As promised, here is your Health Care Fact Pack, a concise summary of a conglomeration of studies and articles that I have gathered concerning health care reform. Our goal is positive and sustainable health care reform, and these points talk about what works and what doesn't. They also expose some of the misleading statements and outright lies being thrown at us from Washington. I encourage everyone to print out each of the sources (or the relevant portions) cited below each fact and compile them in a binder or a folder. Take them to your town hall meetings, share them with your friends and tweet/email/Facebook this post around the country. If someone questions your data simply pull out the corresponding source and hand it to them. It is hard to argue with the facts!
Fact #1: Politicians claim that 46 million people are uninsured. The very same Census data that Congress uses to arrive at that number also includes the following:
- 21% or 9.7 million are non-citizens
- 18% or 7.9M are between the ages of 18 and 24
- 39% or 17.6M make over $50,000 per year
- 20% or 9.1M make over $75,000 per year
Why are we counting non-citizens and people making over $50/75K per year (who most likely have chosen not to have health insurance)?
Fact #2: The House health care bill includes a provision that effectively ends private health insurance after the government plan is implemented. Investor's Business Daily actually called the House Ways and Means committee to confirm the language in the bill. The assertion has since been refuted a bit by various groups. The fact is that it prevents private insurers from issuing their own plans. All plans must be entered into an insurance pool and managed by the government. It will eventually lead to private companies leaving the market completely.
"(1) LIMITATION ON NEW ENROLLMENT.— (A) IN GENERAL.—Except as provided in this paragraph, the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the effective date of coverage is on or after the first day of Y1."
Fact #3: Congressional Budget Director, Douglas Elmendorf, testified in the House that the health care bill "would expand federal spending on health care to a significant degree." This is in direct contradiction to the claims of our President and members of Congress who claim that the health care legislation will reduce health care costs and spending.
Fact #4: The CBO Director recently sent a letter to House Majority Leader, Steny Hoyer, stating that the latest House health care proposal creating the Independent Medicare Advisory Council would save just $2 billion over the period 2010-2019 (yes, that's just $2B over a ten year period!).
Fact #5: The CBO states that only 11 million uninsured individuals would be covered by the government plan. Opening health insurance markets across state lines would decrease the number of uninsured individuals by as many as 16 million, many more than the 11 million that the CBO states would be added if the government implemented its "option."
Fact #6: Medicare is projected to completely run out of money in 2017. Will our government manage an across-the-board government health care system any better?
Fact #7: For those that claim that a government health care system will increase quality, see this: MedPac, the very agency responsible for oversight of Medicare and Medicaid, has reported on "serious shortcomings in quality as well as the absence of real progress toward restructuring health care systems to address both quality and cost concerns" within Medicare and Medicaid.
Fact #8: Hear someone say that the government "option" will not crowd out and eventually eliminate private insurance? It has already happened with property insurance in Florida. The same would happen if government health insurance legislation is passed.
Fact #9: Study showing that the "public option" will only lead to lower quality health care:
Fact #10: Print out this chart for an illustration of how the House health care bill would work.
Fact #11: The CBO has done a study showing that almost 45% of uninsured individuals gain insurance within four months.
Fact #12: Buried in the House bill is a provision that prevents some of the costs of the bill from being counted in the annual budget (info courtesy of Jamie Dupree's
hard work).
"(3) BUDGETARY IMPLICATIONS.—Amounts appropriated under this section, and outlays flowing from such appropriations, shall not be taken into account for purposes of any budget enforcement procedures including allocations under section 302(a) and (b) of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act and budget resolutions for fiscal years during which appropriations are made from the Fund."
That's like saying "honey, I'm going out to buy a Ferrari," getting the response of "what?!? We can't afford that!" and responding "Oh, it's okay, we just won't count it in this month's budget."
3 comments:
Great Information. I will definitely share it with my family and friends.
How on earth do you have so much time on your hands to research all of this??? LOL! Great job!
Thank you Patrick. Let us know when you read the next 100 pages.I am particularly interested in something I read today...that Altzeimers patients may not receive basic health care under the new plan. Is this true? --Mary Ann
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