The President’s press conference yesterday was a study in deception. For sheer volume, Obama’s duplicity raised the bar of obfuscation. Richard Nixon would have blushed. Dick Morris nailed several of Obama’s fabrications in the following article. After Morris you’ll find an Associated Press piece titled “FACT CHECK: Obama’s Health Care Claims Adrift?” When the state-owned media objects, you know lies have been told.
“RHETORIC V. REALITY: HEALTH CARE BY ORWELL”
By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN, published in the New York Post on July 23, 2009
President Obama’s rhetoric last night summoned the memory of ‘1984,’ George Orwell’s novel of a nightmarish future — where the slogan of the rulers is ‘War is peace; freedom is slavery; ignorance is strength.’
The president assures us that he will cut health-care spending. . .by adding $1 trillion to health-care spending.
He says that ‘health-care decisions will not be made by government’. . .while he sets up a new Federal Health Board to tell doctors what treatments they can offer and to whom and under what circumstances.
Obama told the media, ‘I will free doctors to make good health-care decisions’. . .by telling the physicians what to do.
When the president says he guarantees the ’same coverage’ to people who like their current health-insurance policies, he means that their current HMOs, insurers and doctors will be the ones to implement the protocols and instructions the government hands down to them — not that we’ll have our current freedom of decision-making.
When he blandly assures us that we will ’stop paying for things that don’t make us healthier,’ he really means that his Federal Health Board will overrule your doctor and stop him from using his own best judgment in your treatment.
The president will ‘get the politics out of health care’ by putting it under government control.
Obama says that he will not ‘add to the deficit’ to fund health care. But the bill reported out by Rep. Charlie Rangel’s Ways and Means Committee leaves $550 billion unfunded.
The president says that he’ll identify savings that will reduce the need for more taxes — even though the Congressional Budget Office refuses to say that his ’savings’ will actually work and warns that the bill will really be added to the deficit.
He repeatedly tells us that he’ll cut health-care spending. What he means is that he will cut doctors’ incomes and will turn down patients — particularly the elderly — when they seek medical care that his bureaucrats disapprove of.
And he ignores that cutting incomes in the medical field will reduce the number of doctors and force further rationing of care.
The president opines that he will replace the most ‘expensive care’ with the ‘best care’ by empowering government officials who have never met you to substitute their judgment for that of your doctor, who has examined you thoroughly.
When Obama laments that ‘14,000 people lose their insurance every day,’ he is referring to the job losses that his own failed efforts to end the recession have permitted.
He warns that health-care costs are gobbling up money that employers should use to raise wages and worker pay — yet the plans he backs would require employers to pay 8 percent of their payroll as a tax or provide insurance to their workers.
The Obama plan highlights greater preventive care — but, at the same time, cuts medical incomes and so will cut the number of doctors who might provide it.
The stimulus package, in the Gospel According to Barack, was ‘designed’ to work over the next two years. But at the time, he demanded immediate passage to ‘jump-start the economy’ — something that clearly did not happen.
Medicare and Medicaid are ‘driving the deficit’ even as he increased the amount of red ink by at least $800 billion in six months with little, if any, increase in the cost of either program.
He says he ‘expects’ banks to repay their TARP money. In fact, they’re lining up around the block to do so — but the Treasury will only permit a handful of them to do so.
In summary, Obama’s health program will promote ‘lower cost and more choice’ by increasing spending by $1 trillion, telling patients what care they’re permitted to have, and limiting their access to quality care.
Orwell’s heirs should sue for violation of copyright.”
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FACT CHECK: Obama’s Health Care Claims Adrift?
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, Published: July 22, 2009
WASHINGTON (AP) — “President Barack Obama’s assertion Wednesday that government will stay out of health care decisions in an overhauled system is hard to square with the proposals coming out of Congress and with his own rhetoric.
Even now, nearly half the costs of health care in the U.S. are paid for by government at all levels. Federal authority would only grow under any proposal in play.
A look at some of Obama’s claims in his prime-time news conference:
OBAMA: ”We already have rough agreement” on some aspects of what a health care overhaul should involve, and one is: ”It will keep government out of health care decisions, giving you the option to keep your insurance if you’re happy with it.”
THE FACTS: In House legislation, a commission appointed by the government would determine what is and isn’t covered by insurance plans offered in a new purchasing pool, including a plan sponsored by the government. The bill also holds out the possibility that, over time, those standards could be imposed on all private insurance plans, not just the ones in the pool.
Indeed, Obama went on to lay out other principles of reform that plainly show the government making key decisions in health care. He said insurance companies would be barred from dropping coverage when someone gets too sick, limits would be set on out-of-pocket expenses, and preventive care such as checkups and mammograms would be covered.
It’s true that people would not be forced to give up a private plan and go with a public one. The question is whether all of those private plans would still be in place if the government entered the marketplace in a bigger way.
He addressed some of the nuances under questioning. ”Can I guarantee that there are going to be no changes in the health care delivery system?” he said. ”No. The whole point of this is to try to encourage changes that work for the American people and make them healthier.”
He acknowledged then that the ”government already is making some of these decisions.”
OBAMA: ”I have also pledged that health insurance reform will not add to our deficit over the next decade, and I mean it.”
THE FACTS: The president has said repeatedly that he wants ”deficit-neutral” health care legislation, meaning that every dollar increase in cost is met with a dollar of new revenue or a dollar of savings. But some things are more neutral than others. White House Budget Director Peter Orszag told reporters this week that the promise does not apply to proposed spending of about $245 billion over the next decade to increase fees for doctors serving Medicare patients. Democrats and the Obama administration argue that the extra payment, designed to prevent a scheduled cut of about 21 percent in doctor fees, already was part of the administration’s policy, with or without a health care overhaul.
Beyond that, budget experts have warned about various accounting gimmicks that can mask true burdens on the deficit. The bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget lists a variety of them, including back-loading the heaviest costs at the end of the 10-year period and beyond.
OBAMA: ”You haven’t seen me out there blaming the Republicans.”
THE FACTS: Obama did so in his opening statement, saying, ”I’ve heard that one Republican strategist told his party that even though they may want to compromise, it’s better politics to “go for the kill.” Another Republican senator said that defeating health reform is about “breaking” me.’
OBAMA: ”I don’t know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that. But I think it’s fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home, and, number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there’s a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately.”
THE FACTS: The facts are in dispute between black scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. and the white police sergeant who arrested him at his Cambridge, Mass., home when officers went there to investigate a reported break-in. But this much is clear: Gates wasn’t arrested for being in his own home, as Obama implies, but for allegedly being belligerent when the sergeant demanded his identification. The president did mention that the professor was charged with disorderly conduct. Charges were dropped.
OBAMA: ‘If we had done nothing, if you had the same old budget as opposed to the changes we made in our budget, you’d have a $9.3 trillion deficit over the next 10 years. Because of the changes we’ve made, it’s going to be $7.1 trillion.’
THE FACTS: Obama’s numbers are based on figures compiled by his own budget office. But they rely on assumptions about economic growth that some economists find too optimistic. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, in its own analysis of the president’s budget numbers, concluded that the cumulative deficit over the next decade would be $9.1 trillion.”
Posted by Jerry Pomeroy in Best Of the Web, Health Insurance Debate, Obama Presidency