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Several myths about efforts to improve health insurance for Americans.  Five of those myths are addressed here. Answers to common questions can be found here: http://www.healthreform.gov/about/answers.html

MYTH #1: Health insurance reform is a “government takeover.”

FACT:  Health insurance improvement legislation expands private health insurance in America, and is based on increasing choice and competition – providing for new marketplaces (called “Insurance Exchanges”) where the uninsured, small business employees, and the self-employed will be able to choose among a variety of private insurance plans. 

MYTH #2: Health insurance reform slashes Medicare and hurts seniors.

FACT: Nothing in the health insurance reform reduces Medicare benefits for seniors.  The reform achieves savings by cracking down on inefficiency, fraud and waste in Medicare – targeted at private insurance companies and providers, not beneficiaries.  These savings include cutting large and unnecessary overpayments to private insurance companies that offer Medicare Advantage plans.  Rather than undermining Medicare, this bill strengthens Medicare.  Much of the cost savings achieved are reinvested into Medicare – improving benefits.  In fact, the legislation lowers prescription drug costs for seniors by closing the prescription drug donut hole, ensures free preventive care, and extends the life of the Medicare Trust Fund by nine years.

MYTH #3: Health insurance reform will cost businesses too much.

 FACT:  The status quo is unsustainable for the small business community – 60 percent of America’s uninsured, or 28 million people – are small business owners, workers, and their families. Insurance costs for small businesses have increased 129 percent since 2000. The health insurance reform legislation before Congress provides $40 billion in tax credits for small businesses to help them offer coverage to their employees and exempts 96 percent of all businesses from the shared responsibility requirement.

MYTH #4: Health insurance reform is bad for the economy.

FACT: The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says the legislation will dramatically reduce the deficit – by $138 billion in the first 10 years and $1.2 trillion in the second ten years – reins in costs for most Americans, and is fully paid for.  More than 40 of the nation’s leading economists – including three winners of the Nobel Prize – signed a letter urging the swift passage of comprehensive health reform before Congress to slow ‘unsustainable’ health care spending facing our country.

MYTH #5:   Health insurance reform will tax some corporations twice—causing them to stop offering retirees generous prescription drug benefits… or even cut back on hiring.

 

FACT:  Health insurance reform closes a loophole that allowed corporations that offered prescription drug benefits to “double dip,” and deduct the taxpayer-financed subsidy for the drug benefit from their taxes.  Under reform, the corporations still get the taxpayer help—just not the unfair tax break on it.

  

Re-run MYTH.  A false information chain-email from 2009 has been surfacing again.  Information debunking these myths are reposted here:

/UploadedFiles/Answers_to_Healthcare_Myths.pdf