PolitiFact, the often cited gold standard in political fact checking is usually pretty spot on with its assessments of partisan talking points that get thrown around the state.
Both parties often find themselves guilty of truth-stretching or flat out fabrications.
Their latest analysis of Congressman Scott Garrett’s comments on the dire effects of ObamaCare on not only our economy but healthcare system was not one of those usual times.
Garrett made a recent statement that is repeated quite often, but now being ruled “mostly false” by our friends at PolitiFact. And the reasoning could not be built on a weaker foundation, taking Garrett’s words and ruling them wrong because of a concocted distinction without a difference.
Garrett claimed that,
- ObamaCare would be raiding Medicare to the tune of $500 billion over the next ten years.
- ObamaCare creates a bureaucratic rationing board for seniors in the medicare system.
The first claim, even based on PolitiFact’s own assessment, could not be more correct. The medicare system was set to increase spending by a certain amount (let’s call that X) over the next ten years. After ObamaCare was signed into law, it will now increase by X – $500 billion. Yes, there will still be an increase in medicare spending, after all, with the way that health costs are going to increase under the plan how could there not be. Garrett would have in fact been lying had he said that the law actually decreased medicare spending, but that is not what he said. He claimed that it drove the program closer to bankruptcy than without the law, and that, Save Jerseyans, is spot on.
ObamaCare, as written, removes that $500 billion from increased medicare spending. Instead of applying that removal to savings that would extend the life of the program beyond its quickly approaching insolvency date, it uses the funds to pay for the costly ObamaCare regulations coming our way. As costs continue to increase, and funding continues to be removed, the program will continue its fiscal decline. Save Jersey rules this statement as true.
The second “mostly false” claim is an even worse offender than the first. Politifact even makes mention of the semantic game they play to reach their conclusion.
Garrett also said in his column that the health care law creates a “Medicare rationing board” of “15 unelected bureaucrats” to “slow the growth of Medicare spending.” Though there is some truth to that statement, it needs significant clarification. Specifically, the board is restricted from making any recommendations to ration care.
Notice that Garrett did not make any claim of a “death panel,” the misnomer made famous by Sarah Palin back in 2010. If he did, I would have agreed with PolitiFact completely, but Garrett’s quote from his column was pretty specific. A bureaucratic rationing board is exactly what ObamaCare creates.
The board is specifically forbidden from any official act of rationing. However, any decision made by the board that is not acted upon by Congress becomes law automatically after a period of time, and lets be honest, when a tough decision is on the line, Congress is never going to act, not when some other scapegoat can take the fall.
So what is the board allowed to do? Well, for starters, it has the ability to reign in medicare spending by restricting payment amounts to doctors for services. In what universe would that no be called “rationing?”
As the government refuses to pay a proper wage to doctors, doctors will begin to restrict the number of medicare patients they take, if they elect to take any at all. This result is essentially the same as if the board decided to limit the availability of a certain procedure to reign in costs. Save Jersey, again, disagrees with Politifact and rates this statement as true.
