Simon Lang – 9/20/09

This page was last updated on September 20, 2009.

Get facts straight on health care bill; Simon Lang; Beaver County Times; September 20, 2009.

In previous letters I critiqued, Mr. Lang told us “Health care needs to be fixed” and he didn’t like John McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.

“In response to John Zobrak’s Friday letter to the editor regarding health care and U.S. Sen. Bob Casey (‘Vote snubs our moral convictions’):”

[RWC] Mr. Zobrak also wrote of Mr. Casey being one of only seven senators to vote for continued funding for ACORN despite the recent videos of criminal behavior, but I guess Mr. Lang didn’t want to write about that.

“He lies. There is no — I repeat, no — provision in the health bill that gives health care to illegals or enables ‘death of the elderly.’”

[RWC] No, there is no “provision in the health bill that gives health care to illegals,” but there is no mechanism to stop it either and efforts to include those mechanisms were defeated by Democrats. There’s also this. Based on past and recent speeches, President Obama (and some Republicans like Sen. John McCain) believes in blanket amnesty for illegal aliens.

Please read my paper entitled “Healthcare.”

“I sincerely suggest that he read the bill, get the facts and stop trying to use scare tactics just because he most likely voted in the minority last November.”

[RWC] During his speech before Congress, Mr. Obama alleged, “Everyone in this room knows what will happen if we do nothing. Our deficit will grow. More families will go bankrupt. More businesses will close. More Americans will lose their coverage when they are sick and need it the most. And more will die as a result. We know these things to be true.” Pretty scary stuff, if it were true.

In that same speech Mr. Obama also misled us about “One man from Illinois,” asserting the man died because an insurance company cut off his coverage. According to PolitiFact.com, a popular source of the Times, the state AG helped correct the error, the insurance company paid for the man’s stem cell treatment, and he lived another three to four years. The man died earlier this year because his stem cell donor died before he could get a second stem cell transplant. This was all covered in testimony before Congress in June.

In the same paragraph in that speech, Mr. Obama also told us of a “woman from Texas was about to get a double mastectomy when her insurance company canceled her policy because she forgot to declare a case of acne.” Not exactly. According to CNN.com, the woman “also didn't disclose medication she had taken for a pre-existing heart condition -- medicine she wasn’t taking when she originally applied for coverage.” Translation: The woman obtained her medical insurance fraudulently by failing to disclose her “pre-existing heart condition.” This too was covered in testimony before Congress in June.

If Mr. Zobrak used “scare tactics” or got his facts wrong, perhaps he took his cue from Mr. Obama.

In any case, even if the cases noted by Mr. Obama had been true, regrettably those things will happen whether an insurer is a private company or the government. It’s yet another deception to claim otherwise.

As for the minority comment, what’s that got to do with anything? As a reminder, though, Sen. McCain won Beaver County. Therefore, depending on the jurisdiction, Mr. Lang “most likely voted in the minority last November.”