President Obama’s Health Care Misinformation
Friday, August 28th, 2009 By Marc KilmerIn a conference call with religious leaders, President Obama said there was a lot of misinformation in the health care debate. That’s true. Of course, much of that misinformation is coming from him. As Michael Tanner points out in the Orange County Register, the claim that people will be able to keep their insurance if they like it just isn’t true:
…under Section 59(B)(a) of HR3200, the bill making its way through the House, and Section 151 of the bill that passed out of a Senate committee, every American would be required to buy health insurance.
And not just any insurance: to qualify, a plan would have to meet certain government-defined standards. For example, under Section 122(b) of the House bill, all plans must cover hospitalization; outpatient hospital and clinic services; services by physicians and other health professionals, as well as supplies and equipment incidental to their services; prescription drugs, rehabilitation services, mental health and substance-abuse treatment; preventive services (to be determined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the United States Preventive Services Task Force); and maternity, well-baby, and well-child care, as well as dental, vision, and hearing services for children under age 21….
If your current health insurance doesn’t meet all those requirements, you won’t be immediately forced to drop your current insurance for a government-specified plan. But you would be required to switch if you lose your current insurance or “if significant changes are made to the existing health insurance plan.”…
Seniors, too, could lose their current coverage, at least the 10.2 million seniors currently participating in the Medicare advantage program. That program offers many seniors benefits not included in traditional Medicare, including preventive-care services, coordinated care for chronic conditions, routine physical examinations, additional hospitalization, skilled nursing facility stays, routine eye and hearing examinations, and glasses and hearing aids But the House bill cuts payments to the Medicare Advantage program by roughly $156.3 billion over 10 years.
In response, many insurers are expected to stop participating in the program, while others increase the premiums they charge seniors. Millions of seniors will likely be forced off their current plan and back into traditional Medicare.
Finally, the bills would all but eliminate Health Savings Accounts (HSAs), currently used by nearly 10 million Americans. Section 122 of the House bill and 311 of the Senate bill set minimum payout levels for any insurance policy. Insurance payouts must cover 70 percent of claims under the House bill and 76 percent under the Senate bill. And the bills also prohibit any deductibles or co-payments for preventive care.
But virtually none of the high-deductible insurance plans in existence today, and required to accompany an HSA, can meet such a standard. They are simply not designed to work that way. The result will be that a plan designed to those specifications would offer few if any advantages over traditional insurance and would not be competitive in today’s markets.
As a result, insurers warn they would stop offering high-deductible policies.
What’s that you told religious leaders about “bearing false witness,” Mr. President?
