Fact Checking a Few of the Medicare Claims at the Debate

Health care reform has been a major and controversial issue of this election season since the passing of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. There was no exception on October 4, 2012, during the first Presidential Debate. The familiar subject came up frequently as it has on the campaign trail. As far as debates go, this was not one that would change minds or convince independent voters; however, it was an interesting debate for fact-checking the health care argument.

Romney claimed that “Obamacare” will “put in place an unelected board that determines your health care.” This harkens back to the “death panels” that we heard so much about in the 2008 election.  President Obama said during the debate that the notion of such a panel would be “against the law.” The board in question would be there to save costs to Medicare by recommending additional cuts. They can only make recommendations. They can be fired by the President. They will be held accountable.

Obama had promised to cut health insurance premiums for the typical family by $2,500 in his first term.  Romney claimed that he did not keep this promise, and that is correct. Obama said this while he was campaigning in 2007. Although he was able to pass the PPACA, there is no denying that this is a broken campaign promise.

President Obama has claimed that the Romney-Ryan Medicare plan will turn Medicare into a voucher system. This claim is rated on Politifact as a mostly true. The main reason is that the Romney-Ryan plan will offer a “form or check indicating a credit against future purchases or expenditures.” What’s interesting in the Politifact article is when they discuss the re-wording of “voucher” with “premium support.” Premium support was an idea made in 1995 by health care experts Henry Aaron and Robert Reischauer.  They stated that the Medicare system should "pay a defined sum toward the purchase of an insurance policy that provided a defined set of services." Henry Aaron no longer supports the idea of premium support, citing that Obama’s health care law serves “the purpose he intended.”

Finally, Obama stated that his plan was modeled after Romney’s health care plan in Massachusetts. He went a step further and claimed that the two plans were almost identical. Romney’s health care plan from Massachusetts has been a problem for Romney during the campaign, especially for voters that are opposed to the passing of the PPACA, making this claim very volatile. Unfortunately, for Mitt Romney, this claim is absolutely true. Readers are invited to take the Politifact quiz here. See if you can get them all right.

An Aside:

I chose to use www.politifact.com and followed its twitter feed where it posted links to articles it had posted earlier in the year. I invite any reader to challenge what I’ve found, and comment accordingly, because I would prefer to be educated and correct rather than ignorant and wrong. I focused only on some of the health care comments in last night’s debate. Though, I went further than just checking those facts. That being typed, I would like to mention now that what I’ve found so far leaves Mitt Romney with the most untrue statements.