There are quite a few "viral emails" floating around, making outlandish claims about health insurance reform and pretending to be careful analyses of the bills moving through Congress. Drafted to appear as if they are written by concerned citizens, more often the information comes from organizations with a strident agenda to protect the status quo. White House Health Reform Director Nancy-Ann DeParle takes on one of the most prevalent emails directly.
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Transcript
Health Reform Director Nancy-Ann DeParle: Hi, I'm Nancy-Ann DeParle, and I'm the Director of the White House Office of Health Reform. I bet most of you have heard of viral e-mails and, in fact, received them once or twice. One of the folks that I work with here at the White House received this from his dad, who is a doctor. The Federal Government will have direct real-time access to all individual bank accounts for electronic funds transfer. Here are the facts behind that. First of all, I'm pretty sure that this whole effort here came from the administrative simplification efforts that the health insurance industry itself has asked for Congress and the administration to undertake. Individuals, not the government, will be in charge of their bank accounts, just like they are today. The next charge in the e-mail comes from, they say, page 145 of the bill. An employer must auto-enroll employees into the government-run public plan. No alternatives. That's the quote from the e-mail. I've read the bill. There's absolutely no such requirement in the bill on page 145 or any other page. The e-mail says that on page 239, the bill will reduce physician services for Medicaid. Seniors and the poor most affected. Again, not true. On the contrary, in this section of the bill, the health insurance reform legislation prevents a scheduled 21 percent cut in the Medicare physician fee schedule. Now, here's a particularly bizarre claim which they say is on page 241 of the bill. Doctors: No matter what specialty you have, you'll all be paid the same, parenthesis, thanks, AMA, close parentheses. And most of you know, the AMA is the American Medical Association. And all doctors will not be paid the same in health reform. Instead, the legislation discusses how physician fees and Medicare will grow over time. I think it's up to you to share the truth now about health insurance reform to make sure people know the facts and have the facts as they consider this important issue. I hope you'll share this video and head to white house.gov to get more reality checks and find tools that you can use to get the word out. Thank you.
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