Hope and Fail

President claims Heritage ideas are in health care reform

Answering question’s from The Today Show’s Matt Lauer about the partisan way in which health care reform passed, President Obama said he incorporated Republican ideas in the bill:

… and I think that’s unfortunate because when you actually look at the bill itself, it incorporates all sorts of Republican ideas. I mean, a lot of commentators have said, ‘You know, this is sort of similar to the bill that Mitt Romney, the Republican governor and now presidential candidate, passed in Massachusetts.’

A lot of the ideas in terms of the exchange, just being able to pool and improve the purchasing power of individuals in the insurance market, that originated from the Heritage Foundation.

The health care reform bill may look a lot like the Massachusetts plan — which isn’t a good comparison for the president to make, since the Bay State is facing rising costs, long waits for doctor visits, etc.

And Romney is not yet a presidential candidate, it’s presumed he will be, but we’ll let that one slide.

Where the president really goes off the rails is when he claims his exchanges originated with the Heritage Foundation. Using the same name does not make the programs similar, as Heritage pointed out:

“The President knows full well” that the exchanges Heritage advocates “are very different from those in his package.”

“True exchanges,” Feulner explained, “are simply a market mechanism to enable families to choose their health insurance. President Obama’s exchanges, by contrast, are a vehicle to introduce sweeping regulation and federal standardization on health insurance.

The Heritage proposal and what is now law are very different. PolitiFact (which erroneously rated the president’s statement as “mostly true”) gives a rundown. Here’s some examples:

The president’s exchanges aren’t open to all people; Heritage’s are.

The president’s exchanges impose federal regulations; Heritage’s left that mostly to the states.

The president’s exchanges have limited portability; Heritage’s would be completely portable.