Too many of our elected representatives, both from the right and the left, make inflammatory statements without producing any factual data to support what they are saying. What those on the right, both in government and their big-money supporters, have been saying about the Affordable Care Act reflects this lack of fact-based argumentation.

Oct. 28 — To the Editor:



Too many of our elected representatives, both from the right and the left, make inflammatory statements without producing any factual data to support what they are saying. What those on the right, both in government and their big-money supporters, have been saying about the Affordable Care Act reflects this lack of fact-based argumentation.



An extreme example of nasty, hysteria-inducing claims with no factual support is the despicable ad showing an evil Uncle Sam figure about to perform a gynecological exam on a young woman and the repeated statements from elected representatives that the ACA is socialized medicine or a government takeover of health care. Not true! Under socialized medicine, the government owns the hospitals and employs and pays the doctors, nurses, technicians and support staff from administrators through janitors. We have one bit of socialized medicine in the United States — the Veterans Administration system. The current major government involvement in health care is Medicare, which is an insurance plan administered by the government with medical care provided by independent doctors and hospitals. Medicare is extremely popular with its enrollees.



The ACA expands the number of people covered, not by government insurance, but by existing private insurance companies who will contract with existing hospitals and doctors to provide the same kind of services that they do now. So, the ACA provides commercial insurance health care coverage for millions more people and puts in place rules to make sure coverage is as effective as possible — no excluding people with pre-existing conditions, no annual or lifetime caps, requires coverage for a variety of preventive care, reduces drug costs for senior citizens and more.



Another claim made by the right but unsupported with any evidence is that the ACA is a job killer. They support this claim by referencing the shift to part-time employment. However, this trend began as a result of the recession, long before the ACA became law, and this trend has reversed this year as the recovery continues. Studies by a number of economists find no support for the allegation that the ACA is having any significant effect on jobs, but that does not stop the right from saying it repeatedly as if it were a fact while providing no support for the assertion.



There are other claims about the ACA that are not fact-based, but probably the most outlandish is that the ACA provides for death panels and rationing of health care through the Individual Payment Advisory Board. In reality, the IPAB is set up to make recommendations to help control Medicare's overall costs. It has no function to make decisions about individuals' health care. The ACA law specifically bars the IPAB from any recommendation to ration health care or restrict benefits.



Statements like this, masquerading as reality, hurt our democracy in two major ways. First, they distort public information and understanding of reality when an informed public is essential to a functioning democracy, and second, they make it much harder for our elected representatives to work together to find reasonable solutions to our very real problems.



Robert Wilkinson



Portsmouth