FACT CHECK: Distortions rife in health care debate

Medicare is scheduled for a 21% cut in reimbursement. Anyone know it the proposed plan's reimbursement are directly tied to medicare reimbursement?

In otherwords, if the 21% cut in medicare goes through, will there also be a 21% cut in the new gov't plan too?

They don't dictate my provider. I can do a search of providers on the insurance website and choose who I want to provide care to me. I never got anything from my insurance company stating I must see such and such doctor. I'm very happy with my insurance and would rather keep it and see the doctor associated with the hospital where I work instead of going to see another doctor who is not associated with my hospital.

Exactly you can go to the list of doctors on their Preferred Plan Option (PPO) - not anyone that you might want to go to. You cannot go to the one that you think is best through rigorous research - no you have to go to the best one on the list you have that contracts WITH YOUR INSURANCE COMPANY!!!

Another thing is, you can't make all these people be compliant with their meds and diets. So what is Obama gonna do to the docs whose patients are noncompliant diabetics, not pay them? That's not fair at all to the physician.

True, and this will not change with the new health care bill. Once again, you will only be able to use government health insurance with doctors who accept that as payment just as it is with medicare today.

Speaking of distortions....

Misinformed critics commonly charge that the infant mortality rate in America is higher than in numerous other nations. A closer inspection of the facts, however, reveals that this is only because the definition of “live births” in other nations differs markedly from the definition in the U.S.—thereby making the comparisons utterly invalid.

In Switzerland, for instance, a newborn infant must be at least 30 centimeters long in order to be classified as “living.” In France and Belgium, babies born prior to 26 weeks gestation are automatically registered as “dead”—even if they go on to survive for several hours, days, or even weeks before ultimately dying. And when they do eventually die, they do not inflate infant-mortality rates because they were never technically considered “alive.”

In the U.S., by contrast, a “live birth” is any infant that “breathes or shows any other evidence of life such as beating of the heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord, or definite movement of voluntary muscles”—regardless of the infant’s size or prematurity. If such high-risk American infants ultimately die, they do inflate our country’s infant-mortality statistics.

It’s apples and oranges, get it?