OK, President Obama has had his say on health care. Now let’s look at some inconvenient truths.
Obama insisted Wednesday that his public-option plan would save tax dollars, while not adding “one dime” to the deficit. Moreover, he said, “nothing in our plan requires you to change what [health insurance] you have.”
The first claim is demonstrably false; the second, profoundly misleading.
The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has reported that the House Democratic bills would add $220 billion to the deficit over the next decade — and even more after that.
Meanwhile, Obama was technically correct when he said that no one would be required to change their current insurance coverage under his plan. But it doesn’t guarantee that they’ll be able to keep it, either.
That’s a significant change — in the wrong direction — from his repeated 2008 campaign promise that “if you like your health-care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health-care plan, period.”
In fact, the added taxes and mandates that he would institute on private plans would so undercut private insurance that many employers surely would drop health-care coverage.
And that would end up dumping their employees into a public option — especially if private insurance remains available primarily through employers.
There are many more points in which the president’s claims are open to serious question — including whether illegal aliens would be covered, whether health care inevitably would be rationed and just how serious he is about instituting tort reform to help bring down costs.
(Significantly, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, whom Obama named as his point person on tort reform, was the longtime director of the Kansas Trial Lawyers Association. So be warned.)
It’s important, in other words, to approach the president’s speech as one would approach anything involving insurance.
Read the fine print.