Morning Bell: Obama Rhetoric vs Health Care Reality

Conn Carroll / June 12, 2009

Campaigning for his health care plan yesterday, President Barack Obama told a Green Bay, Wisconsin audience: “Right now a number of my Republican friends have said, ‘We can’t support anything with a public option.’ It’s not clear that it’s based on any evidence as much as it is their thinking, their fear, that somehow once you have a public plan that government will take over the entire health care system.” In fact, the opposite is true. It is President Obama who is operating on rhetoric without any evidence to back up his claims. Consider the following four themes crucial to Obama’s argument:

1. You will be able to keep your doctor and health insurance if you want.
On the contrary, an independent analysis has shown that up to 119 million Americans could lose the coverage they have today under a Medicare-like public plan. The whole notion that a public plan would help increase competition defies common sense. For one thing, the government cannot create a level playing field between its own plan and private plans. It would be like an umpire at a baseball game also fielding a team. The playing field will always tilt towards the government plan that would eventually run out. And that is the whole point of the public plan. Just ask public plan architect Jacob Hacker: “Someone once said to me this is a Trojan Horse for single-payer, and I said, well it’s not a Trojan Horse, right? It’s just right there.” (more…)