Separating Fact from Fiction

by Gordon Cooper

From Broader View Weekly, August 28, 2009

As the noise from the Health Care Reform effort continues to drown out almost every other political discussion this summer, it has become increasingly difficult to determine which voices are speaking facts and which are merely spreading fiction. The charges have been flying from both sides and even though we have spent precious newsprint in our two previous columns covering this topic, we decided the importance and relevance of this issue demanded at least one more effort.

At the risk of being redundant, I will fight the urge to echo my earlier objections to this legislation. For those readers who were unable to read my columns or for those who may have forgotten the arguments, I invite you to log on to our blog or email me for copies.

In the fight for facts over fiction, it has been believed by many in the media that the protestors have been the ones spreading misinformation. Obama spent a fortune flying to Montana and New Hampshire for staged Town Hall meetings and gave speeches to civic leaders, church leaders, and anyone else who would listen about why we needed this overhaul and why we needed it now. He claimed this unprecedented sales job by our chief executive was necessary because “so much misinformation was out there”.

I’m sorry to say that he failed to not only stifle the noise of fallacies, but I am suggesting that he actually added more volume to the din. Let me explain.

Obama claims that this bill will pay for itself with two-thirds of the expenses covered by reducing waste, reducing subsidies to insurance companies who augment Medicare coverage, and increasing efficiency. The final third will be supplied by increasing taxes on those earning more than $250k. That is the plan. However, I should remind you here that these are the same planners who were surprised by the depth of the economic morass, and same ones who had to redress the Cash for Clunkers program when it didn’t go exactly as planned.

Even if this bill did not scare me with its provisions for an overreaching and all-intrusive bureaucracy that would monitor and influence every private interaction between physicians and patients, and even if I was not concerned with the loss of privacy and freedom of choice that is contained in the details of this monstrosity, I would still oppose it on economic grounds alone.

Obama is either not being factual in his numbers or he is being naïve. I hereby offer the following factual examples of why this plan will not pay for itself.

Obama bases his numbers on the increased cost of insuring 46 million Americans (and/or anyone who can swim the Rio Grande or squeeze beneath a border guard’s nose) who are currently uninsured, while assuring the rest of us “who like their health care can keep their health care”. The facts are that it will be impossible to squeeze that many people under this umbrella without someone getting pushed out into the rain.

We need only look to our northern neighbor and to the State of Tennessee to see how expensive health care becomes when we get it for free.

In a recent article published on Canada.com by Randall Denley (Tuesday, August, 18, 2009), the author lamented about how costly the Canadian system had become. In fact, he claims that 43% of Ontario’s program spending budget goes to fund health care. He also claims the system is antiquated and inefficient and not patient-friendly, “being driven by government budgets – not patient needs”. I can also quote other Canadian authors who say their current program is unsustainable as it is being run now.

Now, before my critics start yelling about how unfair it is to be comparing Obama’s plan to Canada’s, let me tell you a little secret. One of Obama’s health care architects is Health Czar, Nancy DeParle. She was also instrumental in casting the failed TennCare health policy in Tennessee.

That policy started with the same lofty and altruistic goals as the current House bill. However, reality set in and as employers saw their taxes rise, they shuffled off their employees to the public option and costs skyrocketed. In a few short years the plan was consuming a full third of the state budget and sucked up every penny of new revenue. Before the plan was re-structured, almost half of all TennCare subscribers were people who had migrated from private plans to the free plan. Are you surprised?
To pay the extra costs, taxes were raised, reimbursements to doctors and hospitals were reduced and benefits to patients were slashed. In other words, health care was rationed, and taxes were raised.

Another fact that has not been disclosed by Obama is the fact that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has crunched the numbers and concluded that the new taxes, mandates and bureaucratic sludge that always seems to accompany any government program will increase our obscene deficit by another trillion dollars and cost our economy another 1.6 million jobs.

Again, these are facts, not fiction. Verify them if you wish. I do not dispute the fact that we need reform – but not this reform.