David Cutler of Harvard keeps lying about who's covered under universal healthcare (Melinda Beeuwkes Buntin, CAP)

Professor David Cutler of Harvard University and Melinda Beeuwkes Buntin of the Rand Corporation offer a report entitled "The Two Trillion Dollar Solution/Saving Money by Modernizing the Health Care System" (published by the Center for American Progress, americanprogress.org/issues/2009/06/2trillion_solution.html). It contains a major lie, and one that Cutler has engaged in before:

The fundamental challenge in health reform is to reduce the growth rate of health care costs. If annual cost increases can be lowered, then workers’ incomes will increase, labor market distortions will decline, and government budgets will move closer to balance. If we cannot “bend the curve” of increasing health care costs, then we will not be able to afford our current commitments to Medicare, Medicaid, and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, let alone the cost of covering the 45 million uninsured Americans.

In fact, according the the Census Bureau, there are only about 36 million uninsured Americans. There are almost 10 million additional people living in the U.S. who are uninsured, but who are foreign citizens. Many are legal immigrants, but millions are illegal aliens. It's beyond intellectually dishonest to call those 10 million people "Americans", but that's something that Cutler has done before. See the link for my attempts to contact him regarding this; I never received a reply.

If Cutler can't even be honest about 10 million people, what else is he being dishonest about?

Wed, 06/24/2009 - 15:19 · · Importance: 4