Myths of the GOP Response to Obama’s Health Care Speech

David Streeter — September 10, 2009 – 9:45 am | Congress | Domestic Policy | GOP Hypocrisies | Health Care | Republicans | Stop the Smears Comments (0) Add a comment

Following President Barack Obama’s health care speech to the joint session of Congress is no small feat. Obama delivered an impassioned speech that detailed his plan for reforming the health insurance industry. For those of us paying attention, we got the message. But it seemed that the Republicans were just uninterested. Watch C-SPAN’s video of the speech and play “where’s the bored Republican.”

House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) spent much of the speech texting, and many Republicans, like Representative Joe Wilson (R-SC) felt the need to focus on heckling rather than taking notes and paying attention. The TV cameras seemed to show a Republican caucus that was apathetic to the president’s speech and one that was uncomfortable with the debunking of the many myths surrounding health care insurance reform. In particular, the death panel myths perpetuated by former vice presidential candidate and half term Alaska Governor Sarah Palin and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) were dispelled once and for all.

Given their recent behavior, the negative Republican response is to be expected. But their actions pale in comparison to myths perpetuated in the official Republican response delivered by Representative Charles Boustany (R-LA). Video with analysis can be found on Politico’s website.

Boustany Myth 1: The government is going to replace your insurance with its own government run program.

After Obama’s speech, where did this come from? Obama made it clear that the public option will not be mandatory and that it will not replace private insurance companies. Factcheck.org examined this and some of Boustany’s other claims and found several myths related to this issue. Boustany must have been sleeping during Obama’s speech in preparation for his.

Boustany Myth 2: Now is the time to “start over” on health reform negotiations.

Now is NOT the time to start over. Again, was Boustany sleeping? Obama said we are 80% of the way to obtaining health care reform. Why does congress need to start over? Health care reform has been on the agenda since February. The Republicans and their allies, who Boustany implies are being left out of the process, should have spent more time at the negotiating table and less time encouraging town hall disruptions, smearing Obama as a socialist, Nazi, or racist (depending on what would spook more people), and pursuing irrelevant issues such as the location of Obama’s “true” birth certificate (Boustany allegedly supports the “birther” movement).

Sadly Boustany, who is also a medical doctor with three malpractice suits under his belt, might have revealed an ulterior motivation with his call for starting over: his $1.25 million in campaign contributions from insurance companies. The health insurance companies seem to want to kill health care reform and re-starting negotiations could possibly lead to that. Maybe Boustany should have waited more than a few minutes after Obama finished to begin the Republican response that he could make sure his facts were correct.

Organizations that have busted Boustany’s myths:

• Fact Check.org
• Media Matters
• But for the most comprehensive myth busting, check out Campaign for America’s Future’s line-by-line analysis

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