John Hawkins
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Barrack Obama and his pals in the mainstream media are doing everything in their power to keep people from finding out the truth about the health care bills that are winding their way through Congress. Rather than engaging in an honest debate about the pluses and minuses of socialized medicine, they've abandoned all significant attempts to work with the GOP, they've demonized American citizens who've dared to voice their concern at townhalls, and they have lied more than Bill Clinton probably did the first time Hillary mentioned the name "Gennifer Flowers" to him.
Liberal claim: The public option won't kill private health insurance. When that sleazy old terrorist Yasser Arafat was alive, he was famous for telling Westerners he wanted peace in English, while telling his own people in Arabic to kill the Jews. Liberals are using the same tactic with the public option.
When they're talking to the general public, they assure them that the public option won't kill private insurance and if people like the plans they have, they'll be able to keep them.
But when liberals talk to each other, they explicitly admit that the public option is designed to kill private insurance so the government can take complete control.
There are many examples of this, but this quote from Barney Frank is so crystal clear about what they're doing that no more examples are really needed,
I think if we get a good public option, it could lead to single payer and that's the best way to reach single payer. Saying you'll do nothing until you reach single payer is a sure way never to get it.
Liberal Claim: Illegal aliens won't be covered If you want to know why Americans don't believe Congress or the mainstream media, the sort of slick deception that's being practiced here is typical of what's driving the distrust.
There is indeed a clause in the House bill that says illegal aliens aren't covered. The mainstream media looks at that clause and then dutifully reports, as if it were a fact, that illegal aliens won't be getting taxpayer funded health care.
However, here's the catch: there's no enforcement provision. Texas Congressman Lamar Smith explains how the scam will work:
The Democrats’ bill in the House, H.R. 3200, contains gaping loopholes that will allow illegal immigrants to receive taxpayer-funded benefits. And these loopholes are no accident.
The legislation contains no verification mechanism to ensure that illegal immigrants do not apply for benefits. Republicans offered an amendment to close this loophole — it would have required verification using the existing methods that are already in place to verify eligibility for other federal benefits programs. But when they were asked to put the language of the bill where their words were, in a party-line vote, House Democrats rejected the amendment to require verification and close this loophole.
In other words, the Democrats can claim that illegal aliens won't be covered by the bill and even point to a provision in it that says it won't happen. Meanwhile, if the health care bill passes, millions of illegals aliens will have their health care picked up on the taxpayer's dime -- just as the Democrats planned all along.
Liberal claim: Abortion won't be covered by the bill. This is another clever bit of sleight of hand designed to fool the American public. As Congressman Steve King explained:
...The history of abortion funding from the federal government has been this: since 1973, the federal government has funded abortions unless there was an explicit prohibition written into the law. We have prohibited that in any number of cases, but this healthcare bill that's being rolled out by the Democrats and the House, by any information I have of what's in it, would fund abortion because there is no explicit prohibition.
In fact, there was an amendment that was brought through the Energy and Commerce Committee that passed by one vote, that would have prohibited abortions. They then turned around and wrote another amendment that struck it out again. So, the committee has voted to fund abortions with public taxpayer dollars.
So, is there a provision in the bill that says that abortion will be funded? No, but all that means is that abortion will be funded by default. This shouldn't surprise anyone given that Barack Obama explicitly said abortion would be covered in his health care plan during the campaign:
The Obama campaign responded to a question about health care from the pro-abortion RH Reality Check web site.
"Senator Obama believes that reproductive health care is basic health care," the campaign said, using the phrase that abortion advocates employ to refer to abortion.
"His health care plan will create a new public plan, which will provide coverage of all essential medical services. Reproductive health care is an essential service," the Obama campaign added.
The Obama camp also made it clear that any private insurance companies wanting to participate would also be required to provide abortion coverage.
"And private insurers that want to participate will have to treat reproductive care in the same way," the Obama campaign responded.
Liberal Claim: The health care bill will lower costs: This is perhaps the single most jaw droppingly dishonest claim about the whole bill, especially given that Medicare's unfunded liability is 34 trillion dollars. How in the world are the same people running a program that's on track to bankrupt the entire country supposed to create a newer, larger program that's going to actually lower the cost of health care?
Estimates of how much the bill will add to the deficit range from a few hundred billion to a trillion dollars plus, but these are likely to dramatically underestimate the costs for two reasons.
First of all, there's the staggered way the system is supposed to be rolled out,
The Congressional Budget Office has estimated the proposal now under consideration will cost over 10 years a little more than $1 trillion, depending on the final deal. House Democrats have vowed to find a way to pay for that cost despite an acknowledgement by a Congressional Budget Office official that the deficit will increase $239 billion because of Medicare payments to doctors.
But fully phased-in coverage of Americans under the plan will only occur for six of the 10 years measured by the CBO. That's because the Democratic plan in the House will start collecting revenues in 2011 but won't start providing coverage until 2013 and won't be fully implemented until 2015.
Why set the system up this way? In part, so that the Democrats can game the system and hide how much it's really going to add to the deficit.
Even setting that aside, the Congressional Budget Office has traditionally underestimated how much health care programs cost by stunning margins. Here's one all-too-typical example,
In 1965, as Congress considered legislation to establish a national Medicare program, the House Ways and Means Committee estimated that the hospital insurance portion of the program, Part A, would cost about $9 billion annually by 1990. Actual Part A spending in 1990 was $67 billion. The actuary who provided the original cost estimates acknowledged in 1994 that, even after conservatively discounting for the unexpectedly high inflation rates of the early ‘70s and other factors, “the actual [Part A] experience was 165% higher than the estimate.”
At a time when we're running the largest deficit in history and spending at an unsustainable level, can we afford to create yet another massive entitlement program? After creating a debt so big that our children's children won't be able to pay it off, what are we going for here? Are we trying to create a world where our great, great, great, great, great, great grandchildren will still be spending a significant amount of their income to pay for the goodies we're getting from the government today?
Liberal Claim: There will be no rationing of health care. If you're wondering if a "death panel" will convene and "pull the plug on Grandma," essentially, the answer is "yes." Of course, it won't be called a "death panel" and Nancy Pelosi is not going to show up personally and yank Grandma's life support out of the wall. They don't have to be that dramatic.
Consider what happened to Barbara Wagner, who's on Oregon’s state-run health care program. Her doctor prescribed a cancer drug that slows the spread of disease and the Oregon Health Plan refused to cover the cost of the treatment. However, they did note some other things they would cover including ”doctor-assisted suicide.” That's what a "death panel pulling the plug on grandma" looks like in the real world and we'll be seeing it nationwide if the Democrats get their way.
Still don't believe it? Well, consider this: the Democrats say their plan will cover a lot more Americans. Yet, there are no provisions in it to add any new doctors or nurses. In fact, one of the ways they're going to save money is by simply refusing to pay hospitals the full value of what their services are worth. Take any business and dramatically increase the number of customers they're serving with the same staff while significantly decreasing the amount of money per customer they receive, and you're going to get a drop-off in quality. How bad can it get? In Britain, 100 people a week lose their eyesight because the government run health care system is so overstretched that they can't get them an appointment with an optometrist. That's how it works in Britain and that’s how it will eventually work here, too, if the Democrats have their way.
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