Posted by
Arayem on Sunday, August 16, 2009 4:54:15 PM
Here are some more examples of why you cannot trust President Obama on health care, courtesy of David Patten at Newsmax.com.
The president promised no policyholder will lose his or her current coverage. But a study commissioned by the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank concluded that more than 88 million individuals would have to shift to a new plan, if the current proposals on the table are adopted. Other estimates issued by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Urban Institute estimate the number will be lower, but still in the millions. Obama has admitted he can't control whether employers drop their current plan in favor of one that's cheaper. (It should be noted that most of these estimates assume a government-subsidized public option for insurance, however, which Obama now states he does not favor.)
Obama said his plan to require insurance companies to cover preventative medicine would reduce Americans' healthcare expenditures. As laudable as preventative medicine may be, the CBO has concluded it will actually increase the costs of medical care due to the large number of preventative tests needs to screen for diseases that the vast majority of people will not develop.
Obama stated that there are 46 million uninsured Americans, a number very much in dispute. It includes undocumented workers without insurance, workers temporarily without coverage, and people eligible for Medicare who simply haven't needed it yet, but who can obtain it at a moment's notice.
Obama again stated that a combination of savings, and a tax surcharge on those earning more than $250,000 annually, would make healthcare reform deficit-neutral. Conservative think tanks dispute that. But even if the statement were accurate, it doesn't account for a subsequent budget shortfall that would reach over $188 billion per year by 2020, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Obama maintains that "any discussion" of the public-option has always assumed it would not be government-subsidized. In fact, he says any suggestion to the contrary is a distortion. But during the campaign, Obama stated that he personally favors a single-payer system that would be paid for by the government. Until Obama recently redefined the term "public option," it was broadly understood to refer to a health-insurance option financed by the government. Moreover, even Obama's "non-subsidized" public-option would cost taxpayers hundreds of millions – if not billions – in startup costs and creation of a bureaucratic infrastructure.