Labor & Employment Law

The Shocking Truth: Newt & Co. Lie About Health Care Reform

By Mike Hall

Pop quiz time. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is making claims about the new health care reform law that are:

1. Wildly inaccurate.
2. Stemming from a partisan analysis based on false assumptions.
3. An outright misrepresentation.
4. All of the above.

The answer to the question about Gingrich’s claims, like those of so many radio blabbers, tea pot stirrers and even “mainstream” (if any are still around) Republicans, is ”all of the above.”

The scary part is that some of these outlandish pronouncements and outright lies can gain traction. The good folks at Media Matters for America pull the pins out from under some of the more recent fibs about health care reform. (We’ve got facts and fliers on health care reform at the AFL-CIO health care resources page here as well. Check it out).

Let’s start with Newt and his oft-repeated claim that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) will hire 16,000 new “agents” to act as “health police.” Media Matters notes that both FactCheck.org and PolitiFact.com debunk Gingrich’s dire warning about IRS agents in the exam room with you.

The basics are (click here for the details) he is using a figure from a Republican House Ways and Means Committee report that looked at a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis. The report examined how many new employees, clerks, accountant, telephone operators and the like, not the dreaded auditing IRS agents, the IRS might need to hire to inform small business and workers about tax credits and subsidies they are entitled to under the new law. But then, with pretzel logic, the House Republican report twists the numbers and the facts and then Gingrich added his own twists and turns.

And that’s how we got to D, all of the above.

Next, let’s look at Dick Morris, the former Democratic strategist who’s turned hard right and is seen regularly on Fox News’ stable of hyperbolic blowhards. He’s claming nearly all of us are due for an immediate rate hike in our health care premiums because of the new law. Surprise, wrong again.

Media Matters points to Politifact and the CBO, which find that people who get their health coverage through their employment will see their costs stay about the same or slightly decrease because of the new law.

CBO estimated that by 2016 a majority of people insured on the individual market would receive subsidies, which would decrease their premiums compared to what they would pay without health care reform.

Click here for a more detailed exposure of the lie.

On a Fox News business show, Ben Stein, the curmudgeonly comedian, conservative commentator and former Nixon insider, put on his best scary face and told seniors the new health care reform law eliminates subsidies for drug costs for companies that sponsor retiree prescription drug plans. The wink-wink, nod-nod, inference was to scare seniors into believing companies would drop retiree drug coverage.

Well, wrong again. In real simple terms, the new health care reform law does not eliminate subsidies for drug coverage. It’s not there, anywhere. Look as hard as you want Ben, you won’t find it. Media Matters offers a more complete look here.

Let’s end this look at health care reform lies with a bit of truth about the new law and what it really can do, courtesy of Fort Worth Star-Telegram columnist Mitchell Schnurman, who writes:

Soon after President Barack Obama signed health reform, a local baby with a heart condition was rejected for insurance. The story became front-page news in Fort Worth and was picked up nationally.

The insurer quickly reversed its decision and agreed to pay for a procedure the newborn had received days earlier.

He notes that it was likely that bad publicity thawed the insurance company’s icy cold heart because legally they had no obligation to cover the newborn.

But the episode stands as another exhibit of what’s wrong with health insurance in America, and how it’s about to get better.

In six months, the same sequence of events won’t happen, because insurers won’t be allowed to reject children for a pre-existing condition, even a heart defect.

And that, my friends, is just one of the many truths about health care reform.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on April 08, 2010 (boomark / email).