Medical debt was responsible for 62 percent of personal-bankruptcy filings in 2007, yet three-quarters of the filers had some form of health coverage.

The Department of Labor estimated that roughly one in seven claims filed through employer health plans were initially denied, with excuses ranging from minor paperwork error, such as a required code, to the more controversial judgment that a certain medical procedure was not required.

This article will attempt to arm the majority a line-item list of responses to moderate and conservative Democrats, Independents, and Republicans who the Tea Party Patriots have been programmed to target.

The corporate front group FreedomWorks, run by lobbyist and former House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX), had its staff organize the very first tea party on Feb. 27 in Tampa, FL, following CNBC's Rick Santelli's call for a Boston Tea Party-like upheaval to protest Obama's housing plan. Soon after, FreedomWorks began planning nationwide tea party protests and had their operatives help coordinate logistics, call conservative activists, and provide activists with everything from organizing tips to sign ideas. Americans for Prosperity, a front group run by corporate lobbyist Tim Phillips (a former partner to Ralph Reed), assisted with the effort, drawing upon its extensive field staff to plan events, write press releases, and distribute talking points for people on the ground.

Talking Points taken from Tea Party Patriots:

Claim #1 -

“The current administration has spent trillions of dollars so far and we are setting new records for debt every day. Spending in 2009 has increased in excess of 25%, which is the largest non-war government expansion since the New Deal.”

Claim #1Facts – See Comparative Charts for Federal Spending.

Are the policies of the Bush Administration responsible for the ideology right wing movement? Alternatively, is the movement more of an approach simply to stop President Obama?

Obama, elected by a large majority, intended to change policies to improve the lives of U.S. citizens. The changes affect business as usual of ferociously greedy big corporations. Fight back they must. What is more potent than using the fear factor? Fear is a mighty emotion, mixed with an array of distorted one-liners and high profile names to deliver the message, the ill informed took on the role for moneyed interest. This craftily designed monster will not be tamed by reason. It was manufactured to react in fear based on distortions and more of the same feed the continuum.

Claim # 2 -

“Government Healthcare is a multi-trillion dollar program, which will crush an already embattled private sector economy, while government continues to grow. Medicare is Government Healthcare – Take a look at all the fraud and waste! Do you really want this, an estimated $68 BILLION in FRAUD every year – a shining and undeniable example of government incompetence in handling the nation’s healthcare system?”

Claim # 2 Facts - Fox News hosted Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla. who took a leading position against Democratic health care reform efforts by targeting Medicare fraud.

"If you look at Medicare and Medicaid, both vital programs today, they're highly inefficient. People claim that they're efficient. Medicare has at least $80 billion worth of fraud a year. That's a full 20 percent of every dollar that's spent on Medicare goes to fraud. And Medicaid is not much better. We don't actually have the numbers because half the states aren't reporting their Medicaid fraud. So when you have programs that are designed to be defrauded, even though they're well-intended and they are helping people, we ought to think about how do we get better value for that money and less money going out the door,” Coburn said.

Health care experts and exhaustive Internet searches revealed that while “Medicare fraud is a notable concern, statistics offered to document the scale of the problem are slippery at best.”

In May, of 2009, Daniel Levinson, inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services, testified before the Senate Special Committee on Aging "it is not possible to measure precisely the extent of fraud in Medicare and Medicaid."

Levinson said that the National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association (NHCAA) estimated "at least 3 percent or more than $60 billion each year is lost to fraud." However, Levinson carefully noted, the $60 billion amount includes fraud in all U.S. health care expenditures, not just in Medicare; leaving Coburn far from his number.

In 2007, total Medicare outlays were $431 billion, or 19 percent of total national health care expenditures. Assuming that fraud is as common in Medicare and other types of health care, then Medicare’s share of the NHCAA's $68 billion fraud estimate would be $13 billion. $13 billion in fraud divided by $431 billion in total Medicare outlays would be 3 percent of total Medicare expenditures. Coburn's “20 percent” is way off base.

Even if you triple that $13 billion to $39 billion in fraud, you only get nine percent, less than half of what Coburn asserted.

Tea Party Patriots claim there is $68 billion in fraud in all health care expenditures, but Coburn's figure for Medicare alone was $80 billion.

Claim #3 –

“The system is currently insolvent, and is projected to be completely bankrupt in seven years. Who will pay for THAT bail out? You know who…you will.”

Claim #3 Facts - An ad from a conservative group Americans for Prosperity (AFP) claimed, "Medicare will be bankrupt in eight years."

The ad referred to a government report that said the trust fund for one part of Medicare hospital insurance would not have enough money to pay all benefits in 2017. The report also said, Medicare's physician and drug benefits will "remain adequately financed."

Government projections found the hospital insurance trust fund would face a shortfall "almost from its inception," according to the Congressional Research Service. Politicians have found ways to extend it; for example, in 1970, the trust fund was expected to be insolvent in 1972.

The ad also claims, "Some want to pay for health care reform with $500 billion dollars in Medicare spending cuts." In reality, the House health care bill proposed a net cut in spending of $219 billion over 10 years, according the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

As the Social Security Administration explains:

• Hospital insurance (Part A) pays for inpatient hospital services, skilled nursing facility care, and hospice care.
• Medical insurance (Part B) covers physician services and medical supplies not paid for by Part A.
• Medicare Advantage (Part C) is an option to receive benefits through a private insurance company.
• Part D is Medicare's prescription drug coverage.

Part A relies on payroll taxes and its trust fund to pay benefits. Parts B and D, are funded by general revenues and monthly premiums, and "are both projected to remain adequately financed into the indefinite future," according to the report. The trust fund for parts B and D "will continue to require general revenue financing and charges on beneficiaries that grow faster than the economy and beneficiary incomes over time."

Funds for Part A will only be able to pay 81 percent of the projected spending in 2017, and less each year after that, according to the trustees' estimates.

In a 2008 report, the Congressional Research Service wrote, "almost from its inception, the hospital insurance trust fund has faced a projected shortfall. The insolvency date has been postponed a number of times, primarily due to legislative changes which had the effect of restraining growth in program spending."

This is hardly a new problem. Several times, the insolvency date successfully was pushed back due to legislative tinkering. The Senate's Special Committee on Aging made clear that health insurance shortfall predictions should be taken seriously; however, they also said it is not going to be bankrupt.

The Obama administration has commented on the report several times. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius labeled it "a wake up call for everyone who is concerned about Medicare and the health of our economy," adding "it's yet another sign that we can't wait for real, comprehensive health reform." Administration proposals are designed to extend the life of the trust fund by several years.

Based on past political maneuvering, it appears probable the health insurance fund will remain solvent by offsetting scheduled depletion's through a combination of increasing taxes and other funding, and decreasing payouts. Republicans have even supported the effort, but you would never know it by listening to their talking points.

Ads from Patients First and its parent group, Americans for Prosperity, have asserted the false claim that Congress wants a Canadian or British-style health care system. When in fact, that is not what the legislation in Congress would arrange. The ads by the group have been repeatedly debunked as lies.

Articles about patients in Canada waiting for appointments, MRI's, and surgeries, have been handpicked isolated incidents. Jack Tu, a senior scientist at the Toronto-based Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences and co-author of a recent study on waiting times, said, “What you hear about are the horror stories.”

The debate about Canada’s health care system is futile, because the health care legislation in Congress is not about forcing Americans into that type of system.

Claim #4 -

“The Proposed Government Takeover of the Health Care Industry: Independent projections tell us that as many as 119 million Americans could lose the coverage they have today if a government plan is introduced. Employers would be incentivized to drop private coverage, regardless of individual preferences in the matter.”

Claim #4 Facts - In June, nine Senate Republicans wrote in a letter to President Obama, stating that "forcing free market plans to compete with these government-run programs would create an unlevel playing field and inevitably doom true competition." Citing a Lewin Group study, indicating if Medicare payment levels were used in the public plan, premiums would be up to 30 percent less than premiums for comparable private insurance, thus pushing more than 119 million people to switch from private to public insurance if the plan were open to everyone. The Republicans constructed this scenario, and then used the “119.1 million Americans losing their private coverage” statement as a point in fact.

The actual bill does not force private insurers out of business nor does it force people onto the public plan.
Legislation in both the House and the Senate would actually prevent many people with employer insurance from changing over to the public option. The reality is that the CBO has estimated that the House bill would create a net increase of three million American’s who will carry employer provided insurance.

Claim #5 -

“Bureaucrats and politicians, not families, will control health care choices and decisions. The horror stories of long waits and denied treatment in countries with government health care systems cannot be denied. Government health care doesn’t work. Private insurers will be incentivized out of markets, which will no longer be ‘free.’

Claim #5 Facts –

The US is a non-universal patchwork of public and private spending, drugs and procedures are subject to subsidization by insurance.

1. The UK is wholly single-payer and private care is an option. All drugs and procedures are paid for.

2. Canada is single-payer having provinces to decide how health care is spent, and places strict limitations on private care. Prescription drugs are heavily subsidized.

3. Australia has a public baseline access to doctors with subsidization of private insurance and option of private care. Prescription drugs are heavily subsidized.

4. New Zealand has universal public health care. Primary care and prescription drugs are subsidized with some cost share. Private care is an option

5. The Netherlands uses obligatory private health insurance like the Massachusetts state system where premiums have a flat rate for all citizens, providing subsidies for lower income people who cannot afford regular insurance rates. Individuals and employers split payments of roughly half, and the government makes up the difference.

6. Germany has a mandatory insurance requirement offering buy-in access to one of several hundred "sickness funds" paid employers. A private option is available to those who can afford it, and government subsidizes those who cannot, or are unemployed.

The United States spends much more per capita than any other system; nearly twice as much as the next closest spender, Canada, without covering all of our citizens. We also spend almost twice as much of our GDP than any other country. Most other countries have a high percentage of patients receiving electronic medical records, a far more efficient system that eliminates duplicate expenses through the sharing of information between facilities.

US citizens complain more of access problems than any other country, with 37% of patients not seeing the doctor or purchasing medications because they cannot afford to.

U.S. wait times to see a doctor are worse, and we pay far more out of pocket for prescriptions and co-pays than any other system. Americans spend more on administration of health care than any other country, and we have more people who avoid seeing a doctor because of costs. The Commonwealth fund found, in deaths that were accountable to health care interventions, the U.S. was rated worse than 18 industrialized countries used for comparison. If the U.S. performed as well as one of the top three countries, about 100,000 excess deaths a year would be eliminated.

Where is the real horror story?

In November, the CBO released its analysis of the health-care reform plan that Republican Minority Leader John Boehner and members of his party offered as an alternative to Democratic legislation. CBO current estimate indicates that 17 percent of legal, non-elderly residents will not have health-care insurance in 2010. Fast-forward ten years to 2019, CBO estimates that 17 percent of legal, non-elderly residents will not have health-care insurance. They call that a plan?

The Republican alternative will have helped three million people gain coverage, which slightly keeps up with population growth. On the other hand, the Democratic bill covers 36 million more people and cuts the uninsured population down to four percent.

Maybe, some believe the Republican bill does a great job cutting costs.

According to CBO, the Republican plan will cut $68 billion off the deficit in the next 10 years. CBO says, the Democratic plan will cut $104 billion off the deficit.

The Democratic bill covers 12 times more people, while saving $36 billion more than the Republican plan. After passing through three committees, a merger process, hashed over by industry stakeholders and interest groups, the Democratic bill saves more money and covers more people than alternative offered by John Boehner and House Republicans.

Reality versus political games has allowed the Democratic Party to introduce health care reform that Republicans refuse to comprehend. Rather than sit down and reach constructive compromises for all to bear witness, the Republicans have contrived a list of assurances that Obama must agree to prior to the meeting. Top of the list is a demand that this long process begin anew. These childish stall tactics prove the GOP has no desire to help people, yet will work their tails off to protect large money interest.

Why did voters place a Democratic majority in the House and Senate, and elect a Democratic President?

What have Republicans done for us lately? Moreover, do any of us really believe that in one short year later that the same Republicans who dragged our country through the mud would suddenly change their core beliefs that placed us in our current state?

A message to Tea Party Patriots: You are making a mockery of the phrase “taxation without representation.” You are being represented, by former failed politicians, ideology driven officials, and large greedy corporations who continue to scare you into submission, making you their backstop.