to gridlock, in the form of House and Senate Republicans.”
Democratic Party strategists told the Web-based publication that the push will begin early next week for “a massive, Democrats-only health care plan.” The official said of the summit’s purpose: “The point is to alter the political atmospherics.”
Clearly, while the public face with the C-SPAN cameras on is the president’s soft-spoken “those are all reasonable points,” the unseen reality is closer to the partisan rants of Rep. Weiner.
Again and again, Democratic participants insisted that “we’re really not that far apart,” “we really are close” and “we basically agree” except for “semantic differences.” House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., whose trouble with numbers extends to his own tax returns and whose airtime was buried toward the end of the event, absurdly claimed that there was 70% agreement between Democrats and Republicans.
When Republicans respectfully objected, with factual backup, that the differences were actually basic, relating to government vs. individual control, they were curtly accused of rattling off political “talking points” by the president.
A perfect example of the trickery was the president’s seeming willingness to agree to let consumers buy health insurance across state lines — maybe after his national health insurance exchange is established. The continual theme: Let the federal government intrude, then we can talk.
Highly informed sources on Capitol Hill have revealed to me details of the Democratic plan to sneak Obamacare through Congress, despite collapsing public approval for healthcare “reform” and disintegrating congressional support in the wake of Republican Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts.
President Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid all have agreed to the basic framework of the plan.
Their plan is clever but can be stopped if opponents of radical healthcare reform act quickly and focus on a core group of 23 Democratic Congressman. If just a few of these 23 Democrats are “flipped” and decide to oppose the bill, the whole Obama-Pelosi-Reid stratagem falls apart.
Here’s what I learned top Democrats are planning to implement.
Senate Democrats will go to the House with a two-part deal.
First, the House will pass the Senate’s Obamacare bill that passed the Senate in December. The House leadership will vote on the Senate bill, and Pelosi will allow no amendments or modifications to the Senate bill.
How will Pelosi’s deal fly with rambunctious liberal members of her majority who don’t like the Senate bill, especially its failure to include a public option, put heavy fines on those who don’t get insurance, and offering no income tax surcharge on the “rich”?
That’s where the second part of the Pelosi-deal comes in.
Behind closed doors, Reid and Pelosi have agreed in principle that changes to the Senate bill will be made to satisfy liberal House members — but only after the Senate bill is passed and signed into law by Obama.
This deal will be secured by a pledge from Reid and the Senate’s Democratic caucus that they will make “fixes” to the Senate bill after it becomes law with Obama’s John Hancock.
But you may ask what about the fact that, without Republican Scott Brown and independent Democrats such as Joe Lieberman, Reid simply doesn’t have the 60 votes in the Senate to overcome a Republican filibuster that typically can stop major legislation?
According to my source, Reid will provide to Pelosi a letter signed by 52 Democratic senators indicating they will pass the major changes, or “fixes,” the House Democrats are demanding. Again, these fixes will be approved by the Senate only after Obama signs the Senate bill into law.
Reid also has agreed to bypass Senate cloture and filibuster rules and claim that these modifications fall under “reconciliation” and don’t require 60 Senate votes.
To pass the fixes, he won’t need one Republican; he won’t even need Joe Lieberman or wavering Democrats such as Jim Webb of Virginia.
His 52 pledged senators give him a simple majority to pass any changes they want, which will later be rubberstamped by Pelosi’s House and signed by Obama.
This plan, of course, is a total subversion of the legislative process.
Typically, the Senate and House pass their own unique legislation and then both bills go to a conference committee. In conference, the leadership of both Democrat-dominated houses wheels and deals and irons out differences.
The final compromise bill is then sent back to the full Senate and full House for a vote and has to pass both to go to the president.
In the House, a simple majority passes the legislation. But under Senate rules, major legislation requires 60 votes to end a filibuster.
As it stands, the House bill and Senate bill have major discrepancies. Reid does not have 60 votes to pass a compromise bill that would no doubt include some of the radical provisions House members have been demanding.
But if the House passes the exact Senate bill that passed by a 60-39 Senate vote last month, there is no need for a conference on the bill. It will go directly to the president’s desk.
There is a rub to all of this.
This secret plan being hatched by Pelosi and Reid requires not only a pledge by 52 Democratic senators to vote later for the House modifications. House liberals must actually believe these Senators will live up to their pledge and pass the fixes at some future date.
President Obama repeatedly promised the American people that he planned to televise the health care reform negotiations on CSPAN. But the reality is that most of the most important negotiations that have taken place to date and are currently taking place in reconciling the House and Senate versions of the bills are occurring behind closed doors.
Sen. DeMint Exposes Draconian Measure in Health Care Bill
Senator Reid Proposes Restrictions on Self-Governance
Senator Harry Reid has slipped language into the heath care bill, via an amendment that would tie the hands of future Congresses with regard to repealing or amending it. The amendment makes substantial changes to the standing rules of the Senate, a move that normally requires a super-majority vote of at least 67 Senators. When questioned about this by Senator DeMint, The Senate president ruled that the bill changes Senate procedure, but not Senate rules, so the 67 vote threshold did not apply. The unasked question that begs to follow is, “what establishes Senate procedures?” Answer: The rules.
Section 3403 of Senator Harry Reid’s amendment (page 1020) states that “it shall not be in order in the Senate or the House of Representatives to consider any bill, resolution, amendment, or conference report that would repeal or otherwise change this subsection.” The subsection pertains to regulations imposed by the Medicare Advisory Board. The amendment goes on to require a vote of 3/5 the Senate (60 votes) to waive the paragraph.
This posturing, setting some provisions of the law above others, so as to make them untouchable sets a dangerous precedent. It is the Constitution that is established as the supreme law of the land. The threshold for changing it was set high by the founders. Senator Reid and his cohorts are now attempting to enshrine provisions of their health care bill as above normal laws, and not subject to the normal democratic processes to change or repeal them.
DeMint observed, “I don’t see why the majority party wouldn’t put this into every bill.”
Ed Morisey made the point well in his article: “The elected representatives of today should not have greater authority than those who will follow them. Any attempt to pass this into legislation aggrandizes the power of this Congress at the expense of those that follow.”
The proposed language of this health care amendment would, by simple majority vote, establish a requirement for a super majority to alter or repeal it. If this anti-democracy measure is allowed to stand, the implications for this and all future legislation are dire. Hundreds of years of established Congressional process will be subverted, the future will of the people, expressed by the election of their representatives, thwarted by unreasonable and unprecedented obstacles to our right of self-governance.
The debate over health-care reform has sparked all sorts of controversy over costs, regulations and choices. But one ‘feature’ seems to have escaped notice: the built-in lack of accountability of our elected leaders for what health care will be like after the plan is implemented.
Proponents claim we need reform now to solve an immediate health care “crisis.” “If we don’t act, 14,000 Americans will continue to lose their health insurance every single day,” President Obama claimed on July 22.
Yet the bills he urges us to support will not actually provide any health care until 2013 — by which time, if the president’s claim is correct, an additional 17 million Americans will have lost their insurance.
Why the delay? The best way the people have to hold their elected leaders accountable for results is by threatening to withhold their votes. But this bill seems expressly designed to eliminate that source of accountability. By the time Americans experience the effects of this health care bill (except for the tax increases), not only will President Obama have run for re-election, but so will two-thirds of the senators — and every House member will have been up for re-election twice. Their votes on health care reform will be old news. If it goes very badly, it will be too late to vote those responsible out of office.
Furthermore, the House bill leaves all the knotty details and controversial issues to the newly created “Health Choices Commissioner.”
That’s the person whose job it will be to make a lot of our health care choices for us. The Senate Finance Committee (Baucus) proposal gives that authority to the secretary of Health and Human Services. Issues such as whether to:
Permit people with Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) to retain the high-deductible health plans required by the HSA law.
Allow low-cost catastrophic plans.
Permit insurance companies to cover treatment of otherwise terminally ill patients.
Require (or prohibit) coverage of abortion.
Cover new cancer drugs or controversial procedures like (as the Center for American Progress has called for) transgender operations.
87 percent of the revenue in the original Baucus proposal to finance Obamacare would come from individuals with incomes of less than $200,000.
The U.S. Senate’s version of Obamacare finally is emerging into broad daylight, and the more people see of it, the less popular it should be.
For all the rhetoric, the plan is quite easy to sketch, thanks in part to an analysis by the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation.
So here goes: Under the health-care plan advanced by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, lower- and middle-class people who have insurance today are going to be taxed and squeezed in order to cover people who don’t.
The money to finance the new entitlement comes from two main sources, tax increases and Medicare cuts. Medicare cuts are mostly borne by elderly folks with modest means. That undoubtedly explains why seniors are so concerned.
The tax increases, by contrast, have received little attention. There has been almost no discussion of the simple question: who would pay the tab?
Think about how unusual that is. It is a radical departure from past tax debates. When President George W. Bush was in office, every tax proposal, no matter how minor, seemed to be buried by a blizzard of detailed distributional analyses that went from think-tank Web sites to the front pages of your favorite newspaper instantaneously.
In this debate, the distributional-industrial complex has remained silent.
Such remarkable silence in the noisiest town on earth can only be caused by an uncomfortable truth. And the mother of all uncomfortable truths is lurking below the surface in the health debate. If you are a card-carrying member of the left-wing establishment, you can’t analyze the distributional consequences of the health bill, because if you do, you will catch President Barack Obama in a lie.
By Newt Gingrich – With the Senate Finance Committee poised to pass health care legislation, the final contours of the bill that could come out of Congress are starting to come into focus. The bill will contain new taxes on the middle class. It will add to the deficit. And it will put government bureaucrats between Americans and their doctors, among other things.
So it’s not too early to ask the obvious question: Will President Obama veto health care reform?
It’s worth asking because so many of the costs to taxpayers the President has repeatedly promised won’t be in the legislation are, and so many of the benefits are not.
What follows is a list, in no particular order, of the contradictions between the President’s promises and the reality of Democratic health care reform. Add them up and it’s hard to see how President Obama doesn’t reject the bill Congress seems likely to send him.
Contradiction #1: From a Promise Not to Raise Taxes on the Middle Class to $2 Billion in “Penalties”
As far back as the campaign, President Obama promised he wouldn’t raise taxes on Americans making less than $250,000.
But an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) found that at least 71 percent of the individual mandate penalties in Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus’s (D-MT) bill would be paid by Americans earning less than $250,000. In fact, the nonpartisan analysis found that, of the $2.8 billion in penalties the bill imposes on those who do not purchase health insurance, a full $2 billion will be paid by taxpayers earning less than $120,000 for a family of four.
The Senate Finance bill also levies $215 billion in new taxes on employers and health insurers for offering high-value insurance benefits, which will surely be passed onto all consumers.
Republicans tried to ensure that President Obama’s words would not ring hollow by offering an amendment that said: “This amendment provides that no tax, fee or penalty imposed by this legislation shall be applied to any individual earning less than $200,000 per year or any couple earning less than $250,000 per year.” Democrats defeated it.
Contradiction #2: From a Promise to Reject a Bill That “Adds One Dime to the Deficit” to $239 Billion Added to the Deficit
In his speech to the Joint Session of Congress, the President was adamant: “I will not sign [a bill] if it adds one dime to the deficit, now or in the future, period.”
And yet House bill H.R. 3200 will increase the deficit by an amazing $239 billion over the next decade.
The Baucus bill pretends to be deficit neutral but it’s an accounting gimmick. “It pays for itself” by forcing a new $250-300 billion unfunded mandate on the states. And it doesn’t include nearly $300 billion that will be spent to adjust physician payments in Medicare.
Contradiction #3: From a Promise That “If You Like Your Current Plan You Can Keep It” to Half of Medicare Advantage Benefits Being Cut
In his speech to the Joint Session of Congress last month and elsewhere, the President has reassured nervous Americans that if they like their current coverage, his reform will let them keep it.
Unless you happen to have Medicare Advantage, that is.
Or employer provided insurance.
The director of the nonpartisan CBO testified before the Senate that, under the Senate bill, the benefits of seniors under Medicare Advantage would be cut in half.
And an analysis of the House bill found that 88 million people will lose their current insurance under government health care.
What’s more, both bills would disrupt vision care for more than 100 million Americans.
In the most contentious exchange of President Barack Obama’s marathon of five Sunday shows, he said it is “not true” that a requirement for individuals to get health insurance under a key reform plan now being debated amounts to a tax increase.
But he could look it up — in the bill.
Page 29, sentence one of the bill introduced by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont) says: “The consequence for not maintaining insurance would be an excise tax.”
And the rest of the bill is clear that the Finance Committee does, in fact, consider it a tax: “The excise tax would be assessed through the tax code and applied as an additional amount of Federal tax owed.”
The bill requires every American, with few exceptions, to carry health insurance. To enforce this individual mandate, the Senate Finance Committee created the excise tax as a penalty for people who don’t have insurance – and it can run as much as $3,800 a year per family.
Mark Tapscott discovers a nugget in the analysis provided by the Congressional Research Office on HR3200, the House version of ObamaCare coming to the floor. While Barack Obama insists that the idea that ObamaCare will cover illegal immigrants is a “myth,” the CRS points out that the bill does nothing to prevent it. Since HR3200 doesn’t require people to establish citizenship or legal residency before applying to exchanges for health insurance, including the public option, taxpayer money will certainly flow to illegal immigrants:
In what he called the “first myth” being spread by critics of his proposal for a government-run health care system, Obama said they are wrong in claiming illegal immigrants will be covered: “That is not true. Illegal immigrants would not be covered. That idea has not even been on the table.” Obama said.
Well, Mr. President, that idea must have been tucked under a stack of background briefing papers over there in the corner of the table because the Congressional Research Service (CRS) says this about H.R. 3200, the Obamacare bill approved just before the recess by the House Energy and Commerce Committee chaired by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-CA:
“Under H.R. 3200, a ‘Health Insurance Exchange’ would begin operation in 2013 and would offer private plans alongside a public option…H.R. 3200 does not contain any restrictions on noncitzens—whether legally or illegally present, or in the United States temporarily or permanently—participating in the Exchange.”
CRS reports do not get released to the public. CRS offers private analysis to members of Congress on request, but rarely do they see the light of day. However, David Freddoso got his hands on a copy of the 11-page analysis, “Treatment of Non-Citizens in HR3200″ late last night, and confirmed Tapscott’s reading:
In its subsection on health insurance subsidies (known as “affordability credits”), HR 3200 does state, “Nothing in this subtitle shall allow Federal payments for affordability credits on behalf of individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States.” That would seem to solve the problem, but it’s more rhetoric than reality. The bill contains no verification requirement or enforcement process for citizenship or legal residency, as exists for other federal benefit programs. The only verification required for the subsidies pertains to family income. Beyond that, as the CRS report notes, everything is left in the hands of the Health Choices Commissioner.
House Democrats defeated all attempts in committee to add an enforcement mechanism that would require proof of citizenship or legal residency for those getting subsidies.
CRS also notes that “undocumented aliens” who have a “substantial presence” in the US would be required to buy health insurance (page 4) through the exchanges in HR3200. They would also become eligible for “emergency Medicaid,” although not normal Medicaid (page 6) for up to five years.
The thing about the bully pulpit is that Presidents can make the most fantastic claims and it takes days to sort the reality from the myths. So as a public service, let’s try to navigate the, er, remarkable Medicare discussion that President Obama delivered on Wednesday. It isn’t easy.
Mr. Obama began by depicting a crisis in the entitlement state, noting that “our health-care system is placing an unsustainable burden on taxpayers,” especially Medicare. Unless we find a way to cauterize this fiscal hemorrhage, “we will eventually be spending more on Medicare than every other government program combined. Put simply, our health-care program is our deficit problem. Nothing else even comes close.”
On this score he’s right. Medicare’s unfunded liability—the gap between revenues and promised benefits—is currently some $37 trillion over the next 75 years. Yet the President uses this insolvency as an argument to justify the creation of another health-care entitlement, this time for most everyone under age 65. It’s like a variation on the old Marx Brothers routine: “The soup is terrible and the portions are too small.”
As astonishing, Mr. Obama claimed he can finance universal health care without adding “one dime to the deficit, now or in the future, period,” in large part by pumping money out of Medicare. The $880 billion Senate plan he all but blessed this week would cut Medicare by as much as $500 billion, mainly by cutting what Mr. Obama called “waste and abuse.” Perhaps this is related to the “waste and abuse” that Congresses of both parties have targeted dozens of times without ever cutting it.
Reform: Millions of Americans finally got to hear the Democrats’ pitch on health care reform, made by their top salesman. But they heard nothing new — just a lot of discredited myths recycled as the truth.
For the record, we support improving our health care system. As is, it has too many rules, too much government spending and too few market forces to keep costs low and quality high.
We spend north of $2 trillion every year on health care — 17% of our GDP, the most of any wealthy nation. If that sounds like a lot, remember this: An estimated 47% of that already is spent by the government. And government’s share will grow even without “reform.”
Look closely at the plans so far to emerge from Congress. What the Democrats have proposed, in essence, is a government takeover of nearly one-fifth of our nation’s economy. When brought up in Congress, this idea has been rejected repeatedly. Yet, somehow, the idea never dies.
That’s why the president’s speech Wednesday night was a big disappointment.
Rather than a breakthrough that would remove government’s stranglehold on a once-healthy market and move us toward true reform, we heard a lot of old bromides and myths — things we just can’t let go uncorrected. Too much is at stake.
So following are 15 of the biggest misconceptions — and there are many more, we assure you — that we found in the speech:
• “The uninsured . . . live every day just one accident or illness away from bankruptcy. These are not primarily people on welfare.”
Actually, of the 46 million people the census estimates don’t have insurance, some 20 million have incomes above average and could afford to buy it, according to a study by former Congressional Budget Office Director June O’Neill.
Of the remaining 26 million uninsured, an estimated 13.7 million are poor. They are eligible for Medicaid — the state health care programs for the poor. But many, too, are illegals — about 8 million.
Though they’re eligible, research from the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association suggests as many as 14 million uninsured Americans qualify for public coverage, but don’t enroll. And as many as 6 million are enrolled, but don’t report it to the government, according to the National Center for Policy Analysis.
That leaves about 5 million people with no care.
By the way, according to the Census Bureau, America now has 37 million people in poverty. But Medicaid enrollment covers 55 million people — at a cost of $350 billion a year.
Based on this, no one should be without care. Which leads us to wonder: Is nationalizing our health care system really necessary to take care of people who already have care available to them?
• “Many other Americans . . . are still denied insurance due to previous illnesses or conditions that insurance companies decide are too risky or expensive to cover.”
This statement betrays a profound ignorance of what insurance is. If you can buy insurance after you’ve gotten sick, it’s not really insurance, is it? And why have insurance at all? It’s an incentive to simply wait until you get sick, then make someone else pay for it.
To see how absurd this is, let’s take the same concept to auto insurance. Why not let people buy insurance after they get in an accident? One reason, of course, is it leads to fiscal and personal recklessness.
• “There are now more than 30 million American citizens who cannot get coverage . . . every day, 14,000 Americans lose their coverage.”
As noted above, the bulk of the 30-plus million uninsured actually can get coverage — and in many cases, qualify for existing government programs. But how about 14,000 Americans losing their coverage each day? A little math shows this is just a scare statistic.
Multiply it out, and it comes to 5.1 million people losing coverage in a year. Sound scary? Consider that, according to the census, 46.3 million Americans don’t currently have insurance — 600,000 more than last year. That means that, along with 14,000 Americans losing their coverage each day, another 12,400 Americans are signing up for it — even in the middle of a brutal recession.
Those who lose insurance do so usually because they’ve lost a job. Most are without insurance for a couple of months or so. The best way to boost the number of insured — and one that “costs” nothing — is to cut taxes, ease regulations and slash government spending. Those policies are all proven job creators.
• “We spend one-and-a-half times more per person on health care than any other country, but we aren’t any healthier for it.”
This is a non sequitur. We spend one and a half times more per person, true. But because our health care here is better. That’s right — better. True, our life expectancy of 78.1 years — which is up sharply from just a decade ago — ranks us 30th in the world in longevity. But look a little closer at the data.
The U.S. homicide rate is two to three times higher than in other industrial nations. And we drive a lot more than others, so our auto fatality rate of 14.24 deaths per 100,000 people is higher than in Germany (6.19), France (7.4) or Canada (9.25). Add to this, we eat far more than other countries on average, contributing to higher levels of heart disease, stroke, diabetes and cancer.
When all those factors are figured in, according to a recent study by Robert Ohsfeldt of Texas A&M and John Schneider of the University of Iowa, Americans actually live longer than people in other countries — thanks mainly to our excellent health care.
A conservative media watchdog organization is demanding that the media reports President Obama’s “lies, distortions, and exaggerations” delivered in his speech on healthcare reform Wednesday night.
The Media Research Center says President Barack Obama will not stop committing what it calls “serial dishonesty with the American people until the media expose his false figures and bogus exaggerations for what they are: fraudulent scare tactics.” The group describes the president’s Wednesday night speech about healthcare as “a litany of lies.”
Rich Noyes, director of research at the MRC, says The Associated Press did do a fact check on his speech.
“[The AP story suggests] that he uttered ‘a variety of over simplifications and omissions,’” says Noyes. “He talked about how he would not add a single dime to the deficit, when the studies are showing it would add about a trillion dollars to the deficit over the second year of the plan. He talked about not permitting any illegal immigrant to be covered, when in fact it was Democrats who voted down any attempt to verify immigration status.”
“The list of things that he talked about [was] very misleading,” the MRC spokesman concludes, “added to the arrogant veneer of him scolding anybody else for taking liberties with the truth as liars, as he did.”
Noyes says Obama’s speech was about as “audacious” as one could possibly get. He says while the AP did do its fact check, there has been little coverage from the mainstream media on Obama taking liberty with the facts during his speech. Until that happens, says MRC, it gives the president “a green light to lie and cry wolf about whatever he wants, whenever he wants — and it will aid in the most radical government takeover ever attempted in America.”
By John Boehner, House Republican Minority Leader — Last night during his address to a joint session of Congress on the topic of health care, President Obama again repeated many claims that simply aren’t true. But despite the President’s rhetoric, the Democrats’ health care bills will force millions of Americans out of their current health care plans, add to the federal deficit, and increase Americans’ health care costs. Following are some of the discredited claims the President repeated last night:
CLAIM: “…[N]othing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have. Let me repeat this: nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have.”
FACT: This marked an important change in the President’s language last night. He used to say, “If you like your health-care plan, you keep your health-care plan.” By now using the word “require,” the President’s admitting that they can’t guarantee Americans will keep their health plan. After both the Associated Press, ABC News and others have thoroughly debunked this claim, it’s not surprising the White House has made this shift. But the point is that no one knows for sure how many employers will drop their coverage altogether if their plan goes into effect. Experts at the Lewin Group estimate the number could be more than 100 million Americans. And $500 billion in Medicare cuts will obviously reduce the quality of care America’s seniors receive.
CLAIM: “The plan will not add to our deficit…I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits – either now or in the future. Period.”
FACT: According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, the House Democrats’ bill would increase the deficit by $239 billion over 10 years. And a recent study by the Lewin Group found that “[i]n the second 10 years…the proposal would add an estimated $1 trillion to the federal deficit.”
CLAIM: “(I)t will slow the growth of health care costs for our families, our businesses, and our government.”
FACT: As the Associated Press has reported, the Democrats’ plan will increase costs, rather than lower them: “Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf warned lawmakers the legislation that he has seen so far would raise costs, not lower them.”
CLAIM: “If you come to me with a serious set of proposals, I will be there to listen. My door is always open.”
FACT: The Hill reported yesterday, that the President has not met with House Republicans since April, and when Republican Leaders asked for a meeting to discuss health care in a May 14 letter, the President ignored the request. The Politico reported on the President’s response on June 5, saying, “he makes no mention of the request to meet in the letter, which he signs off by stating, “Thank you again for sharing your thoughts with me and I look forward to further discussions on this critically important issue.” But those “further discussions” simply didn’t happen. The facts are clear: blame for the lack of bipartisanship in the current health care debate lies squarely at the feet of Washington Democrats.
CLAIM: “I will not stand by while the special interests use the same old tactics to keep things exactly the way they are.”
FACT: This is an interesting assertion considering the President also said last night: “Our overall efforts have been supported by an unprecedented coalition of doctors and nurses; hospitals, seniors’ groups and even drug companies.” So what special interests is he talking about when the White House seems to have struck back room deals with so many of them?
CLAIM: “We’ve estimated that most of this plan can be paid for by finding savings within the existing health care system – a system that is currently full of waste and abuse.”
FACT: The massive $1.6 trillion House bill’s cost is NOT mostly “paid for” through savings in the existing health care system – not by a long shot. In fact, the House bill includes more than $800 billion in new tax increases during a severe economic downturn on families and employers to “pay for” most of the massive price tag. And, the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that even with these tax increases, coupled with other “pay fors” in the bill such as cuts to Medicare, the House bill still has a revenue shortfall that will add $239 billion to the federal deficit over a ten year period. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce wrote in an open letter to Congress raising concerns about a $534 billion small business tax in July: “Even with some exemptions, this provision will kill many jobs. Market forces and employer autonomy should determine what benefits employers provide, rather than Congress.”
CLAIM: “And one more misunderstanding I want to clear up — under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place.”
FACT: During his quest for the presidency, now-President Obama declared that everyone deserves access to reproductive health care that includes abortion, and vowed that this “right” would be at the heart of his health care reform plan if elected president. President Obama has never retracted this vow, and the health care reform bill moving through the House would help him make good on it if enacted into law. As written, it would allow the U.S. Secretary of Health & Human Services (HHS) to include abortion as a benefit in the government-run health care option. Many Democrats dispute this, pointing to the recent adoption of an amendment sponsored by Rep. Lois Capps (D-CA) that would prohibit federal dollars from being used to fund abortion. But under this amendment, the HHS Secretary is explicitly authorized to pay for elective abortions under the government-run insurance plan. Some have also suggested that the government-run plan would not result in government-funded abortions because it will be subject to the “Hyde Amendment,” but this argument is misleading as well. The Hyde Amendment is not a government-wide applied law, but a rather provision included in the annual HHS Appropriations bill, which bans federal funding of elective abortions. According to a memo produced by the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, the government-option will not be funded through the appropriations process. For this reason, it will not be subject to the Hyde Amendment. The truth of the matter is that the HHS Secretary will be allowed to include abortion as a benefit in the government-run health care plan under the legislation currently moving through the House. Moreover, FactCheck.Org has stated that “House bill would allow abortions to be covered by a federal plan and by federally subsidized private plans.”
CLAIM: “Now, there are also those who claim that our reform efforts would insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false. The reforms I am proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.”
FACT: The non-partisan Congressional Research Service confirms in a report that there is no mechanism included in the bill to verify that individuals are U.S. citizens or legal immigrants before they receive government benefits. Furthermore, Republicans offered two amendments in the Ways and Means, and Energy and Commerce Committees that were rejected by Democrats. The first would have prevented illegal immigrants from being automatically enrolled into Medicaid and the second would have required better screening for applicants for federally-subsidized health care to ensure they are actually citizens or legal immigrants.
Set aside Joe Wilson’s bad manners — what about the substance of his accusation?
Mr. Wilson claims that various Democratic proposals wending their way through Congress will use U.S. taxpayer dollars to further subsidize health care for illegal immigrants. Democrats say this is not true, and the back-and-forth continues like this: Democrats say that there is nothing in pending legislation that explicitly covers illegal aliens. Republicans say, “Aha! But we offered amendments that would have specifically required more robust measures to keep illegals out of the system and you voted them down, leaving the back door open!” And Democrats respond, “No, we didn’t. We don’t need that, because Medicare and Medicaid and such already require documentation of legal status.” And then the Democrats will point to this report from that solomonic arbiter of fact, the CNN Truth Squad, which concludes: “A new report finds the bill could require illegal immigrants to buy coverage, but it clearly restricts subsidies to U.S. citizens and legal residents.”
As Sarah Palin, critics of Van Jones, and those who seek to exclude Cass Sunstein from the collective czardom of the Obama administration have pointed out, there’s what the law says and there’s what the administrative apparatus does. When it comes to the question of whether government-run health-care programs will be used to subsidize illegal aliens, we need not confine ourselves to the realm of the hypothetical and the speculative. Helpfully, the government itself has taken a look at the issue from time to time.
President Obama will be visiting the St. Louis area Wednesday to garner support for his health reform plan. As Washington prepares for a final bare-knuckled battle this month, the stakes could not be higher. With Republicans united in opposition, Democratic leaders are planning to enact a sweeping health overhaul that the American people continue to say in the every way possible that they don’t want.
Thursday’s much-hyped health “summit” seemed mainly designed to show the president telling Republicans, “Those are all legitimate points.” Democrats admit it was a setup to pass their $2 trillion plan.
From 
by Robert A. Book, Ph.D.
The U.S. Senate’s version of Obamacare finally is emerging into broad daylight, and the more people see of it, the less popular it should be.
In the most contentious 
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Reform: Millions of Americans finally got to hear the Democrats’ pitch on health care reform, made by their top salesman. But they heard nothing new — just a lot of discredited myths recycled as the truth.
A conservative media watchdog organization is demanding that the media reports President Obama’s “lies, distortions, and exaggerations” delivered in his speech on healthcare reform Wednesday night.
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