The facts about 10 accusations of "Obama-care"

All of us have gotten at least one email lately about how bad the current federally funded health care plan before Congress is right now, commonly known as “Obama-care”. Most mass media outlets gloss over the negatives in this bill-which appear to be many-and the only legitimate attempt at pointing out even a few of the negatives came in the form of a Yahoo news piece about 2 weeks ago which listed 5 “changes” that we will be forced to accept if Obama-care passes.

As my friends and family all know, I in no way support this health care bill-not so much for what is contained within it, but more because the Fed has no business even attempting such a thing (I mean, come on, look at the mess Medicare is). However, a problem I am having with all of these emails is that they are full of opinion and very light on facts. They all make some very wild claims about what could happen if Obama-care passes without giving us the exact verbiage within the bill which leads them to draw these rather extreme conclusions.

Well, being the inquisitive person that I am, and always wanting to know the facts before I make any formal opinion on anything, I took it upon myself to find out exactly what the proposed healthcare bill says regarding 10 of the more extreme suppositions being drawn from Obama-care.

So here goes, 10 of the crazier suppositions in these emails we are all getting, measured up against the language within in the bill they are drawn from so that you can decide for yourself exactly what “Obama-care” will do to our economy and our healthcare system.

1. The Fed will have to ration our Healthcare.

Common sense and our Federal Governments past as to how business savvy (cough, cough) they are should tell us that this is an inevitability, so it’s not unfair to assume that this is going to happen at some point. Regardless, the exact verbiage relating to this can be found on page 29 of the bill. It says that there is an annual limitation defined as: Part A “The cost-sharing incurred under the essential benefits package with respect to an individual (or family) for a year does not exceed the applicable level specified in subparagraph; B) The applicable level specified in this subparagraph for Y1 is $5,000 for an individual and $10,000 for a family. Such levels shall be increased (rounded to the nearest $100) for each subsequent year by the annual percentage increase in the Consumer Price Index (United States city average) applicable to such year.

The plan goes on to further define this, and only makes it sound worse. Regardless, I don’t know about you, but it sounds to me as if the max any family can spend on healthcare a year is $10k and for a single person it’s $5k. This sounds worse than rationing to me, but you can decide for yourself.

2. You will have no choice in what benefits the Fed will choose for you.

Beginning on page 42, section 142, the bill establishes a commissioner whose duties include “Qualified Plan Standards”. No where does the bill say that you have no choice in what benefits you can have, but it does blatantly imply that the Fed will choose what benefits you are entitled too.

Based on everything else found in this bill, however, the supposition is easy to draw that they you wont have any say in the choice of what health care options you will have.

3. A “Healthcare Exchange is being created to bring all health care plans under government control.

The establishment of this so called “exchange” starts on page 72 of the bill. Although nowhere within its early verbiage does it say anything about bringing all other health care plans under its control, if you read on you can see how, in the future, this may be the intent behind creating this so called “exchange”.

4. Healthcare will be provided to all non U.S. residents, whether here legally or not.

This is just downright wrong and is what lead me to actually do the research myself. At the bottom of page 50 of the bill is a section titled “Prohibiting discrimination in health care”. The first part of this section says “Except as otherwise explicitly permitted by this Act and by subsequent regulations consistent with this Act, all health care and related services (including insurance coverage and public health activities) covered by this Act shall be provided without regard to personal characteristics extraneous to the provision of high quality health care or related services.”

You can take this for how you want, but it does sound as if you are a provider of governmental health care you cannot prevent someone from getting health “care” for any reason what so ever.

5. Doctors will be told by the Fed what they can make.

This is actually true. If you read the bill, it specifies on page 127, sub section B “preferred physicians” will receive payment at a “rate established under section 223 (without regard to cost sharing)” as being paid in full for their services. Sub Section C goes on to say that “non-preferred” physicians “agree not to impose charges (in relation to the payment rate described in section 223 for such physicians) that exceed the ratio permitted under section 1848 (g)(2)(c) of the Social Security Act.

I didn’t take a look at the referenced section of the SSA but I did take a look at section 223 of the bill. This section pretty much says that the Secretary in charge of overseeing implementation and collection of the fees and rates has the power to set these rates based on the rates, but that they must be based on the established rates already found in Medicare parts A and B.

6. Employees of the Fed Healthcare Administration will have unlimited access to all Americans financial and personal records.

This is, without question, one of the scarier accusations of all the emails we are getting about this bill. Here is what the healthcare bill says about this on page 195: “IN GENERAL.—The Secretary, upon written request from the Health Choices Commissioner or the head of a State-based health insurance exchange approved for operation under section 208 of the America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009, shall disclose to officers and employees of the Health Choices Administration or such State-based health insurance exchange, as the case may be, return information of any taxpayer whose income is relevant in determining any affordability credit described in subtitle C of title II of the America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009. Such return information shall be limited to (i) taxpayer identity information with respect to such taxpayer, (ii) the filing status of such taxpayer, (iii) the modified adjusted gross income of such taxpayer (as defined in section 59B(e)(5)), (iv) the number of dependents of the taxpayer, (v) such other information as is prescribed by the Secretary by regulation as might indicate whether the taxpayer is eligible for such affordability credits (and the amount thereof), and (vi) the taxable year with respect to which the preceding information relates or, if applicable, the fact that such information is not available.

Fortunately this doesn’t say that anyone who works for the Healthcare Administration can look into our personal finances whenever they want and for any reason they want too, but it does say that they can if they are given the authority too by their superiors and under specific guidelines. Those guidelines, however, aren’t really that specific as you can see and could be easily exploited.

7. Doctors and hospitals are prohibited from investing and/or expanding the facilities in which they work.

This is freakish but completely true. For brevity at this point I won’t go into the specific verbiage the bill goes into, but over pages 316-320 it specifically says that from the day this bill is implemented both Doctors and hospitals can no longer reinvest or continue to invest in their own institutions. You can only assume that this is because the intention of this bill is to make it so that every healthcare facility in the country becomes the sole and explicit property of the Federal Government.

8. There is a restriction as too how many “special needs” people can be on the plan.

Page 354 starts with section 1154, called “Extension of Authority of Special Needs”. The first sub heading of this section is called “Plans to restrict enrollment”.

Enough said.

9. The Fed will plan out “end of life” for all senior citizens.

This is another scary thing which was passed around in the emails and beginning on page 425 with section 1233 of the bill, is titled “Advance care planning consultation. Again, for brevity I will leave it to you to read this section, but it leaves you without a question as to the intent of this part of the bill.

10. The bill effectively ends both Medicare and Medicaid.

No where in the over 1000 pages of this bill will you find anything about the elimination of either of these programs. However, the bill makes it very clear in several places 2 things about both of them: firstly that different aspects of the bill are going to be based, at least in part, on aspects of either or both Medicare and Medicaid. Secondly, the bill does very little to differentiate between this program and Medicare and Medicaid. In the case of Medicaid, the bill explicitly says they plan to force everyone on to Medicaid who is eligible-whether they want Medicaid or not. The bill also says the same for seniors.