Ok. I’m not exactly what one would call a ‘fan’ of the health reform bill – too much coverage, not near enough cost control. There are plenty of issues with the current bill, more than enough to make serious students/wonks concerned without having to resort to outright lies.
Yet that is precisely what some are doing. Here, collected for your reading pleasure by the good folks at FactCheck.com, are the top nine falsehoods perpetrated by those not smart enough to focus on the real issues.
* Requires patients to be implanted with microchips. (No, it doesn’t.)
* Cuts benefits for military families and retirees. (No. The TRICARE program isn’t affected.)
* Exempts Muslims from the requirement to obtain coverage. (Not specifically. It does have a religious exemption, but that is intended for Old Order Amish.)
* Allows insurance companies to continue denying coverage to children with preexisting conditions. (Insurance companies have agreed not to exploit a loophole that might have allowed this.)
* Will require 16,500 armed IRS agents to enforce. (No. Criminal penalties are waived.)
* Gives President Obama a Nazi-like “private army.” (No. It provides a reserve corps of doctors and other health workers for emergencies.)
* “Exempts” House and Senate members. (No. Their coverage may not be as good as before, in fact.)
* Covers erectile-dysfunction drugs for sex offenders. (Just as it was before the new law, those no longer in jail can buy any insurance plan they choose.)
* Provides federal funding for abortions. (Not directly. But neither side in the abortion debate is happy with the law.)
Here’s the detail on a couple of the more ludicrous issues (quoting FactCheck.
Does the law provide for armed IRS agents to enforce penalties?
No. This is a fantasy. GOP lawmakers claim the law might require “as many as 16,500” new jobs in the IRS, a figure inflated by dubious assumptions. But the agency’s role will be mainly to hand out tax credits, not to enforce penalties. And the IRS won’t be sending armed agents to enforce the health care mandate, as falsely claimed by Texas GOP Rep. Ron Paul. The law specifically waives any criminal penalties for those who both decline to obtain insurance coverage and refuse to pay the tax enacted to penalize lack of coverage.

And here’s this whopper, which was ‘reported by a number of wingnut sites, including ‘last days’ crazies. and from this firearms advocacy site.
Will the law require all patients to be implanted with microchips?
No. Nothing like this appears in the new law, or in any of the bills that Congress considered. This claim stems from a wild misinterpretation of a provision in the original House leadership’s bill (H.R. 3200) that did not require implantation of anything, and that was, in any case, not part of the final legislation. The part of the original House leadership’s bill that’s usually referenced to support this rather paranoid claim actually would have set up a registry for class III medical devices and class II devices that are “implantable, life-supporting, or life-sustaining.”
jeez, would someone buy these people a clue…

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and today’s GOP is certainly close to desperation. A recent news article highlights their new strategy; building bridges to allies in the fight to overturn, repeal and replace ObamaCare.
You’ve got to admire the Republicans’ big tent…

On Tuesday night, PBS’ Frontline focuses on what really happened to get health reform passed. Here’s a blurb from the press trailer:
“The administration’s hopes for reform rested with Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.), the powerful head of the Senate Finance Committee, who also happened to be one of the Senate’s top recipients of special interest money from the health care industry.
The White House encouraged Baucus to quietly negotiate deals with the insurance lobby, drug companies and other special interest groups, despite promises to run a different kind of White House. “The president said that having people at the table is better than having them throw stuff at the table,” White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer tells FRONTLINE. ”
While I haven’t seen the actual program, the trailer is pretty tough stuff.

The tradition here at MCM is to honor all the important holidays, with none so important as April 1. In the five and a half years I’ve been publishing this blog, the April 1 post has become a challenge – how can we top the previous year?
Last year’s post about Coventry acquiring UnitedHealthGroup was reportedly the cause of some consternation at the afore-mentioned firm, which was forced to issue a press release denying the deal (I’m kidding).
This year’s effort generated much good cheer among many readers, as even a few who take issue with some of my opinions got a good laugh (Allen you weren’t alone).
Unfortunately, there’s always someone who doesn’t think before passing on the post as truth, resulting in a bit of embarrassment. The adults are a bit chagrined, and a bit wiser, and take the heat in good spirit, realizing the spoof is all in good fun.
But there’s always someone without a sense of humor. Late on the fateful day, a senior policy person at a conservative-group-that-shall-remain-nameless sent me an email which read in part “Is this really true? If so, it is extremely explosive and could quickly become a national story. Can you cite the specific language in the law just signed by Obama and the relevant NHS language that leads you to your conclusion? Thank you.”
I responded back that no, it wasn’t true.
Evidently my correspondent is afflicted with a serious case of SOHDS (sense of humor deficit syndrome), as he (yep, it was a male) shot back “That is extremely unfortunate and not at all funny. I had run it past several very senior people who were looking forward to confirmation of its veracity.”
I’ll bet.
(In retrospect, maybe I should’ve come up with some wild story about how this was in a Presidential signing statement that had not yet been made public, and quoted actual verbiage…)

There are enough problems with reform – big, obvious, scary problems – that make lying about reform unnecessary. Yet opponents continue to resort to ludicrous, unsupportable, and completely false claims about the bill, with some of the leading detractors choosing to rewrite history in an effort to scare voters and score political points.
It is NOT socialized medicine, socialized healthcare, government-controlled health care, a violation of the US Constitution, or any of the other ridiculous charges leveled by people who should be more responsible. The reform law is:
– pretty centrist – no public option, utilizing private, for-profit insurers to deliver insurance
– without price controls on providers or insurers, and with no utilization controls to speak of
– based on a very weak mandate that is more accurately described as a fine for those who decide to forgo coverage
Among the demagogues who know better is Newt Gingrich the former House Speaker is outraged, outraged I say, at the Democrats’ passage of the insurance mandate. He’s obviously had a change of heart, as a few short years ago he not only called for an enforceable mandate in a speech, he did it in two of the books he wrote.
Newt’s flip-floppery came about just yesterday, when the following dialogue took place on that fair and balanced network:
HANNITY: Do you think any of these constitutional challenges that are out there about the employer mandate, individual mandate, or any of the other challenges — do you think as they work their way through the courts, that any of that will be effective?
[…]
GINGRICH: Then you have to appeal the president’s ruling and they’d probably lose that fight. But what my sense is — first of all, I’m glad to see that some 13 attorneys general around the country —
HANNITY: Are going to sue.
GINGRICH: Have sued. Based on a 1992 Supreme Court decision which said that the federal government cannot punish you for failure to do something, I think that there’s an outside chance the suit will hold up. And that that will stop the individual mandate at the federal level.
Hmmm, seems pretty unequivocal.
here’s what Newt said just two years ago: “According to a June 11, 2008 Associated Press article (accessed from the Nexis database), which ran under the headline, “Gingrich suggests insurance mandate for those who can afford,” Gingrich reportedly “outlined his strategy to combat rising health care costs a plan of attack that includes insurance mandates for people who earn more than $75,000 a year” at a visit to a Nebraska health system. The article went on to report that “Gingrich called it ‘fundamentally immoral’ for a person who can afford insurance to save money by going without, then show up at an emergency room and demand free care. He said those who can afford insurance and choose not to buy it should be required to post bonds to pay for care they may someday need… Gingrich said everyone should have insurance, but not provided by the federal government.” [emphasis added]
(from MediaMatters)
Is he so ignorant, or so ballsy, that he doesn’t think anyone will pay attention to what he said, or wrote, a few short months ago? Or is Gingrich so driven, so insanely desperate for power, that he’ll be blown by political winds like a feather in a gale? Gingrich’s patently false statements are prima facie evidence of the depths to which right-wing opponents will descend in pursuit of power and popularity.
It’s disgusting and abhorrent behavior, and ill serves the nation.
What does this mean for you?
The new law of the land is nowhere close to perfect, or even very good; as I’ve said repeatedly I’m deeply concerned about the law’s all-but-complete failure to address costs. There’s so much misinformation circulating about health reform it is impossible to keep track of it all, much less debunk it.
When you hear Romney, or Boehner, or McConnell, or their fellow wingnuts proclaim the end of America as we know it, ignore them, or better, marvel at the lengths they will go in pursuit of the votes of the ignorant.

While it’s not a done deal, the passage of health reform legislation is all but inevitable. When President Obama signs the bill on Tuesday, the American health care system will begin a change more drastic and comprehensive than anything we’ve seen in decades.
Not all of this will be for the better, and when those unintended consequences begin to be felt there will be plenty of recriminations. I’ll give my take on what those might be later.
For now, here’s the quick summary of how reform will likely impact work comp.
1. Less need for hospitals to cost shift to work comp to make up for revenues lost due to treating the uninsured. Sure, Medicaid reimbursemt is lousy and Medicare not much better but something’s a lot better than nothing.
2. Possibly more cost shifting from other providers to work comp to make up for big cuts in Medicare reimbursement. More to come on this late this summer when Congress takes on the SGR debate.
3. Possibly higher claims frequency, although this is based on assumptions and interpretations. The data indicate those workers with health insurance are more likely to file comp claims than those without, but that appears to be a statistical relationship and not neccesarily a causal one. More explanation on the way.
4. For the big managed care companies, a much stronger and tighter focus on managing group health, Medicaid and Medicare will mean less interest in, and resources dedicated to comp. Make no mistake, this is an event for which the big and small health plans are woefully unprepared. If they are to survive they must adapt immediately.
All we have time for today; these big events really should wait till I’m back from holiday.

Yesterday’s news that the CBO estimated the reform bill will come in under the Democrats’ $950 billion over ten years (after revenue increases) was good news for reform advocates.
But the analysis didn’t account for the $250 billion plus deficit that’s hanging over Medicare like Damocles’ sword. As I’ve reported previously, Medicare physician reimbursement will change – and when it does that deficit will be added to the nation’s debt.
That’s not to say the CBO erred in their cost projection. They are required to base their calculations on current law, and current law has physician fees slashed by over 20% this fall.
That is NOT going to happen. And therefore the real cost of the Medicare program is going to be at least a quarter billion dollars higher than CBO projects.