Revised and Extended Remarks

I support the idea of the public health care option, but I recognize that Obama's using hyperbole when he talks about it. So, I thought it would be interesting to quote what he said, and what he might have said if he was being completely honest. The quote comes from the White House Blog.

Under the reform we're proposing, insurance companies will be prohibited from denying coverage because of a person's medical history. Period. They will not be able to drop your coverage if you get sick. They will not be able to water down your coverage when you need it. Your health insurance should be there for you when it counts -- not just when you're paying premiums, but when you actually get sick. And it will be when we pass this plan. They'll be able to raise your costs, though, if you start costing them more than they estimated you would, up front.

Now, when we pass health insurance reform, insurance companies will no longer be able to place some arbitrary cap on the amount of coverage you can receive in a given year or a lifetime. And we will place a limit on how much you can be charged for out-of-pocket expenses, because no one in America should go broke because they get sick. That difference between the more that you're costing them and what they're earning will be paid by your employer. If you're paying for the insurance yourself, it'll be paid by you. That's not out-of-pocket, exactly.

And finally -- this is important -- we will require insurance companies to cover routine checkups and preventive care, like mammograms and colonoscopies -- -- because there's no reason we shouldn't be catching diseases like breast cancer and prostate cancer on the front end. That makes sense, it saves lives; it also saves money -- and we need to save money in this health care system. Doctors will charge for that, and the insurance companies will pay for it. Well, most of it. The rest goes to that out-of-pocket.

So this is what reform is about. For all the chatter and the yelling and the shouting and the noise, what you need to know is this: If you don't have health insurance, you will finally have quality, affordable options once we pass reform. If you do have health insurance, we will make sure that no insurance company or government bureaucrat gets between you and the care that you need. And we will do this without adding to our deficit over the next decade, largely by cutting out the waste and insurance company giveaways in Medicare that aren't making any of our seniors healthier. Right. You can have quality, all you can afford. The more you can afford, the more quality you'll get. We'll ensure a basic level, but past that is up to you. As for the bureaucrat, it'll likely be a hospital bureaucrat. And we won't add to our deficit, but, hey, somebody's gonna pay for it. Just, not us.

Now, none of this means I don't agree. I do. I just would like it a lot better if politics allowed people to tell the truth. Last I looked, we're all adults. We can handle it. Just be straight with us.