Q: What type of health insurance do members of Congress receive? Is it a single-payer, government-run system?
A: Until 2014, members of Congress were covered by private insurance under the same system that covers all federal workers.
Issues: health insurance
Keep Your Insurance? Not Everyone.
President Obama has repeatedly said that under the health care overhaul efforts in Congress, “if you like your health care plan, you keep your health care plan.” But he can’t make that promise to everyone. In fact, under the House bill, some employers might have to modify plans after a five-year grace period if they don’t meet …
More ‘Senior Scare’
The conservative 60 Plus Association is running a TV ad saying Congress plans to pay for overhauling health care “by cutting $500 billion from Medicare.” It claims that this “will mean long waits for care” and cuts to MRIs and other imaging services, that “seniors may lose their own doctors” and that “government, not doctors, will decide …
Seven Falsehoods About Health Care
So much for a slow news month. August feels like campaign season, with claims on health care coming at us daily. Does the House bill call for mandatory counseling on how to end seniors’ lives sooner? Absolutely not. Will the government be dictating to doctors how to treat their patients? No. Do the bills propose …
Private Insurance Not Outlawed
Q: Will the House’s proposed health care plan outlaw private insurance?
A: No. Those who are claiming that the plan would get rid of private insurance or make it illegal are misinterpreting the bill.
Health Care Meets Shark Week!
Playing off Discovery Channel’s much-watched Shark Week, MoveOn.org Political Action launched a video likening health insurance companies to these predators of the sea.
[TET ]
Announcer: They are enormous and powerful. They prey on our weaknesses, trying to separate the healthy from the sick. Their strategy is to confuse and exhaust their victims. And they kill people each year by denying coverage while profiting billions. During shark week, let’s take on the real predators: health insurance companies.
Broken Record on Record-Breaking Profits
Last week we posted an item on President Obama’s recent claim that health insurance companies were logging record profits. Not true, we discovered, at least not for the largest publicly traded companies. Some of them weren’t even close.
Expect to keep hearing the assertion, however, in a series of seven cookie-cutter radio ads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is airing around the country this month, targeting Republican House members. Here’s one of them:
In each ad,
Dying on a Wait List?
Perhaps the most emotional of the health care ads we’ve seen in recent months is the one featuring Canadian Shona Holmes, who warns of the dangers of a government-run health care system. Holmes tells viewers: "I survived a brain tumor. But if I’d relied on my government, I’d be dead. … As my brain tumor got worse, my government health care system told me I had to wait six months to see a specialist. In six months,
White House Fact-Checking
We welcome competition – or rather, colleagues – in the fact-checking business. But the latest entrant to our line of work is an entity we’ve actually fact-checked, and will continue to fact-check. Regularly.
The White House, according to its official blog, is encouraging people to send along any health care rumors or claims, mainly of the "scary" chain e-mail variety, that seem "fishy." In its first installment of these debunking efforts, Linda Douglass, the communications director for the Health Reform Office,
Insurance Co. Profits: Good, But Not Breaking Records
When President Obama said at his July 22 news conference that health insurance companies were making record profits "right now," we thought he might have insider access to corporate earnings data. After all, most of the top publicly traded companies were on the verge of filing their reports, but only one had done so at the time Obama spoke.
Obama, July 22: Now, you know, there had been reports just over the last couple of days of insurance companies making record profits.