Health Care Reform: The Opposition is Always So Insightful Top 5 Lies in the Health Care Debate 1. The Govt will decide what benefits you receive. Not True. The House bill consists of private insurers and one government plan. The government plan is just a separate OPTION that gives people without health insurance the option to buy into a public plan. If you are happy with your current coverages, you can keep them. The House bill only establishes minimum levels of coverage and requires participating plans to cover preexisting conditions. 2. Death panels. Absolutely NOT true. This lie springs from a provision in the House bill that requires Medicare to cover optional counseling on end-of-life care for any senior who requests it. This means that any patient, terminally ill or not, can request a special consultation with his or her physician about ventilators, feeding tubes, and other measures. Thus the House bill expands Medicare coverage, but without forcing anyone into end-of-life counseling. 3. Illigal immigrants will get free health insurance. This too is not true. The House bill doesn't give anyone free health care- not even US citizens. Furthermore, the House bill says that "individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States" will not be allowed to receive subsidies. 4. The government will determine the salaries of doctors. False. Page 127 of the House bill says that physicians who choose to accept patients in the public insurance plan will receive 5 percent more than Medicare pays for a given service and doctors can refuse to accept public option patients. 5. Your Health Care will be rationed. All health care is "rationed" to some extent. There will never be a plan that covers everything. Of course some services under the new plan may be limited. The current system certainly has its exclusions. Private insurers and Medicare choose not to cover certain conditions and treatments all the time. The difference is that the new plan will not allow private insurance companies in dark rooms to determine what claims they want to pay.
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