Maybe we’ve been ignoring the good news for these past several months as we’ve covered the debate [1] on health care reform.

For example—there really isn’t a health care crisis and everybody is just gosh-darn happy with their insurance providers. Did we mention that the health insurance industry is doing such an above-board, honest job that it doesn’t need any new rules or regulations?

Somehow, we missed those stories, but when you consider the sources—Rush Limbaugh, the insurance group America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) and Sen. John Kyl (R-Ariz.), perhaps the loudest voice in the U.S. Senate screaming to scuttle health care reform—we didn’t miss much in the way of truthful news after all.

Click [2] here, [3] here and [4] here for more on the dubious claims by Limbaugh, AHIP and Kyl.

 

In the interest of balance and fairness, here a few health care reform news nuggets of the truthful variety.

• Right-wing pundits are lying their ***** off about health care reform, says Joshua Holland, and [5] he has the video to prove it. Holland notes that on several Fox News shows and other reactionary opinion shows, conservative blabbers are claming health care reform legislation will make private insurance illegal—in fact, one even claims reform advocates “will kill the private insurance companies.”

Did we all miss that meeting? Click [5] here for more from Holland and the ludicrous lies from Fox, et al.

• Author David Sirota writes that it’s actually the super-rich who are looking for a kill shot. In a recent column, he details how the ultra-rich are trying to kill health reform. He writes that the wealthiest 1 percent—whose share of America’s total income is the highest it’s been since 1929 and their tax rates are the lowest they’ve faced in two decades—have deployed

an army to destroy an initiative that would tax the super-rich to help pay for health care.

Read Sirota’s entire column [6] here.

• Turning to some cold hard facts, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) [7] reports today that while laid-off workers may keep their employer-sponsored health insurance—at their own expense—for 18 months after losing a job, the cost of such coverage can eat up almost all of an unemployed worker’s jobless benefits.

The average monthly unemployment benefit is $1,432 and the monthly cost of a family health insurance plan is $1,057, “not including the deductibles or co-pays for prescriptions or doctor and hospital visits,” notes EPI.

For low-income families, it is quite possible their health care costs actually exceed their unemployment benefits.

EPI calls for additional federal support beyond that contained in the economic recovery package passed earlier this year.

• A Hat Tip to Digby at [8] Hullabaloo for pointing out a recent Rand Corp. study that links soaring health care costs to the job loss and lower output in many U.S. industries, especially those that provide health coverage for workers.

“This study provides some of the first evidence that the rapid rise in health care costs has negative consequences for several U.S. industries,” said Neeraj Sood, the study’s lead author and a senior economist at RAND. Industries where more workers receive employer-sponsored health insurance are hit the hardest by rising health care costs.”

The Rand study, writes Digby:

gives weight to President Barack Obama’s dire warnings about the impact of rising costs if Congress does not enact health care reform.