News outlets check the facts and explain health care reform

MarketWatch/The Philadelphia Inquirer reports on "the five biggest myths about health reform" -- that reform would lead to a government takeover of health care, that it would ration care, that it wouldn't address "out-of-control" growth, that you could keep your insurance if you like it, and that changes would be better suited piecemeal instead of by one large bill. On the "takeover:" "'Here's a plan, the primary purpose of which is to extend private health insurance, and it's called a government takeover. It's just bizarre. It's false,' said [Henry Aaron, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution]. 'Even the tiny glimmer of possible validity in that argument, which a public option would provide, is not going to be part of any final bill'" (Gerencher, 12/14).

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.