So the health-care status quo needs top-to-bottom reform, except for the parts that “you” happen to like. Government won’t interfere with patients and their physicians, considering that the new panel of experts who will make decisions intended to reduce tests and treatments doesn’t count as government. But Medicare shows that government involvement isn’t so bad, aside from the fact that spending is out of control-and that program needs top-to-bottom reform too.
Voters aren’t stupid. The true reason ObamaCare is in trouble isn’t because “folks aren’t listening,” but because they are.
Please read the whole thing. It is full of the contradictory statements that cancel each other out, leaving the careful listener with only one fact at the end of Obama’s speech: He’s not speaking any truth at all.
What Obama is saying is technically true but there is more to the story that people need to be aware of. I read the House bill. I have three major problems with it:
1. New workers entering the workforce have no choice. The “public option” is their only option.
2. Existing workers who change jobs will not be able to choose a private plan offered by that employer. The “public option” is their only option.
3. If do opt in to the “public option” there is no way to opt out if you find that it does not meet your needs. Once you are in, you are in forever.
So yeah, technically “if you have a plan you like, you can keep it” is true. But what Obama is attempting to imply is that people will always have a private option and that is a lie.
crosspatch, the whole thing is structured in such a way, including those provisions you mention, that it will lead to the inevitable phase out of private health insurance companies and the eventual end of the private health insurance industry. Look at just the 3 things you listed, eventually just those three policies would do it on their own.