The Day in 100 Seconds: Health Care Bingo
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Obama asks help of bloggers to debunk myths.

Good post. Some of the lies being read into the record in Congress by idiot Representatives and Senators are pretty outrageous. It borders on criminal, and it amazes me they are able to get away with it.

The biggest lies they are hanging their campaign on are that Washington will choose your doctor and Washington will decide what treatment you get. As any Medicare patient if this is true.

(See also the Heritage Foundation memo: (link...))

The Alex Castellanos memo is so full of lies its hard to know where to start. But their "solutions" are nothing more than talking point bullets in a poorly constructed propaganda memo:

We support requiring/incentivizing doctors and hospitals to post pricing and outcomes. In this day and age, why aren't the cost of all tests, treatments, procedures and office visits -- as well as effectiveness of treatments posted openly on the Internet?

Not sure how this helps anything. But it does point out one problem. People with insurance don't care what anything costs. Telling them will just make them go, "Gosh, that's a lot! Here's my claim form. Thanks!"

We believe health insurance companies should compete with each other with simple, one-page contracts/summaries so insurance is simpler, cheaper, and fairer. (Like many banks are doing w/ car or home loans). And how about incentivizing insurance companies to have simple, one page reimbursement forms?

Every businessman I have ever known (me included) loves the mythical "one page contract." Try to actually write one that spells everything out sufficient that both parties are protected and understand what they are supposed to do. Then try to get a court to enforce the part where it didn't say anything about this or that.

We believe doctors should be protected from frivolous, expensive lawsuits so they can work together with other doctors and patients in their communities to reduce unnecessary and expensive tests and procedures.

Tort reform comes up in every debate about health care, even though it's only around 1% of the cost of health care. If we really want to reduce malpractice lawsuits, reduce malpractice. Doctors are largely self regulating. Bad doctors can skate for years. But you never hear them talking about weeding out bad doctors, just limiting the rights of their victims.

We want to change the law so you can take your health insurance with you if you have to change jobs (eliminating expensive and unnecessary insurance turnover).

I agree with this one 100%. Isn't that partly what the Exchange proposed in the House bill is supposed to do?

We want to change the law so insurance companies can't deny you coverage because of pre-existing conditions.

This is in the House bill.

We want to cut out the "Washington health care middle-man," reducing expensive bureaucracy to produce big health care savings.

Insurance companies are the health care "middle-man." Their overhead is about 30%. Medicare's overhead is more like 5%. This is classic Bush "clear skies," "healthy forest," "mission accomplished" double-speak.

We support (tax incentives?) new paperless, computer-age health care IT systems to reduce the cost of health care management as well as reduce medical mistakes.

The House bill calls for "computer-age" IT information systems.

Every American should have equal opportunity to get the best value and buy the cheapest insurance no matter where he lives or whom he works for. We want to change the law so any American can buy the lowest cost insurance available nationwide, not just in their states -- whether from insurance companies, businesses, church groups, college alumni associations, or groups like the AARP, who often provide it less expensively.

I agree with this 100%. This is one of the purposes of the Exchange proposed in he House bill.

The Wall-Mart way to bring costs down is better than the Washington way. So we want to use consumer-buying power, also called "group buying power," not Washington price-controls, to bring health care costs down.

Again, this is addressed by the Exchange proposed in the House bill. But yes, please do keep using the Wal-Mart metaphor to sell America on the Republican "solution." That's exactly the mental image that will help advance real reform.

We support effective prevention, wellness, and disease management programs because they will improve our health and save money.

Covered in the House plan.

We support bold new tax deductions for companies that develop new treatments and cures because that is smarter than paying for chronic long-term illnesses we can't cure today.

Translation: Handouts to pharmaceutical companies. For cures like the latest one I saw just last night on TV. It's some kind of chemical that you paint on your eyelids to make your eyelashes grow. (It can have serious side effects that could affect your vision, so be sure to ask your doctor if it's right for you!) But anyway, yes, I'm all for tax credits and grants and other government funding for legitimate research.

We believe in bottom-up health care savings: every American should get a tax deduction for their health insurance premiums.

OK, fine. Assuming you itemize. Or even pay taxes at all based on your income. But won't this add to the deficit?

We believe the working poor should get a refundable, advanceable tax credit to help them get health insurance.

And the mechanism to make sure they use this for health insurance is what? And how much of a tax credit would it be? And wouldn't that add to our deficit?

We want to incentivize and expand practical, down-to-earth reforms that are already working and reducing health care costs all across America. Safeway's plan, which gives employees a stake in holding down health care costs, is a model. Instead of cutting care or shifting costs to employees, Safeway has held health care costs flat the last 4 years, while it's up 40% for the rest of corporate America.

I don't know what the Safeway plan is. I wonder if it involves firing people who get sick or who have a family member who gets sick? I wonder if it involves choices between pay cuts v. raising deductible and out of pocket expenses?

We support special "too much paperwork" tax credits for small businesses, so they don't have to bear the intolerable costs of filling out insurance forms or meeting government mandates and regulations.

Covered in the House bill. Although, business should not be in the business of providing insurance and health care in the first place.

We want to give small businesses the same cost-saving breaks big businesses get by helping them form small business health plans and small business health co-ops.

Covered in the House bill with the Exchange.

And no lifetime health care benefits and insurance for Congressmen who leave their jobs -- unless and until everybody else in America has the same.

Yeah, sure. Right.

Also, there are pages and pages on the internet devoted to warning the American public that page 16 of the bill makes private health insurance illegal. It doesn't.

Did Medicare Part D lower the costs of pharmaceuticals or just throw in money for people who couldn't afford the high prices? I always thought it sounded like a bailout for drug companies.

I can tell you that: NO...Medicare part D did not lower the costs of pharmaceuticals, nor does it cover everyone for the high prices. Sometimes you just don't get the most effective drug for your condition because there is no generic alternative that is cheaper. Your doctor sometimes has to combine two or more drugs to achieve the same effect of one drug that has no generic alternative and the drug companies specifically wrote the Medicare part D language that way to get people to have to buy MORE drugs...not less or cheaper.

In fact, the state of Tennessee has to help me pay my Medicare premiums because the amount of money I get from disability is so low, that when I was trying to pay the Medicare part B premium and the Medicare part D premium (which is in addition to...not part of...the part B premium) it was using fully 15% of my monthly income just on the premiums...and the co-pays for doctors and the drugs was even more money right off the top. Some months I had not enough money left for food or other bills.

The alternative for me to not paying all those premiums and co-pays is death. Honestly, sometimes it feels as if the entire Republican party and the insurance and pharmaceutical industry and corporate America are all lining up to say to people like me, "Go ahead and die already...your life is worth nothing, you are worth nothing..."

And it really pains me to hear my neighbors, who are supposedly such good "Christians", agreeing with those sentiments with their tea parties and other similar nonsense. I know they can't truly be real Christians because they obviously have never read, or listened to, or really thought about the passage from the Bible in which Jesus is talking about how it is their responsibility as Christians to feed the hungry, to care for the sick, to clothe the naked, to give shelter to the homeless, and to visit and comfort those in prison, "for that which you have done unto the least of these, my brothers, you have done unto me." when I hear talk about socialized medicine being a bad thing, I keep wondering how folks reconcile those sentiments with their belief in the very first socialist in history...Jesus of Nazareth, you know, the Son of God, Prince of Peace, the Light of the World...that guy. Pretty radical community organizer and socialist, him.

Go figure...

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"You can't fix stupid..." ~ Ron White"
"I never said I wasn't a brat..." ~ Talidapali

...........do you trust these DC clowns with your life?