If Liz were Queen

1.  MYTH FROM THE BLOODSUCKERS: The government will have electronic access to everyone’s bank account and the Feds will rob you blind.
FACT:  The 1,017-page bill passed by the House Ways and Means Committee does call for electronic fund transfers—but from insurers to doctors and other providers. There is zero provision to include patients in any such system.

2. MYTH FROM THE BLOODSUCKERS: A health choices commissioner will decide what benefits you get.

FACT: There is no “health choices commissioner”. In fact, the House bill sets up a health-care exchange—essentially a list of private insurers and one government plan—where people who do not have health insurance through their employer or some other source (including small businesses) can shop for a plan, much as seniors shop for a drug plan under medicare part d. The government will indeed require that participating plans not refuse people with preexisting conditions and offer at least minimum coverage, just as it does now with employer-provided insurance plans and part d.

3. MYTH FROM THE BLOODSUCKERS: Health care will be financed through Medicare cuts.

FACT:  Closer to the  truth is that health care will be financed in part through cut backs to PRIVATIZED healthcare insurance companies which is why they need blood sucking myths like this one to scare people.  This refers to proposed decreases in medicare increases. That is, spending is on track to reach $803 billion in 2019 from today’s $422 billion, and that would be dialed back. Even the $560 billion in reductions (which would be spread over 10 years and come from reducing payments to private medicare advantage plans, reducing annual increases in payments to hospitals and other providers, and improving care so seniors are not readmitted to a hospital)

4. MYTH FROM THE BLOODSUCKERS: Illegal immigrant will get health care.

FACT: The House bill says that “individuals who are not lawfully present in the United States” will not be allowed to receive subsidies.

5. MYTH FROM THE BLOODSUCKERS: Death panels will decide who lives.

FACT:  This lie springs from a provision in the House bill to have medicare cover optional counseling on end-of-life care for any senior who requests it. This means that any patient, terminally ill or not, can request a special consultation with his or her physician about ventilators, feeding tubes, and other measures. Thus the house bill expands medicare coverage, but without forcing anyone into end-of-life counseling.

6.MYTH FROM THE BLOODSUCKERS: The government will set doctors wages

FACT:  While page 127 of the House bill says that physicians who choose to accept patients in the public insurance plan would receive 5 percent more than Medicare pays for a given service, doctors can refuse to accept such patients, and, even if they participate in a public plan, they are not salaried employees of it any more than your doctor today is an employee of, say, Aetna.