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Fact-Checking President Obama’s Health Care Talking Points

By John Boehner

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

“Ifyou misrepresent what's in this plan, we will call you out,” PresidentObama warned in his health care address to Congress earlier this month.

Fair enough. But the President himself has made numerous claims during this debate that don’t meet the straight-face test.

Whenthe President says that health care reform will not require anyone todrop their current coverage, he fails to account for an independentanalysis by the Lewin Group showing that as many as 114 millionAmericans could lose their current coverage and instead end up on agovernment-run plan under House Democrats’ proposal (H.R. 3200.) Eventhe most conservative estimates say millions could be shifted to agovernment-run plan.

Whenthe President pledges that reform will not add to the deficit, not evena little, he neglects to mention that House Democrats’ plan wouldincrease the deficit by $239 billion over 10 years, according to thenon-partisan Congressional Budget Office.

What’sworse, when the President insists that middle-class families won’t seea tax increase – as he did repeatedly during his recent appearance onABC’s This Week – it’s as if he failed to read the health care billsaltogether. On page 167 of H.R. 3200, the title of section 401 reads:“TAX ON INDIVIDUALS WITHOUT ACCEPTABLE HEALTH CARE COVERAGE.” TheAssociated Press didn’t mince words when it began a fact check piece,“Memo to President Obama: it’s a tax.”

Ifthe President read these bills, he’d also find that his pledge toprotect seniors’ Medicare benefits rings hollow. According to thenonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, House Democrats’ plan cutsMedicare Advantage programs by more than $172 billion.

Asa result, six million seniors will be denied access to an affordableMedicare Advantage (MA) plan, including three million who will lose theplan they currently have, according to an analysis completed byRepublicans on the House Ways & Means Committee. And that’s justthe beginning. The House Democrats’ bill includes a total of more than$500 billion in Medicare cuts, meaning reduced benefits and fewerchoices for seniors.

Tobe fair, there are areas in which the President has sought to make upfor the shortcomings of Democrats’ costly government takeover of healthcare. It was encouraging when the President’s pledge to Congress that“no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions” was followed by ameeting at the White House with pro-life activists. It turns out,however, that the Administration would not commit to inserting aprovision that explicitly excludes abortion from health care reform.

Thus,the status quo remains: House Democrats’ health care legislation wouldallow the U.S. Secretary of Health & Human Services to includeabortion as a benefit in the government-run health care option.

Itwas also encouraging when the President assured law-abiding taxpayersthat illegal immigrants should not and will not be covered under theDemocrats’ health care plan. The non-partisan Congressional ResearchService has confirmed, however, that there is no mechanism included inthe House bill to verify that individuals are U.S. citizens or legalimmigrants before they receive government benefits.

HouseRepublicans offered two amendments in the committee process to correctthis: the first would have prevented illegal immigrants from beingautomatically enrolled into Medicaid and the second would have requiredbetter screening for applicants for federally-subsidized health care toensure they are actually citizens or legal immigrants. Both wererejected by Democrats.

Theseare just a couple of the many ideas House Republicans have offered toimprove Americans’ health care. For instance, why not allow smallemployers to group together through national associations so they canbuy health insurance for their employees like big companies and unionscan today? Why not allow the American people to buy health care plansacross state lines? Why not get serious about ending junk lawsuits andmore importantly the costly defensive medicine that doctors are forcedto practice?

Weoutlined these proposals in a letter to the President back in May andasked to sit down with him and discuss them. The response we receivedessentially said ‘Thanks, but no thanks.’

Forhis part, the President has talked about a “whole series of Republicanideas” being included in health care reform. This is just another mythperpetuated by the President, whose rhetoric simply doesn’t match thereality of congressional Democrats’ government-run health careproposals.

Thisisn’t about calling out President Obama for the sake of doing so. TheAmerican people deserve to know the unvarnished truth about thepotential consequences of this costly government takeover of theirhealth care. The President’s failure to meet this common-sense standardis yet another indication it’s time to hit the reset button and startover in a bipartisan way to achieve health care reforms hard-workingAmericans can support and afford.

John Boehner is the Republican Minority Leader for the House of Representatives.