Obama's Health Care Stretchers

Non-partisan websites FactCheck.org and Politifact.com called President Obama on some inaccurate statements in his press conference on health care this week.

He claimed insurance companies were making "record profits." Recent quarterly statements from major insurers show "significant" but not unprecedented profits according to health care financial analysts. He repeated a campaign promise that health care reform would be paid for while congressional budget analysts say the proposals being discussed would add hundreds of billions to the federal deficit. He claimed that proposed plans would cover 97% of Americans while analysts have said the figure is more likely to be 81%. While the President was correct in noting that Americans spend more per capita on health care than citizens of any other country, his numbers were somewhat inflated.

--Ballard Burgher