Your Bank Account Is Safe: Running Down The Latest Winger Health-Care Lie

TPMmuckraker ^ | August 11, 2009 | Zachary Roth

[Triple]

Your Bank Account Is Safe: Running Down The Latest Winger Health-Care Lie By Zachary Roth - August 11, 2009, 11:57AM Another day, another metastasizing lie about health-care reform that needs debunking.

We've already seen the euthanasia lie -- in which conservatives, including Sarah Palin, have claimed that a provision in the bill that would extend Medicare coverage to end-of-life consultations is really aimed at letting Obama kill your grandmother. But that's old news by now.

The hot new conservative health-care lie is that the bill will give the government direct access to Americans' bank accounts at any time, which, in some variations of the lie, will then be raided to finance the legislation.

The bank accounts lie has been proliferating in recent days. A questioner at Sen. Arlen Specter's townhall this morning asked about it. Rush Limbaugh, of course, has talked it up several times over the last week on his show. Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ), speaking last week to a local right-wing radio station, called the provision "pretty Orwellian."

Where does it come from? It appears to have its roots in an email "analysis" of health-care reform that includes various lies and distortions about the bill. (Politifact, the fact-checking site run by the St. Petersburg Times, has called the email a "clearinghouse of bad information.") One charge made in the email is that "the federal government will have direct, real-time access to all individual bank accounts for electronic funds transfer."

What's the truth? The section of the legislation on which this claim is based states that the bill will "enable electronic funds transfers, in order to allow automated reconciliation with the related health care payment and remittance advice."

As Politifact points out, the bill's legislative summary makes clear that the intent of this section is to "adopt standards for typical transactions" between insurance companies and health-care providers, and continues: "The legislation generically describes typical electronic banking transactions and does not outline any special access privileges." In what seems like an excess of even-handedness, Politifact calls the claim made in the email "barely true."

Media Matters adds that this is no different from setting up an automatic online bill-pay in order to pay back a student loan, calling it "completely uncontroversial, and totally not scary."

Not that we're expecting any of the people actually disseminating this lie to be interested in the truth. But it's worth understanding where these things come from.

[Triple]

Can you believe the spin? - they (TPM) cite an independent source to support their claim - when in fact the source says that the government *can* access your bank account.

UFB

[freespirited]

IMO the statutory language is vague. No one can be sure what it will mean until the implementing regulations are written.

[OB1kNOb]

I’m beginning to think Satan would have trouble out deceiving a democrat in a head to head match.

[Frantzie]

Small business and people with any money are hanging on for dear life and are praying for the 2010 elections.

[jennyjenny]

Whatever. To be on the safe side, I think I'll just send rolls of pennies in before turning my banking information over to bambi’s computer czar.

[Triple]

vague isn’t good enough to deserve *any* votes.

[Clock King]

Or until a court decides.

"The legislation generically describes typical electronic banking transactions and does not outline any special access privileges."

Why even write it into the bill then? What was the point? People have been paying bills electronically for over a decade.

[OpusatFR]

No your bank account, or your other assets are NOT safe.

They aren’t safe now if you are a senior and wife getting ready to go into a nursing home for extended, perhaps lifetime care.

The government will require you to spend down your money and it goes quickly since nursing home care is very expensive. Your wife can keep the home and a small pittance to live, but those assets have to go.

The government will also, when you need to go onto Medicaid to pay for the nursing home after you deplete your assets, go back over your records and find those sums of money you gave to your kids if they are within a window of years. If it looks like you attempted to disperse your assets to your heirs, you are cooked.

This is without the healthcare bill. What do you suppose will happen if it’s passed?

[Cacique]

btt

[WhistlingPastTheGraveyard]

Politifact, the fact-checking site run by the St. Petersburg Times

The new "FightTheSmears"... when you see this website, be prepared to be lied to.

[bustinchops]

They write this stuff deliberately vague so that when it’s challenged in court, their bench appointees will interpret it in their favor. Until then, they can claim, “No, it doesn’t mean that.” Then they do “that”, get hauled into court, and their bench buddy appointees confirm it.

[Attention Surplus Disorder]

Just another one of those things

that means what they say it means until it doesn’t
that cannot be opted out of
that is there “for our protection”
that doesn’t apply to Congress or the SEIU

and just wait until they make a mistake and you can fight with any of 40 or more bureaucracies as to whether you’ve been properly billed.

or if they don’t like your political stance on an issue, might they freeeze your bank acount and force you to late-pay a month or two of your normal expenses.

If it’s no big deal, then excise it from the bill.

[Pegita]

The Government will have access to your bank accounts:

"Requires the use of a standard electronic transaction with which health care providers may quickly and efficiently enroll with a health plan to conduct the other electronic transactions provided for in this part." (page 59, line 21-page 60, line 8).

Excerpt from Washington's Prescription, Healthcare, The Editors, as posted on worldmag.com.

[the long march]

As if “original intent” has ever meant anything to these yahoos. This should just be embarrassing for them. None of it passes the giggle test.

No reason at all to specify what types of payments are allowed —— micromanaging at its worst

[kcvl]

Don't CRY, Zachary!

Dear Zachary,

Tell Joe the Plumber the government can't access your records when they damn well please!

Jan 7 2008

The New York Observer's beleaguered media editor, Zachary Roth, "has quit," according to Mediabistro. Word on the street since Roth took over the weekly's press coverage in August, was that he might have been ill-prepared for the task. Roth was under so much pressure, in fact, that according to a source he broke down in the newsroom at one point.

Zachary Roth is a reporter-blogger at TPMmuckraker. He is a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly, and has also written for The New Republic, Slate, Salon, Columbia Journalism Review, the New York Observer, and Guardian America, among other outlets.

He is a native of London, England, and currently lives in Manhattan.

[Billthedrill]

Uh...so the vicious, absurd, right-wing lie that the government will have access to your bank account is really simply a situation of the government having access to your bank account. Completely different thing.

The reporter seems to be absent certain critical thinking skills here.

[usmcobra]

WHAT!!!!

He’s not even American!

Of course he probably still voted for Obama.....

[verity]

What is not fair?

[savage woman]

Sounds like we could open up an account, put $5.00 in,
and give them that account #.....

[DallasDeb]

Why shouldn’t your personal wealth pay for your nursing home care? Isn’t that what retirement saving is partly about, so our children don’t have to be burdened by the cost of caring for us?