Members of the Bay Area Patriots at an anti-healthcare reform rally in San Francisco.
Photo by Luke Thomas
August 15, 2009
MoveOn’s Real Voices for Change campaign put together this list of health care reform lies that are spreading via anonymous email chains.
Lie #1: President Obama wants to euthanize your grandma!
The truth: These accusations—of “death panels” and forced euthanasia—are, of course, flatly untrue. As an article from the Associated Press puts it: “No ‘death panel’ in health care bill.” What’s the real deal? Reform legislation includes a provision, supported by the AARP, to offer senior citizens access to a professional medical counselor who will provide them with information on preparing a living will and other issues facing older Americans.
Lie #2: Democrats are going to outlaw private insurance and force you into a government plan!
The truth: With reform, choices will increase, not decrease. Obama’s reform plans will create a health insurance exchange, a one-stop shopping marketplace for affordable, high-quality insurance options.6 Included in the exchange is the public health insurance option—a nationwide plan with a broad network of providers—that will operate alongside private insurance companies, injecting competition into the market to drive quality up and costs down.
If you’re happy with your coverage and doctors, you can keep them. But the new public plan will expand choices to millions of businesses or individuals who choose to opt into it, including many who simply can’t afford health care now.
Lie #3: President Obama wants to implement Soviet-style rationing!
The truth: Health care reform will expand access to high-quality health insurance, and give individuals, families, and businesses more choices for coverage. Right now, big corporations decide whether to give you coverage, what doctors you get to see, and whether a particular procedure or medicine is covered—that is rationed care. And a big part of reform is to stop that.
Health care reform will do away with some of the most nefarious aspects of this rationing: discrimination for pre-existing conditions, insurers that cancel coverage when you get sick, gender discrimination, and lifetime and yearly limits on coverage. And outside of that, as noted above, reform will increase insurance options, not force anyone into a rationed situation.
Lie #4: Obama is secretly plotting to cut senior citizens’ Medicare benefits!
The truth: Health care reform plans will not reduce Medicare benefits. Reform includes savings from Medicare that are unrelated to patient care—in fact, the savings comes from cutting billions of dollars in overpayments to insurance companies and eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse.
Lie #5: Obama’s health care plan will bankrupt America!
The truth: We need health care reform now in order to prevent bankruptcy—to control spiraling costs that affect individuals.
The Hunger Site
August 19, 2009 at 4:46 pm
I am outraged that there is no mention of acupuncture or chrystal theraphy in the plan. The right white trash are right, Obama has over-stepped the mark and the United States is under threat.
AJ
August 18, 2009 at 10:31 am
There is nothing in the current proposals that are targeted at containing costs; such as Medical Malpractice Tort reform, or the AMA’s stranglehold on the number of doctors allowed to practice. As far as a right to health care, let’s not forget – the medical profession does not deny treatment to the sick or injured now; the cost just gets added to the insurance premiums paid for by the covered. Now the Dems want to add a tax to those who are covered to provide BETTER medical care to those who aren’t covered. This will be the end of Pelosi’s career as Speaker.
August 17, 2009 at 10:02 pm
I don’t mean to be racist or anything, but why are the crazy anti-healthcare protestors so blonde?
August 16, 2009 at 3:56 pm
The headline of the day is that Obama is ready to throw the public option under the bus. How much can Obama water down the plan before he loses your support for it, Ralph?
And just a word of advice… if you’re trying to win over single payer advocates to support some milquetoast reform, there is nothing more grating to our ears than these throwaway catchphrases like “don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” There’s no excuse for the Democrats to control overwhelming majorities in both houses and not deliver meaningful healthcare reform. If the votes aren’t there, then you fight for the votes.
I understand you may not always get what you want. But if you don’t fight for the perfect, you’ll never get anything good. A strong public option -one that would outcompete insurance companies to the point where it could eventually put them out of business -for me, that is the hold-my-nose just-barely-acceptable line in the sand. Dennis Kucinich’s amendment that lets states enact single payer also makes the kaka easier to swallow. And make no mistake -it is kaka -any bill that provides a multibillion dollar giveaway to insurance company parasites in the form of an individual mandate, is essentially crap. But OK, I’ll take it, because people are dying. But if the gutless, spineless Democrats throw that under the bus, then screw ’em.
That line may be different for everybody, but what I won’t do is trash progressives by telling them in a patronizing tone to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. We hear that condescending crap every day, mostly from people who don’t want the perfect to begin with.
And by the way, I’ve written, I’ve called my congressperson, I’ve called committee chairs, I’ve protested in front of Feinstein’s office, I’ve gone to OFA meetups, and it looks like none of it is going to do any good.
August 16, 2009 at 2:36 pm
I have indeed, about the Single Payer amendment.
Look, the reality here is that if this so called Democrat ‘reform’ package passes, it will entrench the deadly insurance, big pharma and medical industries for many decades longer, allowing them to continue maiming and killing millions more people.
And the completely de-fanged ‘public option’ (now downgraded to an even more pathetic ‘insurance cooperatives’ option) has become a dangerous illusion.
And even if it were not, just as with Social Security, government funded health care will fail if it doesn’t cover everyone together, both rich and poor, under the same system.
Otherwise, the rich will stay out of the system to opt for better private care, and the de facto only-for-the-poor government system will not have enough financial and political support to succeed. It will collapse; thereby giving the aforementioned corporate interests the perfect argument for repealing the ‘reforms’.
Finally, the only way to get even a remotely viable public alternative will be to push so hard for Single Payer that our corporate opposition is forced to compromise and give us a -real- public option.
Such pushing is not division amongst progressives, it is smart organizing.
August 16, 2009 at 11:56 am
Comment on the Comments: Proponents of health care reform cannot afford to let the perfect get in the way of the good. I favor a single-payer health care reform plan, but the votes are simply not there for such a plan. The next best plan is to provide a public option, which will provide some competition for the for-profit insurance companies. Continued sguabbling among reform proponents may result in no reform plan at all, which is just what the Republicans want. A defeat, they hope, will give them a leg up for the mid-term elections. A defeat will also assure continued obscene profits for insurance companies while consumers will pay more for less coverage. And 46 million American will continue without health coverage. I have written my Congresspersons. Have you?
August 15, 2009 at 12:56 pm
Lie number 6: The current plan will not force you to pay out of pocket to get private insurance or pay a tax if you are not otherwise covered and make more than 300% of the poverty level.
-marc
August 15, 2009 at 9:25 am
Don’t Fall For The Democrat/Republican False Debate On Health Care –
Let’s not forget to include the equally big lie coming from the Democrats that -their- legislation will solve the health care crisis. It absolutely won’t. The only solution to the crisis that will have any real impact at all is to throw private insurance companies completely out of the system and enact Single Payer.
While we should of course be alarmed that groups of right wing whackos are being organized by insurance, pharmaceutical and medical corporations to distort the public meeting process; it is -much- more important for us to keep our collective eye on the ball of Single Payer.
Remember that the insurance, pharma, and medical industries are funding both ‘sides’ of this debate. And they are playing a very clever mind trick on progressives.
First they used massive political donations to leverage Democrats like Baucus, Obama and the other DLC ‘left’ to make sure that what comes out of the House and Senate is so hopelessly watered down that it will actually make health care worse, not better; even more so with the now completely gutted ‘public’ plan falsely posing as an alternative.
Then, once the progressive public that got Obama elected in the first place, started actually getting angry and ready for action against this total betrayal by the ‘change’ Democrats, and demanded that Single Payer be placed on the table, those same insurance, pharma and medical companies swooped in with hard funding to the extreme right ‘grass roots’ and mobilized them to brown shirt town hall meetings with cartoonishly fascist and deceptive rhetoric; all to alarm the hell out of the angry progressives and scare them back into line.
And that is exactly what has happened. The progressives and liberals who were starting to get really angry with the Democrats, are now, sheep-like, obediently turning their anger toward the scary boogie-man right wingers and debating with -them- on their freakazoid challenges, and these progressives and liberals are now -defending- the very same corporate crafted Democrat plan that they were about to angrily reject themselves!
If this continues, the corporations have beaten us – and ensured that the public debate has degenerated into a Jerry Springer-esque reality show between two well televised ‘right’ and ‘left’ choices which will each serve well the interests of those corporations, no matter who wins the debate; and no matter what passes out of Congress.
If we fall for this emotion triggering reality show trick, true reform will die, because too many progressives will have gotten suckered in to joining a false debate -purposely- manufactured by corporate influence; and will have stopped demanding the only real health care reform – Single Payer.
Don’t get trapped in that false debate. Stay focused on demanding real and complete change.
Most importantly, remember that the House version of the Health Care legislation, thanks to Dennis Kucinich, now has something in it that we can fight for; specifically, language empowering individual states to adopt Single Payer on their own, regardless of the final national plan.
So contact Senators Boxer and Feinstein and insist that the same state Single Payer amendment be placed in the still nascent Senate bill.
To see the report on the Kucinich amendment go to http://kucinich.house.gov/NEWS/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=138052
Demand Single Payer!