This is Lynn Jenkins, she does not represent us
Lynn Jenkins hasn't told the truth about Health Care Reform. On the floor of the House she made outlandish claims that Health Care Reform was a plan that increases premium costs for Kansas families by more than $2,100 annually. That's both wrong and deceptive. According to FactCheck.Org premiums for those in Group Plans remains largely the same. Those who buy Individual Plans will see an increase of 10% to 13%. That's because those with individual plans will get a better package of benefits.
Scaring old folks ought to be a crime, and Lynn Jenkins should be tried and convicted of fear mongering among senior citizens. Ironically seniors give her a lot of money. Contributing to Lynn Jenkins must be like geezers paying to go to a haunted house! Only her votes are real!
Lynn Jenkins said Health Care Reform cuts Medicare by more than $520 billion. Well, back to FactCheck.Org, they said " Whether these are "cuts" or much-needed "savings" depends on the political expedience of the moment, it seems. When Republican Sen. John McCain, then a presidential candidate, proposed similar reductions to pay for his health care plan, it was the Obama camp that attacked the Republican for cutting benefits. Whatever you want to call them, it’s a $500 billion reduction in the growth of future spending over 10 years, not a slashing of the current Medicare budget or benefits.
It’s true that those who get their coverage through Medicare Advantage’s private plans (about 22 percent of Medicare enrollees) would see fewer add-on benefits; the bill aims to reduce the heftier payments made by the government to Medicare Advantage plans, compared with regular fee-for-service Medicare. The Democrats’ bill also boosts certain benefits: It makes preventive care free and closes the "doughnut hole," a current gap in prescription drug coverage."
On taxes Lynn Jenkins' claim was that this new law increases taxes by nearly $570 billion. The St. Petersburg Times' Politicfact.com looked at the tax consequences of the new law. No doubt we have to pay for this bill, but it isn't $570 billion. Politicfact.com says In all, the Joint Committee on Taxation estimates various revenue-generating provisions in the health bill will bring $437 billion over the next 10 years. That's the kind of $133 billion error I wouldn't think a C.P.A. would make, yet Lynn Jenkins did!
The St. Petersburg Times' Politicfact.com reported that according to Jim Horney, director of federal fiscal policy at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, thinks it makes the most sense to look at the last year of the 10-year CBO projections for the health care reform bill. By then, the plan is fully phased in, including the full effect of all the tax cuts and tax hikes. In that year, the total revenue increase is estimated to be $104 billion. That comes to a little less than 1/2 percent of the projected GDP that year.
Horney notes that that's slightly smaller than the tax effect in the fifth years of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990 (a tax increase signed by President George H.W. Bush) and the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993 (a tax increase signed by President Bill Clinton), as a percentage of the GDP at the time. And it's less than half of the tax increase (again as a percentage of GDP) from the Tax Equity And Fiscal Responsibility Act signed by President Ronald Reagan.
Lynn Jenkins fear mongering on Health Care Reform includes demagoging our Veterans. She said this "plan that, according to the national commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, is ``betraying America's veterans.''
That just isn't so. I turned to the Denver Post for the truth on this one. They reported that these claims are false. "The bill was never written to affect benefits for veterans, and the amendments have clarified that. Veterans receiving health care benefits from government programs will not be penalized under mandates that exist in the current version of the House bill."
Lynn Jenkins harps that the majority of Americans don't want Health Care Reform. She's going all strange with her math. A New York Times CBS News Poll showed that Health Care Reform was favored by 72% and opposed by 20%. That was a June 2009 poll. Polls around the time of the bill's passage showed a closer margin with those opposing in the majority. What Lynn Jenkins doesn't tell you, or hasn't figured out is that 40% of those opposing were against the bill because it didn't go far enough.
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