And the Lies Continue

 If you wonder why some Americans exhibit uninformed  aversion to the Affordable  Care Act, here are a couple of  reasons why.  In each case, the source is either lying by direct misstatement, by implication, or by contextual error. Both of these are fact checked by Politifact. I’ll just put the statement and the analysis for brevity.

1.    “Advocacy group stirs Michigan senate race with ad featuring leukemia patient”

"I found this wonderful doctor and this great health care plan. I was doing fairly well fighting the cancer, fighting the leukemia," Boonstra said. "And then I received the letter, my insurance was canceled because of Obamacare. Now the out-of-pocket costs are so high, it's unaffordable. If I do not receive my medication, I will die. I believed the president, I believed I could keep my health insurance plan." Congressman Peters, your decision to vote for Obamacare jeopardized my health."

Politifact’s  investigation:

Boonstra receives oral chemotherapy to treat her leukemia. She is still receiving the same medication on her new policy. The cost of the medication and other prescriptions are undoubtedly more than they were before, since she previously had no out-of-pocket costs aside from the monthly premiums.

But just like medical treatment, prescriptions are included in the annual cap. Meaning once she reaches $6,350 in out-of-pocket expenses for the year, she will no longer have to pay for her medication.

Boonstra turned to the Michigan Farm Bureau and applied for a new policy through Blue Cross Blue Shield. This plan cost much less — $571 a month, which would cut her insurance costs in half. The difference between her previous monthly premium of $1,100 and her new plan is about $529 a month. Over the course of a year, that’s savings of $6,348.

 (Ed note:Note: while this makes the change a ‘break even’ for this woman who has a catastrophic illness, it would mean about a 50% health care cost savings for a normally healthy individual!)

The Affordable Care Act requires caps on out-of-pocket expenses paid by policyholders, and says for an individual it can’t be higher than $6,350. Some of the pricier plans have caps that are even lower, so at most, Boonstra would pay $2 more over the course of the year under her new policy. And if the annual cap is lower than $6,350, her new plan could actually save her money. It's also possible she is receiving more benefits under the new plan, but the two plans were not provided to compare.

Politifact’s Analysis: That said, the ad is, at worst, misleading and, at best, lacking critical context. It leads viewers to believe that Boonstra lost her doctor along with her insurance and her life-saving medication. The fact is, she has kept her current doctor and still receives the treatment she needs. Further, the ad said the new plan is unaffordable. While the plan does create less cost certainty, annual caps will limit her bills. At most she will end up paying about the same for her health care as before.

2.    From a bit closer to home: “Rick Scott says Medicare rate cuts will affect seniors’ ability to keep their doctor, hospital and prevention services."
 
 He claims, "We already know that 300,000 people in our state were told they are going to lose their insurance, but now under Medicare we are seeing these dramatic rate cuts. It’s going to have a devastating impact on their ability to one, get the doctor, look they rely on their doctor, get to go to the hospital that they trust, make sure they get prevention services that they deserve. These Medicare cuts that the president has caused are the wrong thing for Florida seniors."
(Ed. Note: This from a man whose Major Healthcare company was convicted of defrauding Medicare of billions while he was CEO, a crime for which he somehow escaped culpability, claiming ignorance, a claim which is getting easier to believe with each passing day, here in Florida).

Politifact’s investigation: Scott’s ad posted a few days after the Obama administration announced a proposed rate cut to Medicare Advantage -- but Scott didn’t specify in his ad that he was referring to only those seniors on that particular type of Medicare. (Ed Note: Medicare Advantage was a Bush administration plan, allowing seniors to purchase health care coverage through private insurers who would then become the recipients of those Medicare premiums.  Like other hare brained Bush privatization ideas (SS?), this one failed, and is costing all of us money.)  Politfact’s analysis is: “The health care law tries to bring down future health care costs of Medicare largely by reducing Medicare Advantage, a subset of Medicare plans that are run by private insurers. President George W. Bush started Medicare Advantage in hopes the increased competition would reduce costs. But those plans are actually costlier than traditional Medicare, so the health care law reduces payments to private insurers. Margaret Murphy, attorney and associate director Center for Medicare Advocacy, said that Medicare Advantage plans have always had a limited network of preferred providers and that changes in networks happen every year. Traditional Medicare has no networks, so participants can go to any Medicare eligible provider. (Ed note: This means in plain speak that seniors using Medicare vice a private plan have more choices of doctors, vice fewer!) “Medicare has a broader provider network than many Advantage plans, so even if plans cut benefits and caused someone to go back to traditional Medicare their access to doctors likely would not erode and might actually improve," said Jonathan Oberlander, a health policy professor at the University of North Carolina.

A key issue here, not being mentioned by ACA opponents is that to compete with each other, many Medicare Advantage plans offer extras, such as rebates on premiums, routine dental care, gym memberships and rides to the doctor, in order to compete for business. Medicare requires all Advantage plans to cover all Medicare-covered benefits, which means if a prevention benefit such as a mammogram is covered by traditional Medicare, it would also be covered by an Advantage plan, Neuman said. However, Advantage plans could cut the extras which aren’t covered by traditional Medicare such as a gym membership. (Ed. Note: Apparently Rick Scott believes that the intent of Medicare was to provide all these extras and that we taxpayers should be glad to pay for gym memberships, etc. While some of the extras offered by Advantage plans may be of value to Advantage payers, the cost is shared by all of us, many of whom live many miles from gyms, and provide our own transport to doctors, etc. In fact, while being trumpeted as triumphs of privatization, Medicare advantage plans are subsidized extras for those who buy them, with the extra cost shifted to all of us.) 

Politfact’s Analysis:  "We are seeing dramatic rate cuts," to Medicare that will have a "devastating impact" on seniors’ ability to get their doctor, their hospital and prevention services”, Scott tells seniors in an online campaign ad. Scott omits that the recently announced rate cuts were only for Medicare Advantage plans, a privatized subset of Medicare. Those plans represent about one-third of Medicare plans in Florida and nationwide, and are more costly. (Ed note: although enacted as more economical)

The proposed rate cut won’t be finalized until April, and if it is, health care experts say we won’t know the full impact for a few months. That means it’s too soon to predict if the rate cut will have a "devastating impact" on seniors' ability to keep their same doctor and hospital. It is possible that some seniors on Medicare Advantage will lose or have to change doctors, but the impact could vary from county to county. Seniors on traditional Medicare are not affected by the cuts.

Scott’s ad is a scare tactic that omits several caveats. We rate this claim Mostly False.

My summary and editorial opinion: With lies and half truths such as these, reported by Faux News (both were) and other far right pundits, it is small wonder that many well intentioned persons who only get their “news” from one source are scared and critical of a law which they don’t understand. Irresponsible scare tactics, couched in such terms as to make the uninformed believe that the President alone is solely responsible for the ACA,  are bad enough. When such lies are simply for political gain of the liars, it is the worst sort of political chicanery.

We are led to believe that every insurance misfortune experienced by any American health care consumer is the fault of the ACA. What short memories we have! Long before 2008, America was rife with health care disaster stories. Everyone knew someone who either had to keep a job they could no longer really do or continue working longer simply to keep healthcare. Most of us can cite such cases. Many of us who could do so, now simply turn our national proclivity for complaint in the direction of the ACA. Yes, there are problems, as there are with any startup system involving hundreds of millions of individuals. As I have written elsewhere, several nations do the same level of care or better (by actual health care consumer surveys, not urban myths) for about half the cost per capita. Can you imagine a Federal budget with a cost savings of 50% on health care? Of course you can imagine it, but major players don't want you to, since they currently charge about 4 times as much for admin costs as in many single payer systems.

One simple factual example will suffice, and remember; unlike Faux News, I don't invent information. In Massachusetts, Blue Cross and Blue shield employ around 4,500 persons to administer health care for somewhere in the vicinity of 1 1/2 million customers. Canada uses just under that same number to administer a nationwide health care network for 28 million widely scattered citizens!    The great lie is that privatization results in more efficient operation and competition reduces price. If only that were true, but Medicare Advantage's failure to perform proves otherwise. The crime here is, that while they could act to ameliorate the bumps in the road, some health insurers and several states’ governors are being obstructionist, costing clients and constituents dollars in furtherance of their own political agendas.

 

Acceptance of the concept of a minimum acceptable standard of health care for all our citizens should be an easy sell in our society, but unfortunately, it isn’t. we are presented daily with those Pharisees who proclaim their faith, whatever it be, while acting contrary to its dictates. All major prophets and the religious concepts which they espoused are pretty specific regarding believers’ responsibilities to those less fortunate among us. Why then do we constantly hear the loudest protests regarding this issue from those who most vociferously proclaim their faith? It makes one wonder. Many Tea Partiers no doubt wear (or wore, while they were the fashionable Christian fashion accessory) WWJD bracelets. The answer to those of that persuasion is probably that he would shake his head and wonder how it all went wrong.