Do Obama's Health Care Claims Hold Up?

(CBS)  President Obama goes before the country tonight to make his case for sweeping health care reform. He's already been pushing his health care agenda for months. But some of his claims deserve a second look.

CBS News correspondent Wyatt Andrews provides this reality check.

"It will mean lower costs and more choices and coverage you can count on"

Claim: expand coverage to most uninsured

Fact: All bills do this. Fine Print: Coverage starts in 2013

Of all the President's goals for health reform, he's clearly on track to expand insurance coverage. Where he's claimed the reform will cover most of the nation's uninsured, the fact is that's true. The key bills before Congress actually require that everyone has insurance.

In the fine print however, full coverage for the uninsured doesn't start until 2013, three and a half years from now.

Claim: Reform will bring costs down

Fact: Current proposals can't prove savings

Where the President claims any reform will bring down costs, the fact is nothing on the table right now leads to savings the administration can prove. Democrats are facing an internal revolt because the Congressional Budget Office said the House proposal would not reduce out of control spending.

One big hurdle is this: Mr. Obama, and most experts, believe costs will go down when doctors and hospitals are paid differently - not for every single test and procedure but for healthier patients.

But the House bill only calls for a series of "pilot programs," including one paying doctors "to improve health." In other words, one of president's most important reforms has to be tested first.

"There's not what you'd call a rock solid commitment to changing the incentives," said Len Nichols, health policy program director at the New America Foundation. "We will do experiments, but they don't yet say we will move in this direction."

Tonight in effect the President will argue we have to spend a trillion dollars in order to save long term. He may be right - but he'll need serious changes in both House and Senate before he can prove that in advance.

[my2centsisfree]

I don't fully blame Obama. He is nothing more than what's been programmed into him by his professors at Harvard. It's not like he's thinking outside of the box they taught him to think within. There is nothing new about Obama's thinking and certainly nothing progressive about it. Unless of course big brother rationing healthcare is considered progressive.

My suggestion is that if you have medical work you need done, get it done now before that option is only available to whom Obama says it is. And to think, liberals used to be the party that protects the little guy from the man. They are now the man and are only taking choices away from the little guy. Terrible

[RaptureRenee]

We are told Love one another - Love your neighbor as yourself
Families sacrificing everything - To restore a child to health
Bankruptcy around the corner - How are they to make ends meet
When even the disabled vet - Is just tossed out in the street
It is hard to hold one's head high - Where those in need are treated so
Fired for causing group rates to rise - No where left for them to go
The house, the savings it's all gone - She?s in the hospital still
Working so hard to try and save her - Debts piling up to pay the bill
Growing to the hundreds of thousands - As they're sleeping in their car
On the verge of giving up hope - Thinking they'd maybe gone too far
Remission comes and she?s sent home - But now home is their old car
Days spent at the soup kitchen - While mom and dad are working hard.

[JimFromDenver]

We should also be asking the question: "Do the Republicans' Health Care Claims Hold Up?" I'd say President Obama's claims hold up way better than the out and out lies that the Republicans are telling. Fact check number #1: "No one has had time to read the bill." If that is so, then how can Republicans make any claims about the legislation whatsoever? Maybe they should get off TV, go home, and start reading!!!

[jsd330]

Same for Obama and the Dems, if they haven't read it as Obama addmitted how can they say it's so good? Because the Dems wrote it.

[noloyalisti]

Whatever anyone says, it is quite clear the for-profit system is an abject failure. And then you have the dimwitted failed Republi CONS all of a sudden wanted to fix the failed broken sytem

[busybeela]

There are bloggers out there doing the work that the old media refuses to do, reading the bill! Here are some of the nasty details:

? Page 50: All non-US citizens, illegal or not, will be provided with free healthcare services.

? Page 59: The federal government will have direct, real-time access to all individual bank accounts for electronic funds transfer.

? Page 65: Taxpayers will subsidize all union retiree and community organizer health plans (read: SEIU, UAW and ACORN)

? Page 95: The Government will pay ACORN and Americorps to sign up individuals for Government-run Health Care plan.

? Page 124: No company can sue the government for price-fixing. No "judicial review" is permitted against the government monopoly. Put simply, private insurers will be crushed.

? Page 145: An employer MUST auto-enroll employees into the government-run public plan. No alternatives.

? Page 126: Employers MUST pay healthcare bills for part-time employees AND their families.

? Page 167: Any individual who doesnt' have acceptable healthcare (according to the government) will be taxed 2.5% of income.

? Page 170: Any NON-RESIDENT alien is exempt from individual taxes (Americans will pay for them).

? Page 195: Officers and employees of Government Healthcare Bureaucracy will have access to ALL American financial and personal records.

More here: http://directorblue.blogspot.com

[jschmidt27]

Pretty disurbing list that comrade Pelosi put together. Speaking of costs: I hear the HSAs are out so that would mean an iimmediate tax increase for all workers using HSAs. Will the public option bw subject to state insurance dept jurisdiction? Probably note so that is a cost saving measure not available toprivate insurers. Will private insurers be allowed to sell across state lines like the public option? Probably note-another advantage to the public option. Does not sound like a level playing field to me. And if the list of items above is true, then this bill should be shot down.

[sjc_1]

People that greedily and excessively profit from the misfortunes of the sick are evil and immoral. Half the personal bankruptcies are caused by hugely bloated and excessive medical bills. If you think this is right, you should have your head examined.

[r_mcdonald1]

PLEASE - everyone, read HR3200. This bill is riddled with detailed information that COMPLETELY CONTADICTS everything the politicians are telling you about your health care.

Government unlimited access to your bank accounts with funds transfer ability.

Guranteed health care to ALL illegal aliens.

Governmental restriction of access to care for people with special needs.

The Government will decide your end of life treatment.

The Government can make the end of life decision, basically euthanize you.

The Government will take charge of, then make, mental health decisions.

I would wager to you that Mr. Obama, based upon previous performance with the Stimulus Package, has not read this bill.

Also, once read - please understand that Congress and the Administration, including their families, are EXEMPT from this program and we are obligated to pay for their private care for life.

You decide, can you, or your heirs, afford this administration?

[jsd330]

You can put it in black and white right in front of some of these people and they still don't beleive it. All they beleive is what the spin doctors tell them. Like leading sheep to the slaughter.

[CitizenMikeM]

What FACT do you base this on Ronald McDonald?

[platteman]

Make sure all the congress people all 535 of them, the POTUS and all the cabnet members have the same health care as us and let them try it out for a few years, then come talk to us. Until then, I want status quo.
If it ain't good enough for them, it ain't good enough for me.

[Michelle48188]

Obama in the British Media

Here is an interesting editorial from someone outside our country as to what is going on!


If al-Qaeda, the Taliban and the rest of the Looney Tunes brigade want to kick America to death, they had better move in quickly and grab a piece of the action before Barack Obama finishes the job himself. Never in the history of the United States has a president worked so actively against the interests of his own people - not even Jimmy Carter.

Obama's problem is that he does not know who the enemy is. To him, the enemy does not squat in caves in Waziristan, clutching automatic weapons and reciting the more militant verses from the Koran: instead, it sits around at tea parties in Kentucky quoting from the US Constitution. Obama is not at war with terrorists, but with his Republican fellow citizens. He has never abandoned the campaign trail.

That is why he opened Pandora's Box by publishing the Justice Department's legal opinions on waterboarding and other hardline interrogation techniques. He cynically subordinated the national interest to his partisan desire to embarrass the Republicans. Then he had to rush to Langley, Virginia to try to reassure a demoralised CIA that had just discovered the President of the United States was an even more formidable foe than al-Qaeda..

"Don't be discouraged by what's happened the last few weeks," he told intelligence officers. Is he kidding? Thanks to him, al-Qaeda knows the private interrogation techniques available to the US intelligence agencies and can train its operatives to withstand them - or would do so, if they had not already been outlawed.

So, next time a senior al-Qaeda hood is captured, all the CIA can do is ask him nicely if he would care to reveal when a major population centre is due to be hit by a terror spectacular, or which American city is about to be irradiated by a dirty bomb. Your view of this situation will be dictated by one simple criterion: whether or not you watched the people jumping from the twin towers...

President Pantywaist's recent world tour, cozying up to all the bad guys, excited the ambitions of America's enemies. Here, they realised, is a sucker they can really take to the cleaners.

His only enemies are fellow Americans.

Which prompts the question: why does President Pantywaist hate America so badly?

[velma179]

jsd...

Please try to make a reasonable comment that has at the very least, a basis in reality.

The teleprompter lines just make YOU look ridiculous.

[jsd330]

Do you really believe that Obama or any othe politician could actually answer questions, that weren't prescreened by his staff? Do you really think he could remember how to answer all those questions without the help of a teleprompter? And velma179 your just another one looking for a free ride from the government.