As Congress continues to debate health care reform legislation,
Media Matters for America presents the latest in a series of reports
identifying and debunking myths and falsehoods
in the media's coverage of the issue.
MYTH 8: Health care reform legislation will provide coverage to undocumented immigrants
REBUTTAL: The House bill specifically forbids federal dollars from going to the health insurance policies of undocumented workers residing in the United States, saying no federal payments will be allowed to benefit those
"who are not lawfully present in the United States."
MYTH 9: Public option would be financed by tax hike
REALITY: Public option financed by premiums -- not taxes. Although the Senate has not released the text of its compromise bill, both the House bill and the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee's bill require their public options to charge premiums sufficient to cover administrative costs as well as the cost of enrollees' benefits.
Bills' tax revenues are used to cover expansion of coverage, with or without public option. The Senate Finance Committee's bill, which does not include a public option, requires a tax on high-cost plans to cover the expansion of Medicaid and subsidies for lower- and middle-income Americans purchasing insurance. Similarly, CBO's July 2 analysis of the Senate HELP bill shows that the bulk of cost is for subsidies for lower- and middle-income Americans purchasing insurance. And CBO found that the House bill's proposed Medicaid expansion and subsidy provision for some families to purchase insurance through the exchanges would cost roughly $891 billion over 10 years, which would be "more than offset by the combination of other spending changes, which CBO estimates would save $427 billion, and receipts resulting from the income tax surcharge on high-income individuals and other provisions, which JCT and CBO estimate would increase federal revenues by $594 billion over that period."
MYTH 10: Public doesn't support public optionREALITY: Numerous recent polls on public option found widespread support. Several recent polls found that at least a plurality -- but more often a majority -- of respondents support a public option. An October 30-November 1 CNN/Opinion Research poll found that 55 percent favor "creating a public health insurance option administered by the federal government that would compete with plans offered by private health insurance companies." This finding aligns with polls taken throughout October. For instance, an October 15-18 Washington Post/ABC News poll found that 57 percent support a government plan "to compete with private health insurance plans"; an October 8-15 Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that 57 percent favor "[c]reating a government-administered public health insurance option"; and an October 16-19 USA Today/Gallup poll found that 50 percent support a "public, government-run insurance plan.
MYTH 12: Democrats are to blame for excessively partisan health reform legislative process
REALITY: Senate bills included numerous GOP amendments, reflected bipartisan meetings. According to a HELP Committee document about bipartisan aspects of the health reform bill the committee passed July 15, the final bill included "161 Republican amendments," including "several amendments from Senators [Mike] Enzi [R-WY], [Tom] Coburn [R-OK], [Pat] Roberts [R-KS] and others [that] make certain that nothing in the legislation will allow for rationing of care," and reflected the efforts of "six bipartisan working groups" that "met a combined 72 times" in 2009 as well as "30 bipartisan hearings on health care reform" since 2007, half of which were held in 2009. [HELP Committee document, 7/09] And according to the Senate Finance Committee's document detailing the amendments to the Chairman's Mark considered, at least 13 amendments sponsored by one or more Republican senators were included in the bill.
GOP senators made clear they didn't intend to negotiate with Democrats in good faith. For instance, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) asserted during a July 17 conference call organized by the anti-health care reform group Conservatives for Patients Rights while discussing health care reform: "If we're able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo. It will break him." Similarly, Minority Whip Jon Kyl (AZ) reportedly admitted August 18 that "almost all Republicans" will oppose Democratic health care reform efforts, regardless of the compromises Democrats might make in attempting to win their support. And Senate Finance Committee ranking member Chuck Grassley during an August town hall meeting told the audience they "have every right to fear" the end-of-life counseling provision in the House bill, adding that the "government-run plan" could " could lead to "decide when to pull the plug on grandma." During an August interview, Grassley also admitted he wouldn't vote for his own bill if the GOP remained opposed.
MYTH 13: Health reform is unconstitutional
REALITY: Legal experts have disputed claim that the reform bill is unconstitutional. Legal scholars -- including George Washington University law professor Orin Kerr, who recently served as a special counsel to Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) during Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation proceedings -- have pointed out the flaws in conservatives' arguments, including the facts that regulation of the health care sector falls under Congress' broad power to regulate interstate commerce and that Congress has repeatedly passed laws regulating health care and health insurance.
Fox example, Kerr said Napolitano's op-ed was "filled with so many errors, misstatements, and plainly weak claims that the mere number of those becomes far more interesting than the argument of the op-ed itself." And assessing the whether such a mandate is constitutional, Cornell law professor Michael C. Dorf wrote that he "rejected" what he described as the "libertarian" "objection that an individual mandate would be an unprecedented burden on liberty because it would affirmatively direct conduct, rather than either forbidding conduct or imposing affirmative obligations on only those who engage in conduct that the government has the power to forbid." He added that there are substantial precedents for such affirmative obligations and even if there were not, there is no reason in principle why an affirmative duty is a greater restriction on liberty than a prohibition or condition." He also assessed the "federalism objection" to the mandate's constitutionality, writing, in part, that "the individual mandate is 'plainly adapted' to the undoubtedly legitimate end of regulating the enormous and enormously important health-care sector of the national economy. It is therefore constitutional."
MYTH 15: Prominent opponents of health reform are credible
CLAIM: Betsy McCaughey is a credible health care expert.
REALITY: McCaughey recently exposed as Big Tobacco shill during 1994 health care debate. Rolling Stone revealed that in 1994, tobacco giant Philip Morris implemented a "strategy to derail Hillarycare," which included an "effort to 'work on the development of favorable pieces' with 'friendly contacts in the media' " -- specifically mentioning the company's collaboration with McCaughey on her 1994 New Republic hit piece on the Clintons' health care reform bill. McCaughey has described as "outrageous and fictional" the charge that she "worked for a tobacco company in writing my critique of the dangers of the Clinton Plan. I did not." McCaughey asserted that she "did no fundraising or conferring with corporations."
McCaughey is a serial misinformer who has perpetuated numerous falsehoods about health care reform. McCaughey has repeatedly published op-eds in the New York Post and Wall Street Journal advancing falsehoods about health reform. Notably, she falsely claimed that a prior version of the House health care reform bill would "absolutely require" end-of-life counseling for seniors on Medicare "that will tell them how to end their life sooner" -- a claim that many in the media repeated. McCaughey repeatedly falsely claimed that the Senate HELP committee's bill "basically" "pushes everyone into an HMO-style plan." Additionally, McCaughey concocted the false claim, which was nonetheless widely repeated in the media, that a health IT provision in the economic recovery act enabled government bureaucrats to "monitor treatments" or restrict what "your doctor is doing" with regard to patient care. On multiple occasions, after being challenged on her false claims about health care legislation, McCaughey reportedly insisted that she was right about the ultimate effect (if not the literal wording) of a bill.
CLAIM: Newt Gingrich is a credible health care expert.
REALITY: Newt Gingrich has a financial stake in opposing Democrats' reform proposals. Numerous media outlets have provided Fox News contributor Newt Gingrich a forum to discuss his opposition to the inclusion of a public option and increased insurance regulations in health care reform legislation. But those media have not noted that that his Center for Health Transformation -- a for-profit entity that Gingrich founded and reportedly profits from -- receives annual membership fees from several major health insurance companies, which have a financial interest in preventing the implementation of those policies. Recently, NBC's Meet the Press hosted Gingrich, who attacked proposed cuts to Medicare Advantage programs under Democratic health reform legislation, but neither he nor host David Gregory disclosed his position as head of the Center for Health Transformation, which receives fees from insurance companies that sell Medicare Advantage plans. Gingrich has also repeatedly spread misinformation about health care reform.
CLAIM: AAPS-affiliated members are credible health care experts.
REALITY: AAPS is a conservative-leaning group that has promoted and endorsed controversial views on medicine and health. The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) is a conservative-leaning group that has promoted and endorsed controversial views on medicine and health, including urging doctors not to serve as Medicare providers and supporting a "moratorium on vaccine mandates." AAPS also filed an amicus brief pressing for the public release of photos of former Clinton deputy counsel Vince Foster -- whom AAPS described as "the attorney assigned by Hillary Clinton to 'fix' the AAPS lawsuit against the Health Care Task Force" -- taken following his 1993 death, which numerous investigations have determined a suicide. The group also published an article falsely claiming that "in the past three years America has more than 7,000 cases of leprosy" and tying the increase to illegal immigration. Despite these facts, Fox News' Glenn Beck has hosted AAPS director Richard Amerling, as well as AAPS-affiliated David McKalip, the doctor who notoriously emailed a racist image depicting Obama as a witch doctor to his fellow "tea party" activists, to weigh in on the health care reform debate.
MYTH 16: Health care reform will impose rationingREALITY: Insurance companies already ration care. Insurance companies acknowledge that they ration care, restricting coverage of procedures and tests like MRIs and CAT scans and denying coverage for pre-existing medical conditions.
Sanjay Gupta: "I can tell you, as a practicing physician ... who deals with this on a daily basis, rationing does occur all the time." As Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN's chief medical correspondent, explained: "[P]eople always say, 'Is there going to be rationed care?' And I can tell you, as a practicing physician, as someone who deals with this on a daily basis, rationing does occur all the time. I mean, I was in the clinic this past week. And I -- you know, at the end of clinic, I get all this paperwork that basically says, 'Justify why you're doing such and such procedure. Justify why you're ordering such and such test.' And if the justification is inadequate, the answer comes back, 'Well, that's not going to be covered.' Which basically is saying that the patient is going to have to pay for it on their own, which is, in essence, is what rationing is, in so many ways." [CNN's Anderson Cooper 360, 8/12/09]
Insurance companies ration care by rescinding coverage. As former senior executive at CIGNA health insurance company Wendell Potter explained in June 24 Senate testimony, insurance companies restrict or deny coverage by rescinding health insurance policies on the grounds that people had undisclosed pre-existing conditions.
MYTH 17: Obama, Dems pushing "socialized medicine"REALITY: Conservatives have trotted out "socialized medicine" smear for 75 years. Numerous conservative media figures have revived the "socialized medicine" smear to undermine the efforts of Obama and congressional Democrats, most recently by promoting Ronald Reagan's 1961 attacks on a legislative precursor to Medicare. But as the Urban Institute wrote in an April 2008 analysis, "socialized medicine involves government financing and direct provision of health care services," and therefore, recent progressive health care reform proposals do not "fit this description." The analysis also noted: "Similar rhetoric was used to defeat national health care reform proposals in the 1990s and, with less success, to argue against the creation of Medicare in the 1960s." Indeed, a Media Matters analysis found that dating as far back as the 1930s -- with respect to at least 16 different reform initiatives including President Franklin D. Roosevelt's consideration of government health insurance when crafting the 1935 Social Security bill; President Lyndon Johnson's 1965 legislation establishing Medicare; and the health care initiative by President Bill Clinton and first lady Hillary Clinton in 1993 and 1994 -- conservatives have attempted to smear those proposals by calling them "socialized medicine" or a step toward that purportedly inevitable result.
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