Health Care Fibs

Non-partisan website Politifact.com rates statements by GOP politicians such as Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), and Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) about the President's plan for health care reform as largely false. Conservative advocacy groups such as Conservatives for Patient's Rights have been flagged by FactCheck.org for similarly false and misleading claims. These attacks describe the Obama plan as "government-run health care" that will "crush private insurance plans" and "deprive people of health care choices." Such claims are disputed by health care experts.

"Every time I hear these claims I'm astonished," said Cathy Schoen, senior vice president for the Commonwealth Fund, a foundation that studies health care and advocates more coverage for the uninsured, minorities and people with low incomes. She said a public plan could pressure private insurers to lower premiums or negotiate better rates with hospitals, but it would not put private companies out of business.

Another nonpartisan research group, the Urban Institute, reached similar conclusions. "Private plans would not disappear. Private plans that offer better services and greater access to providers, even at somewhat higher costs than the public plans, would survive the competition in this environment," wrote John Holahan and Linda Blumberg of the Urban Institute's Health Policy Center. One of the problems right now is that private insurance is not as competitive as you might think. Both the Commonwealth Fund and the Urban Insitute have noted that most health care markets are dominated by a small number of big insurers.

This last point is explained in greater detail by Zachary Roth of Talking Points Memo.

Defenders of the status quo on health care like to point out that a public option will destroy the system of robust free-market competition that currently exists. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL), speaking earlier this month on Fox News, called President Obama's plan the "first step in destroying the best health care system the world has ever known." A public option, Shelby added, would "destroy the marketplace for health care." But the notion that most American consumers enjoy anything like a competitive marketplace for health care is flatly false. And a study issued last month by a pro-reform group makes that strikingly clear.

The report, released by Health Care for America Now (HCAN), uses data compiled by the American Medical Association to show that 94 percent of the country's insurance markets are defined as "highly concentrated," according to Justice Department guidelines. Predictably, that's led to skyrocketing costs for patients, and monster profits for the big health insurers. Premiums have gone up over the past six years by more than 87 percent, on average, while profits at ten of the largest publicly traded health insurance companies rose 428 percent from 2000 to 2007.

While both FactCheck.org and Politifact.com note inaccuracies in claims made by defenders of the Obama plan, they also acknowledge that other points checked out. A quick perusal of these websites shows both sides applying spin but the GOP spinning harder.

--Ballard Burgher