Cont (FAQ)
Of course, because so many people are arguing about it, and some of the people arguing about it don't really care whether or not what they're saying is true, there are a lot of things people think the bill does that just aren't true. Here's a few of them:
Obamacare has death panels!: That sounds so cartoonishly evil it must be true, right? Well, no. No part of the bill says anything about appointing people to decide whether or not someone dies. The decision over whether or not your claim is approved is still in the hands of your insurer. However, now there's an appeals process so if your claim gets turned down, you can challenge that. And the government watches that appeals process to make sure it's not being unfair to customers. So if anything the PPACA is trying to
stop the death panels. (
Citation: Page 42, sec. 2719 )
What about the Independent Medicare Advisory Board? Death Panels!: The Independent Medicare Advisory Board (which has had its name changed to Independent Payment Advisory Board, or IPAB) is intended to give recommendations on how to save Medicare costs per person, deliver more efficient and effective care, improve access to services, and eliminate waste. However, they have no real power. They put together a recommendation to put before Congress, and Congress votes on it, and the President has power to veto it. What's more, they are specifically told that their recommendation will not ration health care, raise premiums or co-pays, restrict benefits, or restrict eligibility. In other words, they need to find ways to save money
without reducing care for patients. So no death panels. In any sense of the (stupid) term. (
Citation: Page 426, sec. 3403 )
Obamacare has health care rationing!: "Rationing" is just a fancier way of saying "Death Panels". And no, it doesn't. (See above).
Obamacare has an un-elected panel of people who will decide what kind of care I can get!: Yet another way of saying "Death Panels", albeit a softer way of saying it. It's true that the IPAB is appointed, not elected. However, they are expressly forbidden from reducing or rationing care. (Again, see above).
Obamacare gives free insurance to illegal immigrants!: Actually, there are multiple parts of the bill that specifically state that the recipient of tax credits and other good stuff
must be a legal resident of the United States. And while the bill doesn't specifically forbid illegals from buying insurance or getting treated at hospitals, neither did the laws in the US before the PPACA. So even at worst, illegals still have just as much trouble getting medical care as they used to. (
Citations: Page 141, sec. 1402,
Page 142, sec. 1411,
Page 144, sec. 1411,
Page 151, sec. 1412 )
Obamacare uses taxpayer money for abortions!: One part of the bill says, essentially, that the folks who wrote this bill aren't touching that issue with a ten foot pole. It basically passes the buck on to the states, who can choose to allow insurance plans that cover abortions, or they can choose to not allow them. Obama may be pro-choice, but that is not reflected in the PPACA. (
Citation: Page 64, sec. 1303 )
Obamacare forces churches/taxpayers to pay for women to have free birth control!: This claim refers to
Page 33, sec. 2713, which says that health insurance must include preventive care for women supported by the Health Resources and Services Administration. And that Administration, on the recommendation of the independent Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Science, has determined that preventive care for women should include access to well women visits, domestic violence screening, and, yes, contraception. So insurers
do have to provide these services, and no, they
cannot require their insured to pay for them. This is because birth control, particularly its effects on hormones and stuff, are very important to the health of some women. "But what if I, as a taxpayer, don't want to pay for it?" you ask? You don't. It's provided by the health insurance company, not the government. "But what about employers who provide employee plans? Does that mean a church would have to pay for the birth control of its clergy?" you ask? The answer is "no". On February 10, 2012 (or February 15th, if you go by the header in the document), the Department of Health and Human Services issued
this document, detailing its enforcement of that section of the ACA.
Kaiser has given their own interpretation of this. The short version is, churches and houses of worship are exempt from this rule, period. Other religious employers (like Catholic hospitals) are also exempt until August 2013, by which time insurance providers are to have created special plans specifically for them, that put all the costs of contraception on the insurer, with none on the employee
or the employer. So not one cent of taxpayer money is going towards contraception, nor is a single cent of a church's money paying for contraception either. Birth control is to be provided to women
by the insurer.
Obamacare won't let me keep the insurance I have!: The PPACA actually very specifically says you can keep the insurance you have if you want. (
Citation: Page 74, sec. 1251 )
Obamacare will make the government get between me and my doctor!: The PPACA very specifically says that the Secretary of Health and Human Services (who is in charge of much of the bill), is absolutely not to promote any regulation that hinders a patient's ability to get health care, to speak with their doctor, or have access to a full range of treatment options. (
Citation: Page 184, sec. 1554 )
Obamacare has a public option! That makes it bad!: The public option (which would give people the
option of getting insurance from a government-run insurer, thus the name), whether you like it or not, was taken out of the bill before it was passed. You can still see where it
used to be, though. (
Citation: Page 111, sec. 1323 (the first one) )
Obamacare will cost trillions and put us in massive debt!: The PPACA will cost a lot of money... at first. $1.7 Trillion. Yikes, right? But that's just to get the ball rolling. You see, amongst the things built into the bill are new taxes - on insurers, pharmaceutical companies, tanning salons, and a slight increase in taxes on people who make over $200K (an increase of less than 1%). Additionally, the bill cuts some stuff from Medicare that's not really working, and generally tries to make everything work more efficiently. Also, the increased focus on preventative care (making sure people don't get sick in the first place), should help to save money the government already spends on emergency care for these same people. Basically, by catching illnesses early, we're not spending as much on emergency room visits. According to the Congressional Budget Office, who studies these things, the ultimate result is that this bill will reduce the yearly deficit by $109 billion (
Source ). By the year 2021, the bill will actually have paid itself and started
bringing in more money than it cost.
Obamacare is twice as long as War and Peace!: War and Peace is 587,287 words long. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, depending on which version you're referring to, is between 300,000-400,000 words long. Don't get me wrong, it's still very long, but it's not as long as War and Peace. Also, it bears mention that bills are often long. In 2005, Republicans passed the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users, 2005, which was almost as long as the PPACA, and no one raised a stink about it.
The people who passed Obamacare didn't even read it!: Are you kidding? They had been reading it over and over for a half a year. This thing was being tossed around in debates for ages. And it went through numerous revisions, but every time it was revised, it was just adding, removing, or changing small parts of it, not rewriting the whole thing. And every time it was revised, the new version of the bill was published online for everyone to see. The final time it was edited, there may not have been time to re-read the entire thing before voting on it, but there wasn't a
need to, because everyone had already read it all. The only thing people needed to read was the revision, which there was plenty of time to do.
Pelosi said something like, "we'll have to pass the bill before reading it"!: The actual quote is "we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of controversy", and she's talking about all the lies and false rumors that were spreading about it. Things had gotten so absurd that by this point many had given up on trying to have an honest dialogue about it, since people kept worrying about things that had no basis in reality. Pelosi was simply trying to say that once the bill is finalized and passed, then everyone can look at it and see, without question, what is actually in the thing (as opposed to some new amendment you heard on the radio that they were going to put in).
Obamacare was signed quietly in the middle of the night!: This is stretching the truth to the breaking point. The House version of the bill was signed on October 8, 2009 at 12:15 in the afternoon, and the Senate version was signed on December 24, 2009 at 7:05 in the morning. The only vote that you could argue came close to "the middle of the night" was the House vote on the changes made in the Senate version of the bill, which took place at 10:49 p.m... on March 21, 2010, a whole three months later. It wasn't a vote on anything anyone hadn't seen before, but on the version of the legislation passed in the Senate. 431 of the 435 men and women in the House of Representatives voted on it. (
citation: govtrack.us ).
Obamacare is a government takeover of the health industry!: What do you mean by "takeover"? Like, for example, do you believe that because the FDA regulates food to make sure that it's safe to eat, that we've had a government takeover of food? By the same right, the Affordable Care Act adds a lot of regulations saying how health insurers should do business, in order to make sure that more people have insurance and that their insurance works in a way that's fair and reliable... but the government themselves isn't taking over insurance. They're not selling us that insurance - the Public Option, which would have made a government-run insurance plan to compete with private plans, never got passed. So government isn't taking over your insurance any more than they've taken over your food.
Obamacare cuts $700 Billion dollars from Medicare!: Not really. What the Affordable Care Act
actually does is brings Medicare Advantage costs back in line with regular Medicare ( Citation:
Page 384, Sec. 3201 and
Page 389, Sec. 3202 ), limit the growth of certain parts of Medicare where our spending is outpacing what we're actually required to spend (
Citation: Page 426, Sec. 3402 ), and replaces some parts of Medicare with better, more cost-effective substitutes (
Citation: Page 361, Sec. 3112 ). These accusations are based on a
report by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office showing the reduction of Medicare costs from 2012-2022. However, the accusations fail to mention that those "cuts" will not result in reduced care, reduced enrollment, or reduced anything really, other than reduced costs to the taxpayers... which
both Democrats and Republicans agree is a good idea (so much so that Republicans like Paul Ryan even included those exact same "cuts" in their own budget plans).
Obamacare takes money from Medicare to pay for Obamacare!: It absolutely does not. Every penny saved by changes the Affordable Care Act makes to Medicare goes
back into Medicare. The bill itself specifically says that any of these savings must be used to increase Medicare solvency, improve its services, or reduce premiums (
Citation: Page 481, Sec. 3601 ).
Obamacare is going to make hospitals drop support for Medicare and Medicaid!: Some doctors and hospitals are worried about some of the big changes being made to how they're paid. Specifically, that Medicare and Medicaid are changing from compensating them for the number of patients they see to compensating them for how
well they treat those patients. Some doctors have even threatened to stop accepting Medicare and Medicaid. But these threats seem weak when you realize that, according to the
American Hospital Association, "Medicare and Medicaid account for 56 percent of all care provided by hospitals. Consequently, very few hospitals can elect not to participate in Medicare and Medicaid." Now, granted, reimbursements to hospitals under Medicare are in many cases less than the cost of care, but much of what the ACA does is to seek to reduce the cost of care, particularly
by reducing recidivism (patients going back to the hospital to be treated for the same thing because they didn't get the right treatment the first time). And alarmists warning about "cuts made to Medicare" can look back above - it's not being cut, it's having its growth rate reduced, and any savings go back into Medicare.
Obamacare allows Barack Obama to create a secret health care army!: I swear, I did not make this one up. There are actually people out there claiming this. It is pertaining to
Page 562 of the bill, specifically sections 5209, 5210, and 203, which reduce limits on the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, and creates the Regular Corps and the Ready Reserve Corps. What the claim gets right is that these are enlisted uniformed services. However, what these Corps do is respond to disasters like hurricane Katrina and the Haiti earthquake. They are enlisted medical professionals that can be called up in a time of crisis. In fact, the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps was involved in the assistance with both of those emergencies... but at that time, it was limited in size to only 2800 people. This section of the bill removes those limits so we are better-equipped to respond to emergencies like this in the future.