An O’Reilly Factor hat trick: Rove, Morris, and Schoen repeat falsehoods on the eve of health care summit
On the night before the bipartisan health care summit, Bill O’Reilly hosted Fox News contributors Karl Rove, Dick Morris, and Doug Schoen, all of whom repeated various falsehoods about health care reform.
Rove distorts CBO report to claim “everybody’s health care premiums are going to be higher than they would be otherwise”
From the February 24 edition of Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor:
ROVE: There is a trillion dollars worth of additional money being spent over the next 10 years. It’s got to come from somebody, and it’s not just tanning salons. Remember, it’s going to come from everybody who has an insurance policy because the Congressional Budget Office says everybody’s health care premiums are going to be higher than they would be otherwise.
Premiums impact largely limited to nongroup market — about 17 percent of the market in 2016. In a November 30, 2009, summary of Obama’s health care proposal:
The President’s Proposal changes the effective date of the Senate policy from 2013 to 2018 to provide additional transition time for high-cost plans to become more efficient. It also raises the amount of premiums that are exempt from the assessment from $8,500 for singles to $10,200 and from $23,000 for families to $27,500 and indexes these amounts for subsequent years at general inflation plus 1 percent. To the degree that health costs rise unexpectedly quickly between now and 2018, the initial threshold would be adjusted upwards automatically. To ensure that the tax affects firms equitably, the President’s Proposal reforms it by including an adjustment for firms whose health costs are higher due to the age or gender of their workers, and by no longer counting dental and vision benefits as potentially taxable benefits.
A proposed compromise between the House and Senate bills would have exempted high-cost union health care plans from the excise tax until 2018, reportedly to give union members more time to renegotiate their contracts, while nonunion high-cost health care plans would have been subject to the excise tax starting in 2013.
O’Reilly and Schoen falsely suggest that GOP ideas like interstate competition “aren’t in the bill”
From the February 24 edition of The O’Reilly Factor:
O’REILLY: He may just try to show the country that the Democrats — that the Republicans are intractable because we do expect Republicans to go up there and say, look, unless you put in tort reform, unless you put in interstate competition of insurance companies — two stalwarts. And I — maybe — you’re a Democrat, maybe you could explain to me why those things aren’t in the bill, Mr. Schoen, because they seem to be common sense to me. They’re not in the bill. The Republicans have been hammering that for the last eight months, and the president basically just says, I’m not going to do it.
SCHOEN: Bill, I’ve been writing that the Democrats should include tort reform — malpractice reform — and interstate purchase of insurance, so I’m one Democrat –
O’REILLY: But why don’t they do it, then? If you’re a Democrat, I’m an independent, and all the Republicans want it, OK, why doesn’t President Obama say, “OK, I’ll give you both of those things”? Why not?
Obama: “[W]hen you say I ought to be willing to accept Republican ideas on health care, let’s be clear: I have.” During Obama’s question-and-answer period of his House GOP retreat visit on Section 3403 of the Senate health care bill, “Independent Medicare Advisory Board”:
(ii) The proposal shall not include any recommendation to ration health care, raise revenues or Medicare beneficiary premiums under section 1818, 1818A, or 1839, increase Medicare beneficiary cost sharing (including deductibles, coinsurance, and copayments), or otherwise restrict benefits or modify eligibility criteria.
CBO: Advisory Board provision “would place a number of limitations on the actions available to the board, including a prohibition against modifying eligibility or benefits.” In its December 19, 2009, analysis of the Senate bill incorporating the manager’s amendment, CBO noted that “[a]fter 2019, however, the threshold for Medicare spending growth that would trigger recommendations for spending reductions would be higher — specifically, the rate of increase in gross domestic product (GDP) per capita plus 1 percentage point.”
