Health reform fact check: Republicans have used reconciliation, Obama bill will bring down health costs

Mar 6 2010

Several news organization have "fact checks" on the reconciliation procedure and health reform provisions.

The Associated Press examined then-candidate Barack Obama's Oct. 2007 statement of "We're not going to pass universal health care with a 50-plus-one strategy. We're not going to have a serious bold energy policy of the sort that I proposed yesterday unless you build a working majority." The AP concludes he "wasn't talking about polls or public opinion — or only about electoral politics — in the interview." The AP also reports on House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer's argument "that Republicans had used the same fast-track process to enact major legislation along partisan lines when they were in charge of Congress" and finds that it's true (Woodward, 3/4).

Politifact: The statement from Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., that reconciliation was used "for tax cuts for the rich twice under Bush" is "mostly true," and Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., scored a "False" when she said "President Obama's bill won't bring down the costs (of health care) for average Americans -- or really for very few Americans, if any" (3/5).

And MSNBC finds the belief that the "Senate [health] bill would allow only one round of chemotherapy to patients who are Medicare beneficiaries" false, calling it "fiction" (3/5).