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Health Care: Four More FACTS vs FICTION
| FICTION |
FACT |
| Health care reform will lead to rationing. |
Reform will not change your health plan if you already have one, and will not reduce benefits under Medicare or Medicaid. Nothing will stand between you and your doctor or prevent you from making the best health care decisions. But reform will end current forms of rationing by preventing insurance companies from denying you the care you need and by enabling 32 million uninsured people to obtain coverage. |
| Health care reform will raise taxes on the middle class. |
By far the biggest tax revenue to pay for reform is a tax on those who earn more than $200,000 per year ($250,000 for joint returns). The excise tax on high-cost insurance plans has been reduced 85% from the original proposal, and accounts for only 3% of the bill’s funding, and won’t go into effect until 2018. |
| Health care reform will increase premiums. |
The CBO projects that reform actually will lower premiums slightly for group health plans and by 14% to 20% (for the same coverage) for people who purchase their own insurance individually in the exchanges. It will lower costs by reducing cost shifting for uncompensated care for the uninsured, creating more competition under the new exchanges, reimbursing plans for the costs of early retirees, allowing individuals to obtain group rates in the exchanges and instituting cost-saving delivery and payment reforms under Medicare that will set the standard for the private sector. |
| Democrats rammed health care reform down our throats too fast even though the American people oppose it. |
In 2008 President Obama and House and Senate Democratic majorities ran on a platform of health care reform, and the American people elected them. Congress then debated health care reform for 14 months. Senate Democrats incorporated 147 Republican amendments and abandoned popular ideas (such as the public option) that Republicans did not like. In fact, health care reform mirrors the plan championed by Republican Gov. Mitt Romney in Massachusetts and a 1994 proposal by Senate Republicans. Polls show that a majority of Americans approve of this legislation and strongly approve of its various components. |
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