Tag Archives: President Obama

FactCheck.org looks at the President’s health care speech

You can get all the details here, but here’s a summary of President Obama’s less-than-accurate points during his health-care speech Wednesday night:

  • Obama was correct when he said his plan wouldn’t insure illegal immigrants; the House bill expressly forbids giving subsidies to those who are in the country illegally. Conservative critics complain that the bill lacks an enforcement mechanism, but that hardly makes the president a liar.
  • The president said “no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions.” But the House bill would permit a “public option” to cover all abortions, and would also permit federal subsidies to be used to purchase private insurance that covers all abortions, a point that raises objections from anti-abortion groups. That’s true despite a technical ban on use of taxpayer dollars to pay for abortion coverage.
  • The president repeated his promise that his plan won’t add “one dime” to the federal deficit. But legislation offered so far would add hundreds of billions of dollars to the deficit over the next decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
  • The president overstated the degree of concentration in the insurance industry. He said that in 34 states the “insurance market” is controlled by five or fewer companies, but that’s true only of insurance bought by small groups, not the entire “insurance market.”
  • Obama said his plan won’t “require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have.” It’s true that there’s no requirement, but experts say the legislation could induce employers to switch coverage for millions of workers.

Regarding that third point: I have watched and read even the most liberal columnists say that the President’s promise to provide national health care without raising the deficit is totally bogus. It is going to raise the deficit. A lot.

Cato Institute analyzes Obama’s health care town hall meeting

The Cato Institute, a non-profit public policy research foundation headquartered in Washington, D.C., takes a look at the President’s health care town hall meeting that was broadcast on ABC recently:

With the nationalization of some of our largest companies, the recently-passed Waxman-Markey bill, and Obama’s health care proposal, it sounds like we’re well on our way to socialism in America, and I’m not throwing that term out lightly. How else can it be described?