Politics

Health Insurance Reform Mythbuster: Microchips?

By Karina

Health insurance reform opponents continue to spread myths about the Affordable Health Care for America Act including the truly outrageous claim that individuals who enroll in the public health insurance option will be forced to have a data-receiving microchip implanted in their bodies.

Seriously?

There is no such provision in any version of legislation ? in draft or final form ? considered by either the House of Representatives or the Senate.

Myth: People who enroll in the public health insurance option will be forced under the law to have a microchip implant.

Fact: The Affordable Health Care for America Act does not have any provision requiring any person to have a microchip ? or anything else ? implanted on their bodies for any reason.

PolitiFact, the Pulitzer Prize-winning factchecking website, labeled this claim a ?Pants on Fire? lie, its highest degree of untruth:

So add this one to the list of silly, discredited claims about the health bill. It’s so ridiculously wrong, we rule it Pants on Fire.

PolitiFact did attempt to find related language or a similar concept in the legislation Congress is considering that could be distorted as a foundation of this fantastical claim and concludes:

The[draft] bill produced by three House committees, H.R. 3200, included a provision to create a National Medical Device Registry, which would centralize data on medical devices (from pacemakers to artificial limbs) so that experts and the public could analyze how safe and effective different kinds of medical devices are?

Even if microchips had somehow been the target of that line in the bill–and they’re not–the provision in question, which doesn’t appear in the Senate bill, only talks about creating a database that keeps tabs on devices that have already been implanted in people. It says nothing whatsoever about requiring implantation “in the majority of people who opt to become covered by the public health care option.” That part is fiction, pure and simple.

Today, many areas of the country are dominated by only one or two insurance companies. Establishing a public health insurance option will create a new choice for individuals and families–Americans who choose to enroll in health care coverage through the public health insurance option will benefit from increased competition, lower administrative costs, market reforms and strong consumer protections. Learn more facts about the public option»

Full post as published by The Gavel on December 07, 2009 (boomark / email).