Obama’s July 22nd, 2009, Press Conference Fact Check.
Obama: “It will keep government out of health care decisions, giving you the option to keep your insurance if you’re happy with it.”
FACTS: You may be able to keep your current insurance for a year, until you either change or lose your job, then you’ll have to go with the public option. On top of that, the private insurance companies can’t compete with the government. Obama himself has declared that the profits aren’t right and he’s going after them. No company can compete with the government, who doesn’t have to make a profit to thrive. The government can print money, too.
OBAMA: “I have also pledged that health insurance reform will not add to our deficit over the next decade, and I mean it.”
FACTS: According to White House budget director Peter Orszag, this promise does not apply to the proposed spending of $245 billion over the next decade to increase fees for doctors serving Medicare patients.
The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget also has listed a variety of accouting gimmicks that can hide the true burdens of the deficit
OBAMA: “You haven’t seen me out there blaming the Republicans.”
FACTS: In his opening statement, Obama said this, “I’ve heard that one Republican strategist told his party that even though they may want to compromise, it’s better politics to ‘go for the kill.’ Another Republican senator said that defeating health reform is about ‘breaking’ me.”
OBAMA: “I don’t know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that. But I think it’s fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home, and, number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there’s a long history in this country of African-Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately.”
FACTS: Obama admitted also that he didn’t know all the facts and that Professor Gates was his friend, so he would be biased. Gates wasn’t arrested for being in his own home, as Obama implied, but for allegedly being belligerent when the policeman demanded his identification.
OBAMA: “If we had done nothing, if you had the same old budget as opposed to the changes we made in our budget, you’d have a $9.3 trillion deficit over the next 10 years. Because of the changes we’ve made, it’s going to be $7.1 trillion.”
FACTS: Obama’s numbers are based on figures compiled by his own budget office, which relies on unrealistic assumptions on economic growth. According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, the deficit over the next decade would cumulatively be $9.1 trillion.
And here are more fact checks, courtesy of the New York Times:
OBAMA: doctors, nurses, hospitals, drug companies and AARP had supported efforts to overhaul health care.
FACTS: Half-a-dozen state medical societies have sharply criticized provisions that would establish a new government-run health insurance plan.
OBAMA: Medicare could save large amounts of money by creating “an independent group of doctors and medical experts who are empowered to eliminate waste and inefficiency” and hold down the annual increases in payments to health care providers.
FACTS: Far from supporting this proposal, the American Hospital Association is urging hospital executives to lobby against it.
OBAMA: Of the proposed new cost-control agency, “It’s not going to reduce Medicare benefits. What it’s going to do is to change how those benefits are delivered so that they’re more efficient.”
FACTS: Hospitals say the cuts could indeed cut services in some rural areas and from teaching hospitals, which receive extra payments because of higher costs.
OBAMA: 160 Republican amendments were adopted in a bill approved last week by the Senate health committee.
FACTS: Republicans said many of the amendments involved technical provisions and did not alter the fundamental features of the bill.
The president said that health insurance companies were making “record profits.”America’s Health Insurance Plans, the main lobby for insurers, contends that “for every $1 spent on health care in America, approximately one penny goes to health plans’ profits.”
Mr. Obama said he was not proposing to ration care, but just wanted to coordinate it better. For example, he said, he wants to eliminate repetitious tests ordered by different doctors for the same patient.
Under [Obama’s] plan, it is not clear who would take responsibility for patients and coordinate care in traditional fee-for-service medicine.
The president continued to take credit for deficit reduction by making a claim that has been challenged by many experts. “If we had done nothing, if you had the same old budget as opposed to the changes we made,” the deficit over the next 10 years would be $2.2 trillion greater, the president said.
In fact, $1.5 trillion of those “savings” are mainly based on an assumption that the United States would have had as many troops in Iraq in 10 years as it did when Mr. Obama took office. But before leaving office, President George W. Bush signed an agreement with Baghdad mandating the withdrawal of all American forces within three years.
So Mr. Obama is claiming credit for not spending money that, under the policy he inherited from Mr. Bush, would never have been spent in the first place.
