Redstate.com is another conservative website that publishes a lot of items attempting to prove that PolitiFact (PF) is liberally biased. One particular article aimed at PF’s Lie of the Year, the Republican claim that “Obamacare” is a government takeover of healthcare. It used Bryan White’s Sublime Bloviations review of it as most of its support.
It was particularly funny how the writer “Freedoms Truth” (of Austin, Texas—another Weston Hicks?) referred to it without actually quoting it or using it in his own arguments; probably because he had as hard a time “wrapping himself around” Bryan’s sentence construction as everyone else does. He loosely re-words probably the only statement of Bryan’s he could understand, the false choice message that any increased regulation = government takeover.
And again, I have to ask, where the line is drawn as to where the “partially” regulated private sector insurance ends and where government take over begins. I also am told there is no scaled line or measure 1-100%: "Obamacare" is not even close to a single-payer system, medicare for all, or total nationalization. Yet I am supposed to believe they are all one in the same; I suppose it’s due to that black/white only conservative view, with no room for shades of grey.
To quote Freedoms Truth, this is his “truth”:
Many lies have been told about ObamaCare, but most have been told by Obama and the sponsors and supporters. They lied about getting to keep your care (nope, regulations have forced millions to lose coverage they had, from children-only to medicare advantage), lied about the deficit impact (it is going to cost trillions when fully implemented), lied about ‘death panels’ (denied they existed then tweaked the policy on QALY that was in question), lied about alternatives (claimed there was none), lied about constitutionality (denied the fact that Obamacare mandate really is NOT in the Constitution at all and an honest Judge - like happened this week - would rule it unconstitutional).
Let’s take these *lies* one at a time: “They lied about getting to keep your care—nope, regulations have forced millions to lose the coverage they had….” Well, you can’t have it both ways, Freedom. You Republicans have said that illegal immigrants will be covered by “Obamacare”—so they will be covered and not those millions of regular citizens? Sounds like Freedom’s only worry is about the welfare queen getting another limo, so to speak. But he provides no backup to this claim. One would think that the rule (or regulation!) for insurance to include children up to 26 years of age in a family policy would bring in more children, not less. I’m assuming Freedom got this direction from the Republican “Pledge to America” which reads on Page 26: “The Obama Administration has been forced to acknowledge that the new law will force some 87 million Americans to drop their current coverage.” Factcheck.org, another “biased source” (I can’t seem to find any that meets Freedom’s approval except for Heritage.org) reports that this is a misrepresentation.
…it’s deceptive of the GOP to claim that employers of these workers will "drop" their coverage. It would be accurate to say they are expected to change it.
…In many cases policies will be replaced by more generous coverage.
As far as seniors losing their Medicare Advantage, I don’t understand Freedom’s point here either. To me the government should have done this all along, Obamacare or not, because it is proof positive that the “private sector” has not managed itself efficiently to keep healthcare costs down, since Medicare Advantage costs 14% more per head than Medicare. If it had cost less, I’m sure even the most socialist of Liberals would have had to concede that it would have to be expanded as a cost containment. But it was not a cost containment; it was more expensive than regular Medicare. Those who had Medicare Advantage would be switched to Medicare. Why would Freedom want the government to spend more money on Medicare Advantage? He contradicts himself—most likely because his opposition to the Democrats appears to over-ride common sense.
The “Obamacare” deficit impact is trillions? Even the worst case scenarios by the Republicans don’t make it in the trillions:
As for the GOP’s claim that "the bill would add over $700 billion in red ink over the next decade," we judge it to be mostly bogus.
■ It rests largely on a claim that hundreds of billions of dollars in projected Medicare savings are being "double-counted." But CBO is simply not doing that.
■ The GOP’s $700 billion figure also includes more than $200 billion for a permanent "doctor fix" to prevent a cut in Medicare payments to doctors. But that is not even a part of the new law, and many Republicans endorse the "doctor fix" anyway.
■ The GOP claims the law will cost $115 billion to administer, but that isn’t true. CBO actually puts those costs at roughly $10 billion to $20 billion over the next 10 years.
I will agree with Freedom on the “death panels” however. As I have commented before, we have death panels now (in government, too). Every insurance company has one--the person who heads it is usually called the Medical Director. The one who says you are denied coverage because a kidney transplant is "experimental" or that you have reached their imposed "cap" on treatment. They are the real death panels, and they get paid very well for making their "informed" decisions. Personally, I would rather my death panelists be politicians that can be fired by the voters rather than a Republican who gets a bonus every time he saves the company money by denying somebody's rightful claim.
Oh and by the way, it doesn’t stop now that we have this new “government takeover.” The insurance companies did a first-rate cost-benefit analysis on this government take-over “regulation”—they are fined $100 per day if they are found denying someone coverage for a pre-existing condition…which means the death panels will continue. (“So if you’re Aetna, and you’ve got a patient who maybe needs, you know, a $100,000 operation, what would you do? Would you pay out the $100,000 operation because the law says you have to? Or do you break the law but just get a $100-a-day fine? Because, let’s see, after a year that would be $36,500 versus a $100,000 operation…”)
The constitutionality of the healthcare law is subject to politics in the courts as well: some have upheld it, some have not. It has nothing to do with “honesty”—seriously, Freedoms Truth, will all the distortions you made in the paragraph I quoted of yours, you have a lot of nerve having a name with “Truth” in it.
As for “alternatives” I’d be open to seeing what he or the Republicans have in mind, besides tort reform and selling insurance across state lines, because these do little to reduce costs. Speaking of tort reform, Bryan White claims that the Republican “regulation” imposed in tort reform is not a “take-away” but a give-back. He does not say, however, WHO the giveback is to: hint, it’s not the consumer, like, say, a Republican voter. It’s the insurance company and/or doctor. I suppose you can keep waiting for that trickle down (since he probably thinks it will lower the patients' cost)...good luck.
But Freedom only calls these “minor” fibs with a list of “even thoughs” to the major fib, that of government takeover. The problem is, most of the items on his list, with few exceptions, are with us now, without Obamacare having made much of any impact yet. You know, government takeover before government takeover. All I can say, Freedoms Truth wouldn’t know the truth if it hit him in the face.
Finally, as I perused the Redstate website, I found another interesting little article by Brian Darling called “The True Cost of Rationing Healthcare” about a drug called Avastin and how it shows the “rationing under Obamacare” has begun. In reality, it was one more great example of the inherently confusing self-contradictions of Republicans.
Conservatives are against big government and the federal goverment spending your tax dollars on health care. It is wrong for the government to spend so much money on drugs and health care services that cause massive inflation for drugs and care for those paying with after tax dollars…The FDA is forging forward to de-label the drug Avastin, which means that unless they change their mind in the appeals process, Medicare will soon refuse to pay for the cost of it. Furthermore, since private health insurance takes their cues from the government most private health insurance plans are likely to stop covering this drug as well. The drug has proven to work and the FDA is basically saying that costs is a factor in approving the life extending drug…This is a preview to the world we shall live in under ObamaCare.
For the record, the FDA never said that costs were a factor, according to the Wall Street Journal. (“Advisory panels do not discuss monetary costs of the drugs they consider.") and other sources. Yet this lie was perpetuated not only by Redstate but by Breitbart’s “Big Government” website:
For the first time, an FDA sub-panel used cost as a factor in consideration of drug approval — opening the door to rationing for Avastin and other cutting edge drugs. The American people reject rationing. They do not want doctor’s choices limited by cost — undermining the basic premise of ObamaCare and when drugs are rejected because of their price tag, that is rationing.
Redstate writer Brian Darling says Conservatives are against federal government spending [of] your tax dollars on health care. Breitbart says “American people reject rationing.” So how much does Avastin (bevacizumab) cost?
That’s about $8-10,000 a month, i.e., “massively inflated.” But here’s the kicker: (emphasis added)The addition of bevacizumab to standard treatment can prolong the lives of breast and lung cancer patients by several months, at a cost of $100,000 a year in the United States.
In the U.S., many insurance companies have refused to pay for all or part of the costs of bevacizumab. In countries with national health care systems (such as the UK and Canada), many of those national health services have restricted its use because of its extraordinarily lop-sided cost-benefit ratio…
(I see they didn't have to take any "cues" from the government.) So lemme get this straight, according to Darling and Breitbart, if the U.S. insurance companies refuse to pay for all or part of the costs of Avastin, that’s not rationing…but if the government doesn’t pay for it , it IS rationing. And the government shouldn’t be spending $8-10,000 a month on a drug, but if they refused to spend $8-10,000 a month based on a cost/benefit analysis—precisely the way a profit-motivated well managed insurance company would—that’s rationing, something the American people reject.
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| Olay! Mucho deneros! |
I thought about changing my blog title from Politi-Psychotics because *Psychotics* is a little strong (especially after what happened in Tucson recently). But you know, trying to figure out just where the Republicans are going here, I think I’m going to keep it.
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