Rumors That Won’t Die

March 31, 2010

Just because President Obama has signed health care reform into law doesn’t mean the falsehoods, distortions and misleading rumors about what’s contained in the legislation have stopped. Jonathan Cohn at The New Republic points out one such rumor that just won’t go away:

If health care reform is so good, why are politicians exempting themselves from it?

It’s a powerful talking point that gets repeated over and over by Republican leaders, on cable news shows and spread via email and online message boards. But it's not true.

The fact of the matter is, under the new law, members of Congress and their staffs are required to enroll in the insurance exchanges which millions of individual Americans will be enrolling in to buy their coverage.

Cohn points out that it was Republicans who introduced amendments to the legislation requiring lawmakers and staff to enroll in exchanges as part of an effort to make Democrats look bad. But not only did reform advocates accept the change, they embraced it.

[T]he members themselves and the people who work directly for them are all covered. And, far from pointing out the problems of reform, it demonstrates its virtues: The politicians believe in it enough to entrust their own lives, and those of their families, to the new system.

By the way, as part of their “Health Insurance Reform Reality Check” campaign, the White House set the record straight on this very issue back in August 2009 with a video message titled “Congress did not vote to exempt themselves from reform”:

This is just one of many examples of the types of falsehoods being spread about health care reform, and it’s our responsibility as American citizens to stop these sorts of false rumors and get the facts about what’s really in the law.

Learn what health reform means to you by visiting whitehouse.gov and by downloading this flyer prepared for AFSCME members.