The Lies of Obamacare –
Point by Point

From top to bottom and front to back, the justifications for Obamacare can't stand up to scrutiny. Virtually everything its proponents claim on its behalf turns out, on closer examination, to be patently untrue. Readers interested in a point by point rebuttal of health care "reform" can find it here. At the bottom of the page we've provided a link to an important report, assembled by Mary Katharine Ham and Guy Benson, from which this article is drawn. Without further adieu, here are ten pro-Obamacare talking points and their rebuttals.

1. If you like your existing health plan, you can keep it.
   
   Despite the president's promises, revelations of Obamacare's details give every indication that once it takes effect, the opposite will turn out to be true. Health care reform advocates claim that government mandates for certain types of coverage will actually make health care plans better, by making them more all-encompassing, so no one will be hurt by them. But this ignores the people's loss of choice and money because of government mandates. In any event, even if the claim is true, that's not what was promised in the first place.
   
   

2. Reform will reduce spending on health care.
   
   Supporters of Obamacare were mistaken (let's be generous) when they claimed the legislation would reduce the nation’s health care costs. Indeed the government's own Medicare actuary has reported that in ten years, health care will consume a greater percentage of GDP than current projections.
   
   

3. Reform will reduce Americans’ health insurance premiums.
   
   Contrary to what the president claims, it's a virtual certainty that your premiums will rise under Obamacare. Why?  Cost shifting. In order to get CBO cost scoring under the magic trillion dollar threshold, lawmakers relied in part on deep cuts in Medicare reimbursements to doctors, hospitals, and big pharma, to the tune of $45 billion annually. But health care providers will undoubtedly compensate by negotiating higher rates with the HMOs, and those rates will be passed to consumers in the form of higher premiums. According to the CBO, this is exactly what happened after previous Medicare and Medicaid cuts.
   
   

4. Obamacare will not result in a shortage of doctors, or worsen the primary-care physician supply problem.
   
   Quite the opposite is true. Obamacare's cost-cutting mandates will make the medical profession far less attractive. New doctors will work harder and make a lot less money than they do now. Nurses will be pressed into service in large numbers to fill the gap. The media has openly acknowledged this with articles advising Americans to find a doctor quick if they don't have one already.
   
   

5. No government rationing of medical care will occur.
   
   Whether you call it “comparative effectiveness research” or plainly speak the awful truth like Robert Reich or Donald Berwick, rationing by government is a chilling certainty as the United States joins the other nations of the world and their socialized health care systems.
   
   

6. Ninety-five percent of Americans will not experience any tax increase under Obamacare.
   
   Patently untrue. According to the Heritage Foundation, 18 new taxes, many which hit the middle class, are embedded in Obamacare as passed. Significantly, the Obama administration is arguing in court, in response to lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the insurance mandate, that the mandate is not a mandate at all, but a tax.
   
   

7. Health care reform won’t increase the deficit—instead it will actually cut it.
   
   According to a variety of people, including anti-Obamacare congressman Paul Ryan (R - Wisconsin), pro-Obamacare journalist Ezra Klein, and former CBO director Douglas Holtz-Eakin, not only will Obamacare increase the deficit, it will do so dramatically.
   
   

8. Health care reform will help everyone in businesses — employers, employees,
   everyone.
   
   Even the federal government's own IRS ombudsman doesn't go along with this claim. Obamacare is laced with onerous new paperwork requirements for business – so much so that a plethora of groups – from the Associated Press to the Heritage Foundation to the Cato Institute to Ohio-based hamburger chain White Castle (among many others) – have chronicled the problem.
   
   

9. Obamacare will not allow for funding of abortions with taxpayer money.
   
   Not according to the Congressional Research Service, which published a study just last month finding the exact opposite. State laws in Maryland and Pennsylvania appear to contradict this claim as well.
   
   

10. Not only will Obamacare keep all of these promises, it will do so with absolutely no downsides.
    
    Only the terminally gullible could accept such an assertion. The implementation of Obamacare is already shaping up as the mother of all bureaucratic quagmires, with org charts that resemble plates of spaghetti, destructive edicts coming out of the White House, and large corporations announcing massive writedowns as a result of the new mandates that are precursors to what could be the end of private health insurance.
    

Further reading:

ObamaCare: The Sum of all Fears