Some folks on the left side seem to be very concerned that there is "misinformation" regarding Health Care Reform being spread by conservatives.  Scott has a post on this, as does Jay.  Republicans are lying!  They're pulling all these crazy things out of thin air!  Read the bill damn you!  None of these things are actually in there!  Where are you getting this stuff?!  Well, they're coming from Democrats!

Now I want to start by agreeing with part of what they complain about.  Republicans and Democrats are really good at finding something minor, blowing it way out of proportion and drumming on it until your ears burst.  The whole "death panel" controversy that was built out of the "end of life" counseling was totally over blown.  And as John Stossel puts it:

But no bill in Congress mandates end-of-life counseling, much less "death panels." And there's a deeper problem. When opponents of nationalization make such easily refuted charges, supporters of nationalization gain the upper hand. All criticism is undermined. Neutral observers can easily conclude, "If the death-panel claim is false, why believe anything else the critics say?"

That would be a disaster.

But of course, the bills before Congress do raise major concerns, especially regarding care for the elderly and for the disabled.  There may not be "death panels", but the results may not be all that different.  But I'm getting a little ahead of myself.  There are a lot of things that people think are in the bill that aren't, but I can't blame them for thinking they're actually in there.

It seems that a lot of people think illegal immigrants will be covered in this new bill.  Jay seems to assert they won't.  If I take Jay at his word that the bill has no language regarding illegal immigrants, I still can't blame anyone for thinking that illegal immigrants will be covered.  After all, every Democrat who is pushing for this bill, including Obama, talk about how we need to bring coverage to "all 48 million people who are without health insurance".  But as I mentioned in an earlier post, those 48 million include 10 million who are not citizens (including illegal immigrants).  So if they are stumping for the bill saying we need to cover those illegal immigrants, is it all that unreasonable to think that there is something in the bill that will do that?

And regarding those "death panels":

Well, I think it's a great question, and I think the important thing is to underscore that there is consensus that we spend too much on care that does not improve people's health. And if we start with that, then that means we've got to make some changes.

What I've proposed is that we have a panel of medical experts that are making determinations about what protocols are appropriate for what diseases. There's going to be some disagreement, but if there's broad agreement that, in this situation the blue pill works better than the red pill, and it turns out the blue pills are half as expensive as the red pill, then we want to make sure that doctors and patients have that information available to them.

But Nick, you say... he's only talking about providing information regarding medications!  Except, he also has advisors like Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel (who presumably might be on one of these panels) who says things like this:

"Vague promises of savings from cutting waste, enhancing prevention and wellness, installing electronic medical records and improving quality are merely 'lipstick' cost control, more for show and public relations than for true change," he wrote last year (Health Affairs Feb. 27, 2008).
...
Emanuel, however, believes that "communitarianism" should guide decisions on who gets care. He says medical care should be reserved for the non-disabled, not given to those "who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens . . . An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia" (JAMA, Feb. 27, 2008).

Sure... that might not be directly in the bill... but anyone who paid any attention to the Bush Administration during his last few years of office ought to know that doesn't mean anything any more.  The Administration could easily decide that it will set standards for insurance companies or Medicare as part of something that did make into the bill... and wallah!  After all, Obama and every Democrat stumping for these changes keep saying that costs must come down.  End of life care is damn expensive, but often times still beneficial.  So while I don't think people will have to go in front of a board to prove they deserve to live, I think its quite possible that standards will be set by which people will be denied certain treatments, like a pacemaker if you are above a certain age.

And what about the "false claims" that the bill will outlaw private insurance?  While it is correct that the bill will not outlaw private insurance, any inclusion of a "public option" as scoped in the bill will crowd out private insurance pretty quickly.  Even if not outlawed, the public option will have resources at it's disposal that no private insurance company has which will allow it to unfairly undercut private insurance prices so much, that they will have a difficult time competing.

For one, people are already talking about taxing those who aren't using the public option to pay for that public option.  For instance, people who have "Cadillac plans" would be taxed to help pay for the public option.  That means they can undercharge the rest of the people, knowing they can make it up by charging people who aren't even using the plan.  That creates an uneven playing field.  After all, private insurance plans can only charge those who are members of their plans to pay for them.  Blue Cross can't send a bill to Assurant Health customers to help cover costs.  But the government can send a bill to Blue Cross and Assurant Health customers to cover the cost of the "public option".  It's called taxes.

The government also has access to almost unlimited debt besides.  Medicare is being held up as a model of efficiency, and yet everyone knows that it has severe debt problems.  Private insurance companies would never be able to survive being in debt that long.  So a public option would almost inevitably use that to it's advantage.  Both of these things can be used against private insurance companies, but have nothing to do with running anything more efficiently.  They are simply things that governments are allowed to do to hide inefficiency.

All of these ideas I talk about here are based on common knowledge of how government works, or based on things that Democrats have said while stumping for this very bill.  Of course, these bills are notoriously hard to read... and in fact are made hard to read on purpose.  So really, all we have to go on is what these politicians say... and what they're saying is exactly what we're afraid of.