Elmer's Brother

from Farmer John

Joe Wilson... the only honest politican left in America willing to state the obvious... that the Emperor wasn't wearing any clothes. The Republicans should have ALL walked out at the telling of the first lie... because as time went on, they only got bigger and bolder. The biggest being that ANYTHING the Democrats are proposing will reduce health care costs by a single penny, and that hundreds of billions of dollars worth of additional medical services can be squeezed from "waste" currently in the system.

An effort will now be made to punish and censure Joe Wilson for his aggregious breach of political protocol... but who will punish Barack Obama for his aggregious breach of all standards of truth?

Here is a smattering of the more obvious lies and obfuscations:

First, if you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance through your job, Medicare, Medicaid, or the VA, nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have. Let me repeat this: nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have.

No nothing in the plan will REQUIRE your employer to change your coverage, except the cost penalties the government will now impose on those plans through defining them as "premium" coverage and assessing new surtaxes and regulations and/or the business incentives (50 million new customers) that will be offered insurance companies to alter their current plans to comply with the new regulations or face being locked out of the new individual insurance exchange market. I mean, technically, the insurance companies could "choose" to offer you the same coverage you currently have and go out of business thereby and your employer could "choose" to pay the new surtaxes on those plans and go out of business thereby... but it's not bloody likely.

What this plan will do is to make the insurance you have work better for you. Under this plan, it will be against the law for insurance companies to deny you coverage because of a pre-existing condition. As soon as I sign this bill, it will be against the law for insurance companies to drop your coverage when you get sick or water it down when you need it most. They will no longer be able to place some arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year or a lifetime. We will place a limit on how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses, because in the United States of America, no one should go broke because they get sick. And insurance companies will be required to cover, with no extra charge, routine checkups and preventive care, like mammograms and colonoscopies - because there's no reason we shouldn't be catching diseases like breast cancer and colon cancer before they get worse. That makes sense, it saves money, and it saves lives.

And you realize this means your private insurance rates HAVE to go up...

For those individuals and small businesses who still cannot afford the lower-priced insurance available in the exchange, we will provide tax credits, the size of which will be based on your need. And all insurance companies that want access to this new marketplace will have to abide by the consumer protections I already mentioned. This exchange will take effect in four years, which will give us time to do it right. In the meantime, for those Americans who can't get insurance today because they have pre-existing medical conditions, we will immediately offer low-cost coverage that will protect you against financial ruin if you become seriously ill.

"all insurance companies that want access to this new marketplace will have to abide by the consumer protections I already mentioned". This is the provision which will ensure that in four years, you WON'T be able to keep the coverage or the doctor you currently have and that will increase the cost of health care by trillions of dollars in the new medical bankruptcy insurance every American will now be FORCED to purchase.

Now, even if we provide these affordable options, there may be those - particularly the young and healthy - who still want to take the risk and go without coverage. There may still be companies that refuse to do right by their workers. The problem is, such irresponsible behavior costs all the rest of us money. If there are affordable options and people still don't sign up for health insurance, it means we pay for those people's expensive emergency room visits. If some businesses don't provide workers health care, it forces the rest of us to pick up the tab when their workers get sick, and gives those businesses an unfair advantage over their competitors. And unless everybody does their part, many of the insurance reforms we seek - especially requiring insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions - just can't be achieved.

Here's where the "illegal aliens" question enters into the equation. Who covers them? You know they can't be turned away from the Emergency Rooms... so are they all going to get federal subsidies and tax credits to purchase affordable health insurance?

There are also those who claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false - the reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally. And one more misunderstanding I want to clear up - under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place.

In other words...illegals don't have to buy health insurance... but can still use our Emergency Rooms and hospitals... and so we'll end up paying for 15 million uninsured people just as we've always paid for them... with higher insurance premiums. And as for "no federal dollars being used to fund abortions"... if federal tax credits are being used to subsidize health insurance policies which provide abortion benefits... is that really true?

But an additional step we can take to keep insurance companies honest is by making a not-for-profit public option available in the insurance exchange. Let me be clear - it would only be an option for those who don't have insurance. No one would be forced to choose it, and it would not impact those of you who already have insurance. In fact, based on Congressional Budget Office estimates, we believe that less than 5% of Americans would sign up.

No, no one would be "forced" to choose the cheapest policy on the market, but they WILL be forced to either choose a policy or pay a fine... so "technically" no one is being "forced" onto the public option... except, eventually, everyone as employers downgrade their insurance policies to "compete" with the bare bones cheapest "legal" plan available which will eventuially cover 100% of Americans (except Congressmen).

The only thing this plan would eliminate is the hundreds of billions of dollars in waste and fraud, as well as unwarranted subsidies in Medicare that go to insurance companies - subsidies that do everything to pad their profits and nothing to improve your care. And we will also create an independent commission of doctors and medical experts charged with identifying more waste in the years ahead.

...and add trillions of dollars in new adminsitrative fee's and expenses for government civil servants to prevent Medicare/Medicaid fraud, waste, and abuse that those now eliminated but cheaper "insurance bureacrats" once prevented. And of course, the independent panel of experts eliminating "wasteful (but life saving) treatments" is the new Death Panel that will NEVER be allowed to be called by it's true name.

Reducing the waste and inefficiency in Medicare and Medicaid will pay for most of this plan. Much of the rest would be paid for with revenues from the very same drug and insurance companies that stand to benefit from tens of millions of new customers. This reform will charge insurance companies a fee for their most expensive policies, which will encourage them to provide greater value for the money - an idea which has the support of Democratic and Republican experts. And according to these same experts, this modest change could help hold down the cost of health care for all of us in the long-run.

...and if you believe that, then you'll also believe that Obama and the other Democrats can squeeze water from ordinary stones and wouldn't stoop to planting wet sponges as stage props...