Obama's Health Care Whoppers

If you take the partisan blinders off, sometimes it gets downright scary.

At his town hall meeting on health care on Saturday in Colorado, President Obama told the audience:

"I just want to be completely clear about this; I keep on saying this but somehow folks aren't listening -- if you like your health care plan, you keep your health care plan."

That is, unless your health care plan is Medicare Advantage -- the private insurance options that almost one-fourth of seniors have chosen for their coverage under Medicare. Republicans enacted this choice for seniors, and many, many seniors have chosen one of these private insurance options because they get better benefits from it than from standard Medicare.

President Obama's health plan targets these Medicare Advantage private plans for $177 billion in cuts in what he misleadingly calls "subsidies"and "sweetheart deals for insurance companies that don't make anybody any healthier."At a minimum, these cuts will force these plans to cut back on the benefits they provide to seniors. Or the Medicare Advantage plans may just go out of business altogether, dumping all the seniors who have made that choice because they think they are getting a better deal from those plans.

In these town halls, President Obama has repeatedly denied that his health overhaul scheme includes any cuts in Medicare. But besides slashing Medicare Advantage, the Congressional bills cut over $300 billion more from the program, which the Congressional Budget Office has scored. When arguing that his health overhaul is paid for, he wants credit for these cuts. But when challenged, he wants to deny before the whole country -- in broad daylight -- that he is doing it. I can't recall any precedent for such a presidential disconnect from reality.

But it continues. He keeps saying in these town halls that his health overhaul scheme will reduce the deficit. But CBO, which is now in complete control of the Democrat Congressional majorities, says just the opposite, that the plan will increase the deficit by hundreds of billions. But that hasn't stopped Obama from barnstorming the country openly denying this reality.

And it goes from bad to worse. In Colorado on Saturday, President Obama suggested that his health overhaul scheme would "bend the cost curve,"reducing "health care inflation"so much that the enormous long term deficit of Medicare (unfunded liability: $89 trillion) would be eliminated! Otherwise, he said, "We'll either have to cut Medicare, in which case seniors then will bear the brunt of it, or we'll have to raise taxes, which nobody likes."

But the CBO has not confirmed anything like that. What it has said, again, is just the opposite, that Obama's health plans will not reduce costs, but, rather, will increase federal spending by close to a trillion dollars.

Of course, President Obama has also repeatedly cited AARP as endorsing his health overhaul scheme although the group has spoken out, on national television, denying that.

Honestly, if you take the partisan blinders off, sometimes it gets downright scary. President Obama suggested in Colorado that "about 100,000 people die every year from preventable diseases and illnesses in hospitals,"and that "50 percent, 75 percent"of these preventable deaths could be eliminated by a doctor's protocol of "washing your hands, a lot of just basic stuff that costs no money." Really, President Obama, are you simply so brilliant that you can save 50,000 to 75,000 lives a year by just telling those stupid doctors to wash their hands and do a lot of just basic stuff like that? -- Actually, the washing your hands protocol was adopted in the mid-1800s when germs were discovered.

A counter to the Obama health care fairy tales is the study I did for the Heartland Institute, which shows exactly how the Obama health plan will ration and deny you care, will greatly restrict your freedom of choice and control over your health care, will increase health costs rather than reduce them, will increase federal spending, deficits, and debt, and will leave America with uncompetitive tax rates in the global economy.

Peter Ferrara served in the White House Office of Policy Development under President Reagan, and as Associate Deputy Attorney General of the United States under the first President Bush.