Obama's Latest Healthcare Lie- Its Designed to Give the People Control Over Health Care

 As part of his continual campaign to sell the unpopular Obamacare proposal to the American People,  President Obama visited a school on Wednesday to give (what was promised to be) his final argument on the Progressive version of reforming health care:

..... So whatever state regulations were in place, we’d get rid of those and so insurance companies could basically find a state that had the worst regulations and then from there sell insurance everywhere.  And that somehow that was going to be helpful to you.  All this would do would give insurance companies more leeway to raise premiums and deny care. So I don’t believe we should give either the government or the insurance companies more control over health care in America.  I want to give you more control over health care in America.

The President was not being truthful with the American people. This bill is all about government control. Or as George Will said two weeks ago

There you have the premise of this legislation and the core of today's liberalism: the American people are such dopes they can't be counted upon to buy their own insurance.

Not only does the bill require Americans to purchase health insurance, but it tells you the level of health insurance you have to purchase, which according to the CBO will raise the cost to many Americans.

There is also the Dr. Seuss provision (One Pill, Two Pills Red Pill. Blue Pill). Remember when Obama told the story about the two pills. And how the government may "recommend" to doctors that they only dispense the cheaper blue pill:

"If there's a blue pill and a red pill, and the blue pill is half the price of the red pill and works just as well, why not pay half price for the thing that's going to make you well?" 

The problem is if there are ten percent of the people who can only be cured by the red pill, the advisory boards set up by the Obamacare plan can tell doctors they can't use it anyway because it is too expensive, or they will refuse to allow it to be covered, or even worse will discourage the Pharma companies from making the red pill. That is not "rationing" but it is still putting our lives in grave danger.

Section 10304 of the Reid manager's amendment(p. 152) empowers the Secretary of Health and Human Services to impose "efficiency measures," in addition to the "quality measures" provided for under the Reid Substitute, on health care providers. These measures are to be incorporated "in workforce programs, training curricula, and any other means of dissemination determined appropriate by the Secretary." Section 3014(b) adding Social Security Act Section 1890A(b)(1)(A) (p. 709). They are to be used in the calculation of value-based purchasing from hospitals, and renal dialysis services must abide by them or be penalized. Health care providers, including hospices, ambulatory surgical centers, rehabilitation facilities, home health agencies, physicians and hospitals must provide reports, generally made publicly available, based on these measures.
 
Consequently, they exercise considerable influence on how health care providers practice medicine, and consequently on what treatment patients do – and do not – receive, taking control out of the hands of Americans and into the hands of the government.


The control is the latest in the series of lies the White House has come up with in his attempt to sell America on his version of Health Care reform that is based on falsehood:

In early 2009, he couldn't convince fiscal conservatives with his pitch that "health reform is deficit reduction." In late 2009, middle America wasn't persuaded that 2,000 pages of statutes were necessary to cover pre-existing conditions. Early in 2010, the president tried the "it's time to get it over with" line — and Scott Brown was elected senator from Massachusetts.

...At his press conference last week, the president said his proposal gives individual Americans "the same kind of choice of private health insurance that members of Congress get for themselves." Well, it's the same kind of choice, but it's not the same choice.

The White House recently confirmed that there will be no national health exchange in the proposal, only individual state exchanges. So you'll only get to choose from within your home state — a choice most Americans already have. Members of Congress, though, can still choose plans offered by insurers from across the nation.

The president's plan pays for a trillion dollars in subsidies, new Medicaid benefits and new community grants, in part by cutting benefits from Medicare Advantage, a program designed to give seniors more choice.

While this may or may not make fiscal sense — critics argue that Medicare Advantage is a giveaway to insurers, supporters counter that health outcomes are better and seniors are more satisfied — millions of elderly Americans will have less personal control over their care than before.

Even before inauguration, White House budget director Peter Orszag championed a Medicare panel, designed to recommend whether the federal program will cover expensive drugs, devices and treatments, with an eye on saving money.

The president's proposal includes such a panel, and it's still charged with cutting billions of dollars in services. Fewer treatment options mean less flexibility for your physician — and surely, less control over your own health care.

The president's latest proposal explicitly protects state benefit mandates. On Jan. 29, he insisted: "We've got to do so with some minimum standards, because otherwise what happens is that you could have insurance companies circumvent a whole bunch of state regulations about basic benefits or what have you."

Not only do mandates limit choice for consumers, but they tend to drive up the cost of coverage. They are very popular — with certain health-provider lobbies that gain from these regulations.

Take Massachusetts, where everyone is required by law to have insurance that includes in vitro fertilization, substance abuse rehabilitation and (depending on who's counting) between 34 and 50 other services. It's one reason health insurance premiums in the state are nearly 50% higher than the national average. It's as if the law forced every family buying a house to install a hot tub, a swimming pool and a second garage.

If you're a middle-aged Boston mother of two young boys, you shouldn't be forced to pay for in vitro fertilization coverage, just as a family of devout Mormons living in Springfield shouldn't be required to have rehab in their policy.

Under the president's proposal, you'll pay more, since it adds new federal mandates on top of the state ones — in other words, less personal choice (and control).

To paraphrase that old saying about falsehoods, there are three kinds of  Lies; Lies, Dammed Lies and Presidential Healthcare Speeches.