Instead of the normal three articles, posts and videos of the week, and to continue the hot topic analysis of the Obama Health Plan, I’ve included the work of Keith Hennessey, former White House senior advisor and his discussion of the President’s health care remarks at the Portsmouth, New Hampshire town hall conducted this week. Don’t believe everything you hear.
He also wrote an analysis on the alleged 46 million uninsured: How many uninsured people need additional help from taxpayers?
Here are all 20 posts in his series analyzing President Obama’s claims about the proposed government health plan:
- The President’s overpromise that everyone can keep their health plan
- Putting the government in charge of your health insurance
- Waiting in line
- Government-mandated benefits
- Preventive care does not save money (in the aggregate)
- The House bill would increase short-term, 10th year, and long-term budget deficits
- The President was incorrect — AARP opposes the bill
- The bills would take Medicare savings needed for solvency and spend them on a new entitlement
- Medicare is not a good example of government-run health care because Medicare is fiscally unsustainable
- Even if the public option drops out of legislation, other parts of these bills would put private insurance under government control
- The President says the public option will keep private insurers honest at the same time he proposes cutting payments to private insurers competing with the Medicare public option
- The pending bills would move more cost-benefit decisions from insurers to people chosen by the government
- Guaranteed renewal and guaranteed issue
- The President says “we may be able to get even more than” the $80 B of budgetary savings that the pharmaceutical industry thought was a ceiling promised by the White House.
- The President says he’s not “promoting” a single-payer plan, but the only concern he raises is a disruptive transition.
- Many examples suggest that the government cannot compete on a level playing field with private firms.
- The President trashes the U.S. Postal Service and undermines the case that government can run a complex health system.
- The President understates the annual cost of new spending by a factor of two.
- The President says that 2/3 of the offsets come from Medicare and Medicaid spending, while the only public estimate (for the House Bill) shows 21% instead. He also advocates a tax proposal that Congressional Democrats killed last Winter.
- There are 46 million people who are technically uninsured, but the target population is probably one-third to one-half that size.
