The White House is losing the health care debate. Polls from National Public Radio, Wall Street Journal/NBC News, The Washington Post, Gallup, and Pew all show that the American people do not support President Barack Obama’s health care plan. The White House wants people to believe they are losing the health care debate because “scary … videos are starting to percolate on the internet” that are spreading “disinformation” about Obama’s health care plan. The White House is even encouraging Obama supporters to help them identify people spreading this “disinformation.” The official White House blog now asks Americans: “If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.”
In the interest of honest debate, we would like to flag the White House about some prominent people that are directly contradicting the President about what his health care plan would do to the American people. As White House Health Reform Office communications director Linda Douglass points out in a video released by the White House yesterday, President Obama has repeatedly assured Americans that under his plan “if you like your insurance plan, your doctor, or both, you will be able to keep them.”
The problem the White House faces, however, is that much of President Obama’s base does not want the American people to keep their current insurance plan or doctor. Activists on the left prefer a single-payer system where private health insurance companies have been eliminated. So how can the White House both appease its leftist base, which wants single-payer/government-run health care, and mollify the vast majority of Americans, who want to keep their current health insurance providers? By creating a government-run “public option” designed to slowly eliminate private insurance over time.
The President has explicitly said that the public option will not eliminate private insurance. He told the American Medical Association on June 15th: “What are not legitimate concerns are those being put forward claiming a public option is somehow a Trojan horse for a single-payer system…So, when you hear the naysayers claim that I’m trying to bring about government-run health care, know this - they are not telling the truth.” So the President SAYS the public option will not lead to single payer health care … but a number of prominent people are saying the exact opposite:
- Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) at a Health Care for America Now rally: “And next to me was a guy from the insurance company who argued against the public health insurance option, saying it wouldn’t let private insurance compete. That a public option will put the private insurance industry out of business and lead to single-payer. My single-payer friends, he was right. The man was right.”
- Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) told Single Payer Action: “I think that if we get a good public option it could lead to single-payer and that is the best way to reach single-payer. Saying you’ll do nothing till you get single-payer is a sure way never to get it. … I think the best way we’re going to get single-payer, the only way, is to have a public option and demonstrate the strength of its power.”
- Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein at the Democratic National Convention last year: “They have a sneaky strategy, the point of which is to put in place something that over time the natural incentives within its own market will move it to single-payer.”
- Noble Prize winning New York Times columnist Paul Krugman: “[T]he only reason not to do [single-payer] is that politically it’s hard to do in one step…You’d have to convince people completely give up the insurance they have, whereas something that lets people keep the insurance they have but then offers the option of a public plan, that may evolve into single-payer.”
Americans deserve an honest debate about health care. President Obama, Barney Frank, and Jan Schakowsky cannot all be right. Either the President is wrong when he says his plan will not lead to government-run health care, or Frank and Schakowsky are spreading disinformation when they tell their single payer advocate base that it will. So let’s help the White House out. Do email flag@whitehouse.gov and let the White House know you’ve seen something “fishy” on the web about health care reform.
Quick Hits:
- Asked Tuesday if the White House recognized Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the country’s legitimate president White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said, “He’s the elected leader.”
- Just 9% of eligible homeowners who are delinquent have gotten a trial mortgage modification under the Obama administration $75 billion housing recovery plan.
- According to USA Today, the Obama administration’s efforts to pay for Obamacare by cutting the Medicare Advantage program that benefits 10.2 million seniors helps explain why Americans over 65 are the demographic least supportive of Obama’s health reforms.
- According to U.S. military officials, two Russian attack submarines were detected patrolling the waters off the East Coast of the U.S.
- A new report by the Energy Information Administration finds that the Obama administration’s cap and trade energy tax would mean fewer jobs and increased electricity costs for consumers.
From Long Island to Philadelphia to Austin, Texas, Democrats returning from Washington to host townhalls are getting an earful from constituents about their concerns over President Barack Obama’s health care plan. Despite the fact that all recent polls show that a majority of Americans do not support Obamacare, the left still has the audacity to claim that the concerned citizens showing up at these events are health insurance industry stooges. So Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) told the Center for America Progress: “These health insurance companies and people like them are trying to load these town hall meetings for visual impact on television.” But when actual journalists have reported on who is showing up at these events, they are telling a different story. Reporting on events in Pennsylvania and Texas, the New York Times describes the protests as “organized by loose-knit coalition of conservative voters and advocacy groups.”
This country deserves a respectful, honest debate about health care. And the hundreds of townhalls Members of Congress will be hosting across the country this August are just the place for that conversation to happen. Here are just five questions Americans should be pressing their elected leaders on over the coming month:
Can you promise me that I will not lose my current plan and doctor? President Obama says it is “not legitimate” to claim the “public option is somehow a Trojan horse for a single-payer system.” But Reps. Barney Frank (D-MA), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), and Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman have all admitted that the public option will inevitably lead to government-run health care. The independent and non-partisan Lewin Group estimates that about 83.4 million people would lose their private insurance if Obamacare became law.
Can you promise that you and your family will enroll in the public plan? Members of Congress and their families currently receive health care through the popular, and completely public-option-free, Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) which allows members of Congress to choose between 283 private health insurance plans. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) proposed an amendment that would require all members of Congress and their staffs to enroll in the newly-created public health insurance plan. His amendment passed by just one vote in the Senate Health Committee. In the House, Rep. Dean Heller (R-NV) offered a similar amendment and all 21 Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee voted it down. If the public plan is so great, then Members of Congress should be willing to forfeit their private coverage and join the millions of Americans who would be moved into the public plan.
Can you promise that Obamacare will not lead to higher deficits in the long term? President Obama said that he would not support health care legislation that would add to the national deficit. But Congressional Budget Office director Douglas Elmendorf has stated that the House health care legislation would “generate substantial increases in federal budget deficits during the decade beyond the current 10-year budget window.” To help Obama keep his promise, Rep. Patrick Tiberi (R-OH) offered an amendment that would require the Secretary of Health and Human Services to submit an annual report to the President and Congress, comparing the expected revenue and spending under the bill’s provisions for the upcoming 10-year period. In the event that projected spending under the bill outpaced revenue, the Secretary would have to reduce spending so that it would not exceed revenue. Democrats defeated Tiberi’s amendment.
Can you promise that government bureaucrats will not ration health care for patients on the public plan? President Obama promised on July 22 that health care reform would keep the government out of health care decisions, but both the House and Senate bills call for an increased role of comparative effectiveness research (CER). More information on health care effectiveness is good, as long as doctors and patients are the ones empowered to use that information. Conservatives in both the House and Senate offered amendments prohibiting the use of CER by government to mandate, deny, or ration care. These anti-rationing amendments were defeated in both the House and Senate.
Can you promise me that my tax dollars will not fund abortions? The House bill, as currently drafted, allows the Secretary of Health and Human Services to outline the minimum benefits that must be included in any health plan. There is no specific provision in the bill that would require insurance coverage of abortion. However, since the decisions over benefits are left to the Secretary of HHS, with recommendations from a newly created Health Care Benefits Advisory Committee, there is nothing to prevent the current or future Secretary from including abortion coverage in Americans’ health insurance. Conservatives in both the House and Senate offered amendments that would prohibit the use of taxpayer dollars to fund abortions. The taxpayer funded abortion bans were defeated in both the House and Senate.
Commenting on the townhall phenomenon, University of Pennsylvania political scientist Kathleen Hall Jamieson tells Politico: “If this comes down to vocal individuals, the Obama campaign ought to be able to always outnumber their opponent. And if they’re not, then that’s a problem.” So far it appears that Obamacare has a townhall problem.
Quick Hits:
- Frustrated over the Obama administration’s faltering plan to overhaul U.S. financial regulation, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner blasted top U.S. financial regulators in an expletive-laced critique last Friday.
- The American taxpayer stands to lose billions through the Troubled Assets Relief Program.
- In the days before President Obama’s last news conference, White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel pressured the corporate parent companies of ABC, NBC, and CBS to carry the White House health care press conference.
- According to USA Today, Republican support for Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor looks paltry.
- Having failed to meet their August deadline, it looks like Congressional leadership has set a new health care deadline: September 15.