Television stations are running a gut-wrenching ad showing a newborn clinging to life with an oxygen mask. Don't be seduced by it: The Save My Care ad is packed with lies, claiming the ObamaCare repeal bill passed in the home will deprive cancer patients and women that are pregnant of affordable coverage.
Never mind facts. Democrats and media allies are resorting to shock value to defeat repeal – staging funerals with caskets and predicting massive deaths if the bill becomes law.
Boston Globe columnist Michael Jeffries says the bill takes “health services from disabled children, ladies who give birth and survivors of rape and sexual assault.” All untrue.
Senior Newsweek writer Kurt Eichenwald tweets that he hopes “every GOPr who voted 4 TrumpCare sees a family member get long term condition, lose insurance die.” Don't depend on him for a straight story.
Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel tearfully warns that newborns with heart defects won't survive if their parents are poor. Not really close. Listed here are the facts:
Does the GOP bill abandon people with pre-existing conditions? No.
Save My Care's ad falsely claims the home bill “makes coverage completely unaffordable for those who have pre-existing conditions.” In fact, it protects individuals with pre-existing conditions having a $138 billion, 10-year federal fund which will pay the lion's share of the medical costs.
Indeed, the House bill is fairer than ObamaCare, which foisted the entire cost of their care on people stuck in the individual market, forcing healthy buyers to pay the same premiums as sick folks who use 10 times more care.
Does the GOP House bill pass the “Kimmel test”? Yes.
Kimmel's wrenching monologue about his newborn son Billy's heart defect has been viewed 31 million times, making a bigger impact than any politician could. MoveOn.org is sending it out with a message that if little Billy's parents were poor, the GOP would let him die.
The public is being misled.
Newborns with heart defects or other the weather is given all possible care, insured or otherwise. Newborns with low-income parents are covered by Medicaid, with no limit on pre-existing conditions. That's true even for babies born to women in the country illegally. These guarantees existed before ObamaCare, and absolutely nothing in the GOP bill changes them.
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Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) went on Kimmel's show this week, vowing to not support repeal until it meets the “Kimmel test.” Sorry, Senator. It already does.
Will 24 million people lose coverage? No. In reality, no one will have their coverage ripped away.
That myth of 24 million losing coverage arose in March, when the Congressional Budget Office evaluated an earlier draft from the repeal bill. The CBO predicted 14 million more and more people would be uninsured by 2021, and then an additional Ten million by 2026. Let's unpack that.
“Most of that increase” within the uninsured, said the CBO, would occur once the ObamaCare penalty is repealed and people “choose” to not buy insurance. “Choose” is not “lose.” The CBO expected millions to escape ObamaCare's sky-high premiums and deductibles when the boot is business neck. (Search for that 14 million number to contract, since the bill actually passed by the House is expected to lower premiums by double digits.)
The CBO said another Ten million could be uninsured by 2026 because repeal will slow new enrollment in Medicaid. But no one currently on Medicaid will “lose” coverage. The repeal bill grandfathers them in.
Is repealing ObamaCare “a death sentence for thousands” as Bernie Sanders says? Not a way.
Life expectancy has actually declined slightly since ObamaCare went into effect. Medicaid health records show no improvement in Americans' health for the investment property.
Save the funeral theatrics for ObamaCare. It's in a death spiral. Now, insurers in Connecticut requested premium hikes as high as 52 percent, in Maryland 151 percent as well as in Virginia, up to 179 percent. Those minute rates are the actual killers.
Time to put this health organize of its misery, and give the public something better.
Betsy McCaughey is really a senior fellow at the London Center for Policy Research and author of “Beating Obamacare.”
