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Here's how three experts who follow health-care policy weighed in on five of the biggest myths and half-truths about the proposed overhaul.
Assertion: It would lead to a government takeover of health care
That's hardly what the reform effort is designed to do, said Henry Aaron, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington.
"Here's a plan, the primary purpose of which is to extend private health insurance, and it's called a government takeover. It's just bizarre. It's false," he said. "Even the tiny glimmer of possible validity in that argument, which a public option would provide, is not going to be part of any final bill."...
But the gap is still wide: About 29% of people had some form of government health insurance in 2008 compared with 58.5% of Americans who had private, job-based coverage, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. About 15%, or 46 million Americans, had no coverage.
"The distinction between who's delivering health care and who's paying for health care is routinely confused and distorted," said Stephen Zuckerman, a health economist at the Urban Institute's Health Policy Center in Washington. Medicare, for example, is a government-financed program, but private doctors make the clinical decisions and deliver the care.
"Government-run health care is like the Veterans Administration, where the government owns the hospital, employs the physicians and finances the care," Zuckerman said.
...Assertion: An overhaul would lead to rationing, where more people face denials or delays in health care
"This is the big red herring of the current debate," Aaron said. "The United States is so far from having an institutional framework from which rationing could occur that it's not a discussion that has much relevance to the reality of our current system or of the system that would emerge if the bill would pass."
Americans don't support what he called hard rationing, when a person has the money to be treated but is prevented from getting care.
"The American public is quite accepting of rationing in the softer sense, that if you can't afford it you can't have it," he said. "Pushing back that frontier is part of the objective of [the legislation.] The main thrust is to reduce rationing in terms of price rationing."
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Assertion: An overhaul would lead to rationing, where more people face denials or delays in health care
"This is the big red herring of the current debate," Aaron said. "The United States is so far from having an institutional framework from which rationing could occur that it's not a discussion that has much relevance to the reality of our current system or of the system that would emerge if the bill would pass."
Americans don't support what he called hard rationing, when a person has the money to be treated but is prevented from getting care.
"The American public is quite accepting of rationing in the softer sense, that if you can't afford it you can't have it," he said. "Pushing back that frontier is part of the objective of [the legislation.] The main thrust is to reduce rationing in terms of price rationing."
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Assertion: If you like your health insurance you can keep it
President Obama touted this idea early and often as he campaigned to overhaul the system, but can he deliver on that promise?
Many experts speculate that it would work out that way but caution that it's not guaranteed, especially since the two bills assess the potential problem differently. While people wouldn't be forced to change what they have, employers may decide for them if they wager they'd be better served to drop coverage and let their workers shop for policies in the new insurance marketplaces the bills envision.
"There are penalties for employers that don't provide coverage so there is this pay-or-play notion, but depending on the penalties it still might be financially beneficial to employers not to play," Zuckerman said. "In the House bill the penalties are much more severe on employers than they are in the Senate bill."
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Assertion: The bills are too big, and changes should be tackled one by one instead of all at the same time
It's been 15 years since the U.S. came even remotely close to passing comprehensive health reform. While this year's attempt is ambitious, people who decry the scope of the bills underestimate how many moving parts need to work in unison to achieve the desired results, Nichols said.
"It's got to be done as a package," he said.
For example, health insurers would be newly required to accept all comers regardless of their preexisting conditions in exchange for a new requirement that individuals have coverage or face financial penalties.
Addressing cost control without extending health insurance at the same time wouldn't work either, Nichols said. "You cannot get to serious cost containment without the salve of coverage."
"The status quo is not sustainable," he added. "The people who argue that having somebody pay a dollar more or lose their extra glasses in their Medicare Advantage plan is somehow equivalent to leaving 50 million uninsured and doing nothing to contain the cost growth that's eating our economy alive, that's just folly. That's what opponents are trying to get Americans to accept yet one more time."
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