Examining The Facts On Health Care Reform Legislation

Floor Speech

Ms. FOXX. Mr. Speaker, tonight I want to take a little time to examine some of the statements President Obama made when he addressed Congress on the issue of health care. Many of the things he mentioned in his address deserve some clarification or outright rebuttal.

The President said that, Not a dollar of the Medicare trust fund will be used to pay for this plan. That was easy for the President to say, and it is technically correct. It is technically correct only because there is no Medicare trust fund. It is an accounting mirage, a sham of government IOUs, thanks to decades of government deficit spending.

And, furthermore, among more than $500 million in proposed savings from Medicare, the Democrat bills also propose redirecting $23 billion from the Medicare Improvement Fund to fund new health care entitlements. According to current law, the Medicare Improvement Fund is designated specifically ``to make improvements under the original Medicare fee-for-service program.''

Then there is the issue of taxpayer-funded abortion coverage. President Obama said, Under our plan, no Federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and Federal conscience laws will remain in place. But independent groups have confirmed that the legislation will result in Federal funds being used to pay for abortions--both through the government-run health plan and through Federal subsidies provided through the exchange, despite various accounting gimmicks created in a so-called Energy and Commerce Committee ``compromise.''

Republicans offered amendments in all three of the committees to say this money cannot be used for abortions, and they were rebuffed at each turn.

President Obama also went on to claim that, ``Reducing the waste and inefficiency in Medicare and Medicaid will pay for most of this plan. Much of the rest will be paid for with revenues from the very same drug and insurance companies that stand to benefit from tens of millions of new customers.''

But the Congressional Budget Office had previously found that the cuts to Medicare Advantage plans included in the Democrat legislation would result in millions of seniors, including thousands and thousands in my district in North Carolina, losing their current plan--a direct contradiction of the President's assertion that, Nothing in this plan requires you to change what you have.

The President could have strengthened his statements by quoting sections and lines to back up the statements. We who have presented our alternatives and who have stood to refute the comments have been able, in most cases, to quote the section and the line of the bill to show that what we are saying is the truth.

As you can see from this discussion of the President's speech, when it comes to the debate over health care reform, there are often two sides to the issue, and it is simply not as cut and dried as President Obama has tried to make it out.

Many of us have serious misgivings and disagreements with the proposed legislation and will not allow our disagreements to be mischaracterized and sidelined by lofty rhetoric.

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