Cato on Obamacare Lies

July 2009
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Cato on Obamacare Lies

24 July 2009

George Rebane

Sometimes we small town commentators are viewed as holding extreme views. And maybe we do when compared to people who are too busy to pay attention. But what’s coming down from this socialist cesspool in the District of Columbia has not been seen in generations, perhaps ever. The lies are historic and they are consequential to our republic. We are not alone in trying to spread the word. Here’s the latest from the prestigious Cato Institute – ‘Perils of Obamacare – The Three Big Lies’. (all emphasis in the original)

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Writing in the New York Post, Cato senior fellow Michael D. Tanner outlines the three big lies of Obamacare:

1) “If you like your current health-care plan, you can keep it.”
“In the end, millions of Americans would be forced out of the insurance they have today and into the government plan. Businesses, in particular, would have every incentive to dump their workers into the public plan. The actuarial firm the Lewin Group estimates that as many as 118.5 million people, roughly two-thirds of those with insurance today, would be shifted from private to public coverage.”

2) “You will pay less.”
The Congressional Budget Office has made it clear that the reform plans now being debated will increase overall health-care costs. … The final health- care bill is expected to cost more than $1 trillion over the next 10 years. That means much higher taxes, and not just for the wealthy.”

3) “Quality will improve.”
“Anyone who thinks a government takeover of the health-care system will improve quality of care has only to look at the health-care programs the government already runs: The Veterans Administration is overwhelmed with problems, Medicaid is notorious for providing poor quality at a high cost — and Medicare has huge gaps in coverage.”

Posted in Current Affairs, Our Country

One response to “Cato on Obamacare Lies”

Dixon Cruickshank

27 July 2009

Check this out – Senior Death Discount to save money – interesting
Obama Adviser Urges Controversial “Senior Death Discount” In Health Care Reform
Democrats Flip-Flop on Disparate Treatment for the Elderly
Washington, DC, July 24, 2009—White House health care policy advisor Ezekiel Emanuel favors allocating fewer health care resources to senior citizens in order to save money, the Competitive Enterprise Institute discovered today. In a medical journal article published earlier this year, Emanuel justified rationing health care services based on the controversial “senior death discount.”
“Cost-benefit and comparative-benefit analysis are useful tools and should be used in analyzing regulatory policies,” said CEI Senior Fellow Gregory Conko. “But, when President Obama tells Americans that his health reform proposals, which use the senior death discount, will ensure they get the highest quality care, he’s selling them a bill of goods.”
In recent weeks, Democratic members of Congress have criticized Cass Sunstein, nominee to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, because Sunstein favors the statistical practice of taking into account years of life expectancy when evaluating the benefits of regulatory proposals, a practice critics deride as the “senior death discount.” However, health policy advisor Emanuel recommends using the same senior death discount policy to ration health care services for elderly Americans.
In a January article published in the British medical journal Lancet, Emanuel and his co-authors advocate a health rationing policy that discriminates against older people. They wrote, “Unlike allocation by sex or race, allocation by age is not invidious discrimination … Treating 65-year-olds differently because of stereotypes or falsehoods would be ageist; treating them differently because they have already had more life years is not.” And, “although life-years are equally valuable to all, justice requires the fair distribution of them.”
“Current analytical tools don’t take sufficient account of the vast differences among individuals in physiology or value preferences,” Conko explained, “so they should be relied upon much more sparingly where collective decision-making is intended to cut off individual choice. This is a controversial move, but health care reformers are happy to rely on the senior death discount when it can help them book savings for their proposals.”

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