Hope and Fail

Lying in Montana: You can keep your doctor

Another repeated lie from the president about the health care reform package he’s promoting.

During his town hall in Belgrade, Mont., he said this (according to the White House transcript):

If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan. This is not some government takeover. If you like your doctor, you can keep seeing your doctor. This is important. I don’t want government bureaucrats meddling in your health care, but I also don’t want insurance company bureaucrats meddling in your health care either. (Applause.) That’s what reform is about. (Applause.)

He said this in Portsmouth, N.H., earlier this week as well.

The only problem is, in the proposals in Congress, people will lose their insurance and their doctors. Government bureaucrats will be “meddling” in their health care.

The Congressional Budget Office says 10 million workers will lose their insurance, according to USA Today:

In an analysis of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee bill, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that 10 million workers could lose employer-provided benefits and would have to find other insurance.

The Lewin Group says the number of people forced out of their insurance will be more than eight times that amount, from the Heritage Foundation:

Independent, non-partisan analysis from the Lewin Group has confirmed the House bill, H.R. 3200, will do exactly that: About 88.1 million workers would see their current private, employer-sponsored health plan go away and would be shifted to the public plan.

That’s a hell of a lot more than the “46 million” the president says he wants to provide coverage for.

The president has also said the government wouldn’t meddle before, during his July 22 presser. But that’s not true either, according to the Associated Press:

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.

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