Shocker: Luetkemeyer Parrots Misleading Talking Points
Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer released a list of reasons why he opposes the House Democrats' health care plan yesterday. It's a pretty standard list of Republican talking points: laughable claims from the insurance industry-owned Lewin Group (Blaine calls them "on-partisan actuaries"), bureaucrats are bad, anything "government-run" is bad, etc.
The first point in his list is unusually misleading. It reads:
Section 202(c) prohibits the sale of private individual health insurance policies, beginning in 2013, forcing individuals to purchase coverage through the federal government
The intent here is obvious: to leave constituents with the incorrect belief that private insurance will be outlawed and/or purchased from the government.
His esteemed GOP colleague Michele Bachmann has made similar claims about alleged prohibitions on the purchase of private insurance, which almost guarantees that it's a faulty argument. This may come as a surprise you, but if you look at the whole bill -- and not just a couple of pages -- the lesson Luetkemeyer hopes you learn doesn't make a lot of sense.
To decipher [Bachmann's claim], we called Karen Pollitz, project director for the Health Policy Institute at the Georgetown University Public Policy Institute. She said it was a clause that allows people who would be eligible for coverage in the new health care exchange to keep an old policy they like.
"If you have a plan that's in effect prior to the effective date (of the exchange) and you like it, you can keep it," she said. (This is similar to a claim we checked back in July when the editorial page of Investors Business Daily said the bill would outlaw private insurance. We rated that Pants on Fire.)
Here's how the exchange would work: Under the House bill, insurance companies would sell individual policies through a government-run health care exchange, and the government would set minimum standards for coverage. For example, the government would require companies to cover people even if they have pre-existing conditions such as serious illnesses or pregnancy. The government would also set levels for minimum coverage for services such as mental health coverage.
But if someone liked a plan they owned before the new law kicks in, they'd be able to keep the policy, no matter the level of coverage. The rules would largely prevent insurance companies from changing benefits in these grandfathered plans or altering the premiums.
So Bachmann is referring to language that prevents the health insurance companies from enrolling new people in old plans that don't meet the new standards, Pollitz said. Any plan sold after the new law is enacted must provide better coverage.
Luetkemeyer's claim -- like most of "government takeover" rhetoric -- also obscures the fact that the whole plan "would construct a system largely based on private health insurance" and relies on a marketplace of private insurance.
