More Lies About Health Care Reform

(This is a letter to the Editor of The Morning Sun)

Health care insurance companies are excited that Representative Dave Camp and his Republican colleagues voted to repeal the new Health Care law. This law tells insurance companies that they cannot deny coverage for children with pre-existing conditions, and they cannot impose lifetime limits on coverage. They also have to allow adult children to stay on their parents’ health plans up to age 26, and Medicare recipients can have a number of preventive and well-care services without being charged a deductible, co-pay, or coinsurance.

If you or a family member falls under any of these categories, Dave Camp and the insurance companies are glad to tell you that you will no longer be covered if they are successful in repealing health care reform. And now that the Senate has decided to debate repeal, there is the possibility that it might pass there too. 

As part of the insurance companies‘ efforts to rally the anti-reform troops, a document supposedly written by a judge in Texas is being re-circulated. The Judge was looking at HB 3200– the “Care Bill,“ and highlighted a number of sections that, frankly, look pretty scary. 

The folk who are circulating the document don’t want you to know that it is NOT the law that finally was approved. The document the Judge marked up was just a draft of the law that was obsolete by the summer of 2009. H.R. 3962 was the number of the bill that became law, and it was titled “Affordable Health Care for America Act.” 

The Better Business Bureau had a catchphrase to alert the public to shady business practices: “If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.“ When it comes to politics, the reverse is true: “If it sounds too bad to be true, it usually is.” The Judge and the folk who are circulating the latest batch of distortions prove the point.