Fact-checking the ( )bama health care pep rally, Part II

Under the reform we’re proposing, if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan.” This statement is also plainly false. Again, as demonstrated above, the true purpose of Obama’s public option is to move Americans out of their private coverage and into government run health care. Independent, non-partisan analysis from the Lewin Group has confirmed the House bill, H.R. 3200, will do exactly that: About 88.1 million workers would see their current private, employer-sponsored health plan go away and would be shifted to the public plan.

“That’s what the health exchange is all about, is that you — just like a member of Congress — can go and choose the plan that’s right for you.” This statement isn’t false, but it is misleading. Members of Congress do purchase their health care through a health exchange: the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP). Through the FEHBP 283 private plans compete for federal employees’ health care dollars. The Heritage Foundation has long been a supporter of health reform that empowers consumers to utilize a FEHBP like system. But Obamacare is nothing like the FEHBP system. There is no government run public option competing with private plans in the FEHBP. So whenever Obama says that a health exchange already “drives down costs” he is right … but remember that this cost reduction is achieved purely by private health coverage without any “competition” from a government run public option.