Health Care For America Now

The front group "Get Health Reform Right," funded by the insurance industry, sent out their first "grassroots" email today. Here's what it says:

The healthcare reform debate is heating up in Washington and we all have a stake in the outcome.   Draft health reform legislation in the House of Representatives is now under consideration.  While this draft legislation takes some of the critical steps needed to transform our healthcare system and expand coverage, it also takes a huge leap in the wrong direction by creating a new government-run health plan.

We all agree that it is critically important to enact comprehensive healthcare reform this year, but legislation that includes a government-run health plan will actually undermine the goals of reform and have devastating consequences on our healthcare system.  Take action now and tell Congress to get health reform right.

More government bureaucracy will only create more problems, not solve the ones we have.  A new government health plan would use its built-in advantages to eventually take over the entire health insurance market, forcing out private plans and limiting consumers' choices.  Many Americans would lose their current employer-sponsored coverage as millions of people are shifted into a government plan.  This is not the answer for improving our healthcare system.  Instead, Congress should build on the current employer-sponsored healthcare system that is already working for more than 160 million Americans.  Tell Congress to build on healthcare that’s working for most until it works for all.

Thank you for making your voice heard on this important issue.  With so much riding on healthcare reform, Congress needs to get health reform right for America.

Now, given that it's the insurance industry sending this message, I'm going to rewrite it so you can see what they really mean:

The healthcare reform debate is heating up in Washington and our profits have a stake in the outcome.   Draft health reform legislation in the House of Representatives is now under consideration.  While this draft legislation takes some of the critical steps needed to transform our healthcare system and expand coverage, it also forces us to compete and actually provide health insurance, or lose money. We don't like that.

We keep saying that it is critically important to enact comprehensive healthcare reform this year, but we're really worried that our CEOs won't be able to take that 2nd vacation this year if our profits get cut a couple percentage points. So we're going to tell people that offering them a choice of a public health insurance option somehow will cause them to lose health care. It's not true, but it sure is scary! And if we scare them enough, maybe they'll complain to their Members of Congress!

If we actually had to compete, we couldn't pay our CEOs billions, and we would have to stop denying care for prexisting conditions. That would be a big problem - for us. And of course, though we've argued for years that government is so incompetent that it can't do anything, we're going to pretend that we're so vulnerable that we can't compete with government. Yes, we know this doesn't make sense, but we're going to say it anyway. If we make it sound scary enough, people might not realize they would love to choose to dump us if they could, and that most of them (76%) support giving us a bit of competition.

We hate competition, and so we're against health reform. And we're trying to scare you so you are, too.

Boo!

I don't expect anything better from the industry - they lie about everything else, why not lie about being grassroots.

Update: The Education and Labor Committee sends along this fact-check of the insurance industry's lies:

1. Government plan would use its built-in advantages to eventually take over the entire health insurance market, forcing out private plans and limiting consumers' choices.

The public health insurance option would be just one choice for consumers and families in a menu of private health insurance options called the national health insurance exchange. The public health insurance option would be required to follow the same rules as private insurers (level playing field). And, the public health insurance option would self-sustaining through premiums, not government subsidies.

If we are serious about real competition to help control costs, and most Americans agree, a public health insurance option must be one of many choices consumers will have. As studies have shown, many Americans have little or no choices in health plans in their region.

2. Many Americans would lose their current employer-sponsored coverage as millions of people are shifted into a government plan.

No one will be forced into the public health option. If an employer drops their insurance coverage for their employees, those workers would have a choice of any plan in the health insurance exchange, including a public insurance option. In addition, the employer would then have to pay an 8 percent penalty, based on their payroll, for not covering its employees in order to assist low and moderate income employees to obtain insurance coverage that is right for them.