Myths v. Truth: The Truth Behind HR 3200 | Jackson Free Press | Jackson, MS

Myths v. Truth: The Truth Behind HR 3200

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Attendees at a Mississippi Tea Party town-hall meeting asked U.S. Gregg Harper questions, as he employed scare tactics about immigrants and abortion.

Myth: Your health care will be rationed, like Canada.
Truth: The bill says nothing whatsoever about the government getting stingy on health care. It does place a cap on out-of-pocket expenses a beneficiary can pay for a basic benefits package. An individual using the new plan can only pay $5,000, for example. (Insurance companies, by comparison, regularly demand $5,000 deductibles.) The bill makes mention of an advisory committee to recommend what benefits are available, but the bill makes clear that this is only a recommendation, not an order.

Myth: Non-citizens will benefit from the plan that you're paying for through your taxes.
Truth: Lies, lies, lies. The public option is a government plan, practically an extension of Social Security. Non-citizens aren't eligible for Social Security, either—even though their employers pay into it with a portion of their paychecks. The only way a non-citizen can get health care in this country is by breaking the law and stealing an identity or by visiting an emergency room, which isn't allowed to let even non-citizens bleed to death on their floor.

Myth: The government will create death panels to dictate your end-of-life treatment, possibly even authorizing euthanasia to cut costs for the most ailing and expensive beneficiaries.
Truth: Legislators actually removed a section of the bill pertaining to "end of life care," which involved counseling services aimed at somebody who probably doesn't see the beauty of dealing with an agonizing ailment for the remainder of their days. The end-of-life care smelled too much of Sarah Palin's "death panel," however, so they took it out.

Myth: The new tax will run small businesses out of business.
Truth: The bill requires employers with more than $400,000 on their payroll to either offer private health insurance coverage to their employees or pay an 8 percent tax on their payroll to help finance a public plan. The tax won't apply to anybody with payrolls less than $250,000.

Myth: The new tax will put people who can't afford insurance in the poor house.
Truth: The bill mandates every citizen must have insurance that meets a minimum federal standard. Those who don't have it must pay 2.5 percent of their modified gross income for the year—not to exceed a national average premium. Do you want $10,000 worth of chemotherapy and expect to make no investment? The British pay handsomely for their "free" health care. Ours, say reform advocates, will be a deal by comparison.

Myth: A government committee will dictate your treatments and the benefits you get.
Truth: The legislation sets up a "private-public advisory committee," which is indeed government in origin. It's headed by the U.S. surgeon general, though it is comprised of governmental independent "medical experts" picked by the president and the comptroller general. The advisory committee only has the power "to recommend" what benefits are included in the provided insurance plans. Its recommendations don't have to be adopted, and it has no power to pick what treatments anybody gets. You'll still have to turn to your insurance company for refusals on what treatments they'll cover.

Myth: Every U.S. citizen will have to have a national identification health card.
Truth: The legislation makes no mention of a nationally required identification health card. The closest thing the legislation comes to this is requiring new government standards for electronic medical transactions, which according to the bill "may" require the "utilization of a machine-readable health plan beneficiary identification card," to prove your eligibility for government services. Ever heard of a Medicaid or Medicare card?

More myths exposed at factcheck.org.

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