VS Health Reform Check

Honesty

The administration has not been honest with America about its intentions. The public option is not about choice, but about increased government control.

Cost

We currently have the largest deficit in postwar history. Obamacare promises to add hundreds of billions just over the next 10 years.

Abortion

Will ObamaCare force every American to subsidize abortions?

On the payroll?

Who is paying you to say all this?

Rationing

The President has promised there will be no rationing as a result of his plan, but it will happen.

Choice and Competition?

The President keeps saying it's all about choice and competition. Should you believe him?

Astroturf

Angry. Mob. Right-wing extremists. Violent. Hitlerian. These are some of the smears being aimed at protesters of Obamacare. All part of a calculated smear.

Jacob Hacker

Who is Jacob Hacker and why do you need to know?

Why hasn't the Administration been honest about the public option?

Simple, because most Americans and most members of Congress do not support the idea of nationalized, single-payer health care. Rather than admit that this is their goal, the administration claims the public option is only a harmless vehicle to provide more "choice and competition" in the marketplace.

At the same time, there is a contingent on the left that openly (and honestly) supports single-payer. And so, when speaking to these groups, Democrats have occasionally let the truth slip, i.e. this is just a means to an end. At this point the Administration is too invested in this falsehood to acknowledge the truth.

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Will my healthcare be rationed under ObamaCare?

Of course it will. You can't provide government-subsidized health insurance to 35+ million more people, while cutting $500-600B in health care spending over 10 years, without rationing. To be fair, the private market rations healthcare as well. The question is whether you want to empower government bureaucrats to make choices about the "comparative effectiveness" of the care you and your loved ones receive or do you want to continue to have choices within the private marketplace about the type of insurance benefits and care that you receive.

Related: Video - Dick Morris discusses rationing under ObamaCare
Video - MP Daniel Hannan on Nationalized Health Care

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This legislation is going to cost more than a trillion dollars, how can we afford that?

The simple answer is, we can't. Unless borrowing even more money from China counts. And this legislation is actually even more expensive than you've been led to believe. This is because the costs of providing subsidized insurance to 35+ million people aren't fully phased in for 4-5 years. Once fully accounted for, these added costs will amount to over $200B annually, according to the CBO. This means that the full cost of the bill is actually $2+ trillion over 10 years.

The President is fond of saying that we can't just do nothing. He's right. Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are all on the verge of insolvency. However, a plan which adds 45 million people to a new, massive government health plan, one which will dwarf Medicare over time, is not a solution. The President talks about "game changers" and things which will "bend the cost curve" over time. However, the current CBO director as well as the previous director have made it clear that many of these plans (health IT systems, preventetive care) may not save money.

Related: Video - Obama vs. Orszag
News Article - Newsweek: Embracing the Status Quo

Will the healthcare reform bill result in the government paying for abortions?

Federal funds for abortion are currently restricted to a few cases (rape, incest, life of the mother). However, Democrats recenty passed something called the Capps amendment which mandates that the new "public option" cover abortions for the millions of people added to the plan. Capps also mandates that at least one plan in every state fund abortions.

Of course the long-range plan is to shift everyone to the public option. At this point, most abortions will be paid for by the government health system.

During the campaign, the President said repeatedly that if you like the insurance you have, you can keep it. Is this true?

Well, it may be true - for a while.

If you currently receive insurance through your employer, it's possible that the health reform bill may result in your employer dropping your coverage. In that case your only option will be to buy insurance through the government regulated insurance Exchange.

If you currently have a direct, individual insurance plan, the House bill under consideration specifically prohibits your insurer from making some common changes to your policy which may make it difficult or impossible for you to renew your policy. The House bill also specifically prohibits insurers from issuing any NEW individual policies outside of the Exchange. It's all about government control of the health insurance industry, which indisputably limit the insurance choices available to you in the future.

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Are opponents of ObamaCare part of an organized, "fake grassroots" campaign?

A liberal blog called Think Progress wrote a story about a man in Connecticut who wrote a "strategy memo" telling people to shut down town halls by interrupting and yelling. This was taken as evidence of a fake grassroots campaign to create chaos. And within a day the story was picked up far and wide, including on MSNBC's Rachel Maddow show.

What Think Progress and others on the left won't tell you is that the author of this "leaked memo" is a small time activist in Connecticut who sent it out to a total of 10 people. He has no connection to any major group on the right beyond a couple blog posts. He is not on anyone's payroll.

Meanwhile, HCAN -- a massive collaboration of liberal groups representing millions of people -- produced a strategy memo telling their people to shut protesters out of public meetings and prevent Republicans from speaking to reporters. HCAN has also been advertising on craigslist in a dozen cities across the country for health reform "canvassers", offering people $9-$14 per hour to push ObamaCare on the street. Does that sound grassroots to you?

Who is Jacob Hacker, and why is he important?

Jacob Hacker is a Berkeley (formerly Yale) political scientist who devised and marketed the public option strategy for healthcare reform. Hacker studied and wrote a book on the failure of the Clinton health reform initiative. The main lesson he took away from the Clinton debacle was that Americans are very resistant to change.

So in order to ultimately move the country towards a system of nationalized health care it was important to devise a plan that could be sold as just one more choice. His plan allows people to keep what they have, at least for a time, but it also sets up a public system (exchanges and the public plan) which over time absorb more and more people. Ultimately, the balance shifts toward a fully nationalized, single-payer system and private health insurers either go out of business or form a small tier of secondary insurance for the wealthy.

Ok, what insurance industry or conservative activist group is behind all of this?

Verum Serum is a blog run by three private citizens living in Orange County, CA. We are just regular guys with jobs and families. None of us work in the health care industry.

Verum Serum is a labor of love. Look around. There are no ads and we receive no compensation or other benefits for the work we do on our blog. We just care passionately about the future direction of our country. Specifically, we believe the President's health reform plan goes too far, both infringing on individual freedoms and burdening our children and grandchildren with massive debt. We are just doing what we can to have an impact on the debate.