http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/22/AR2009072203365_pf.html
By CALVIN WOODWARD and JIM KUHNHENN
The Associated Press
Wednesday, July 22, 2009 10:15 PM
WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama's assertion Wednesday that government will stay out of health care decisions in an overhauled system is hard to square with the proposals coming out of Congress and with his own rhetoric. . Even now, nearly half the costs of health care in the U.S. are paid for by government at all levels. Federal authority would only grow under any proposal in play.
A look at some of Obama's claims in his prime-time news conference:
OBAMA: "We already have rough agreement" on some aspects of what a health care overhaul should involve, and one is: "It will keep government out of health care decisions, giving you the option to keep your insurance if you're happy with it."
THE FACTS: In House legislation, a commission appointed by the government would determine what is and isn't covered by insurance plans offered in a new purchasing pool, including a plan sponsored by the government. The bill also holds out the possibility that, over time, those standards could be imposed on all private insurance plans, not just the ones in the pool.
Indeed, Obama went on to lay out other principles of reform that plainly show the government making key decisions in health care. He said insurance companies would be barred from dropping coverage when someone gets too sick, limits would be set on out-of-pocket expenses, and preventive care such as checkups and mammograms would be covered.
It's true that people would not be forced to give up a private plan and go with a public one. The question is whether all of those private plans would still be in place if the government entered the marketplace in a bigger way.
He addressed some of the nuances under questioning. "Can I guarantee that there are going to be no changes in the health care delivery system?" he said. "No. The whole point of this is to try to encourage changes that work for the American people and make them healthier."
He acknowledged then that the "government already is making some of these decisions."
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OBAMA: "I have also pledged that health insurance reform will not add to our deficit over the next decade, and I mean it."
THE FACTS: The president has said repeatedly that he wants "deficit-neutral" health care legislation, meaning that every dollar increase in cost is met with a dollar of new revenue or a dollar of savings. But some things are more neutral than others. White House Budget Director Peter Orszag told reporters this week that the promise does not apply to proposed spending of about $245 billion over the next decade to increase fees for doctors serving Medicare patients. Democrats and the Obama administration argue that the extra payment, designed to prevent a scheduled cut of about 21 percent in doctor fees, already was part of the administration's policy, with or without a health care overhaul.
Beyond that, budget experts have warned about various accounting gimmicks that can mask true burdens on the deficit. The bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget lists a variety of them, including back-loading the heaviest costs at the end of the 10-year period and beyond.
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OBAMA: "You haven't seen me out there blaming the Republicans."
THE FACTS: Obama did so in his opening statement, saying, "I've heard that one Republican strategist told his party that even though they may want to compromise, it's better politics to 'go for the kill.' Another Republican senator said that defeating health reform is about 'breaking' me."
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OBAMA: "I don't know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that. But I think it's fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home, and, number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there's a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately."
THE FACTS: The facts are in dispute between black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. and the white police sergeant who arrested him at his Cambridge, Mass., home when officers went there to investigate a reported break-in. But this much is clear: Gates wasn't arrested for being in his own home, as Obama implies, but for allegedly being belligerent when the sergeant demanded his identification. The president did mention that the professor was charged with disorderly conduct. Charges were dropped.
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OBAMA: "If we had done nothing, if you had the same old budget as opposed to the changes we made in our budget, you'd have a $9.3 trillion deficit over the next 10 years. Because of the changes we've made, it's going to be $7.1 trillion."
THE FACTS: Obama's numbers are based on figures compiled by his own budget office. But they rely on assumptions about economic growth that some economists find too optimistic. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, in its own analysis of the president's budget numbers, concluded that the cumulative deficit over the next decade would be $9.1 trillion.
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http://voices.washingtonpost.com/thefix/white-house/obama-press-conference-first-t.html?wprss=thefix
Obama Press Conference: First Thoughts
President Barack Obama used a prime-time press conference Wednesday night to issue a defense, filled with facts and figures, of his policies on health care and the economy, policies that have drawn significant criticism from Republicans, and even some Democrats, in recent weeks.
"I realize that with all the charges and criticisms being thrown around in Washington, many Americans may be wondering, 'What's in this for me?' " Obama said in his opening statement -- a seeming acknowledgment that his political opponents had gained some traction in their push back against his plan to reform the health-care system.
Throughout the hour-long press conference, which was dominated by questions about the feasibility, cost and sacrifices tied to an overhaul of the health-care system, Obama cited a string of data points to make the case that preserving the status quo was unacceptable.
Obama also repeatedly reminded viewers that he had inherited an economy "on the verge of a complete financial meltdown" and had done everything he could -- despite the unpopularity of some of the measures -- to ensure the viability of the financial sector in the early days of his administration.
The Fix Tweeted the proceedings as they happened but also managed to jot down a few broader thoughts about the event.
* Professor Obama: Obama used his opening statement to lay out the stakes, the progress that had been made and the goals still yet to be accomplished on health care. He read carefully and put special emphasis on several points -- the most important being that those who like their coverage will not be affected by the legislation -- to ensure that there was no mixup in the minds of the public about what was being proposed. He cited various facts and figures to back up his points and also to dispute some of the arguments against the plan. It felt to us like we were in a classroom where the students were the American people. Too didactic? It didn't feel that way, but we reserve the right to revisit it upon further reflection.
* Playing Defense: Obama's great gift is the ability to rise above -- or at least to give that impression -- the partisan warfare that dominates Washington to appeal to the common sense of the American public. But, from his opening statement on, it was clear that part of Obama's goal in the press conference was to directly rebut charges leveled against him and his health care plan by Republicans. In his opening statement, he made an oblique reference to Sen. Jim DeMint, and time after time in the question-and-answer portion, Obama made reference to specific arguments against his efforts and worked to rebut them. The White House has used the last five days -- what amounts to an all-out media blitz -- to snatch back the offensive in the health-care fight, but it was clear from tonight's press conference that it has incurred some damage from the past few weeks of partisan wrangling in Washington.
* Stakes Are High: The underlying message of the entire news conference was this: The country has major problems that everyone has a stake in. Obama argued that changing the health-care system wasn't about simply covering the people who don't have health insurance but rather about making health care affordable and portable for all Americans. Social Security and Medicare are not someone else's problem, he argued, they are everyone's problem; likewise, fixing the ailing economy. The idea that everyone has skin in the game was at the core of Obama's rhetorical efforts.
* I Feel Your Pain: For a politician who was criticized during the early days of his presidential campaign for not showing enough empathy for the problems of everyday Americans, Obama was the empathizer-in-chief tonight. He repeatedly referenced the fact that he knew people were struggling and that the country was in a rough patch. He said he knew that people were nervous about making major changes to health care and that sometimes the devil you know seems better than the devil you don't. He referenced the letters he receives telling of sick children who need a change to the health care system now, not in the fall. It was an interesting change of pace for Obama -- and we are interested to see how it plays out in the coverage.
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Guest Comment:Bullying CBO
The Washington Post recently ran a story quoting Democrats as bragging that President Obama has deliberately patterned his legislative strategy after LBJ’s, circa 1965.This may explain the treatment of Douglas Elmendorf, the director of the supposedly nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office who last week told Congress that you can’t “save” money on health care by having government insure everyone.
For that bit of truth-telling, he was first excoriated by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Then he was summoned, er, invited to the White House for an extraordinary and inappropriate meeting Monday with President Obama and a phalanx of economic and health-care advisers.
Writing on his blog after news of the meeting became public, Mr. Elmendorf diplomatically noted that “The President asked me and outside experts for our views about achieving cost savings in health reform.” No doubt he did. But Mr. Elmendorf, a Democrat, will also have received the message that continuing apostasy will not be good for his future political career.
As Douglas Holtz-Eakin, the Republican who ran CBO from 2003 to 2005, put it, “The only appearance could be that they’re leaning on him. CBO was created for Congress, for independent analysis. The White House did him [Elmendorf] a terrible disservice.” On second thought, perhaps we’re being unfair to LBJ, whose method was a combination of muscle and flattery. Mr. Obama learned his methods in Chicago.
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