Fact Check: The Truth Behind Obama's Health Care Plan

June 25, 2009— -- President Obama took his health care reform plan to the American people in a forum at the White House Wednesday night broadcast live on ABC. Obama took questions on a wide variety of topics, from how he plans to pay for the reform to whether people will be able to keep their current insurance plans and doctors.

A fact check on President Obama's main messages of Wednesday night's forum reveal a president eager to make his case to the public -- but sometimes glossing over the thorny details of how to achieve reform.

Visit ABC News' special health care section here.

Watch the full show, ABC News' Questions for the President: Prescription for America, here.

Read the full transcript here.

President Obama told the audience Wednesday night that health care costs are increasing at a rate three times faster than wages in America. It's a line he has used regularly as he campaigns for the health care plan.

But several studies indicate the growth rate is higher than that. Families USA, a group that advocates for health care reform, found that costs are rising at a rate five times faster than wages in America in a report issued in October 2008.

And the Kaiser Family Foundation found that family health care costs increased by 78 percent between 2001 and 2008.

President Obama used different language tonight to argue that his health care plan won't force people off of their current health plans.

"If you are happy with your plan, and if you are happy with your doctor, we don't want you to have to change," the president said.

Then, he made a slightly different claim: "If you're happy with your plan and your doctor, you stick with it."

Last week, the president gave a speech where he made a more sweeping guarantee: "If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan, period."

But -- as the president acknowledged at his news conference Tuesday -- that's not really a pledge he can promise to deliver on. Private companies are always free to choose different health plans for their employees, and that's not something Obama's plan would change.

"When I say if you have your plan and you like it, . . . or you have a doctor and you like your doctor, that you don't have to change plans, what I'm saying is the government is not going to make you change plans under health reform," the president said Tuesday.

When President Obama talked to Jane Sturm, whose mother received a pacemaker six years ago at the age of 99, he said it's important for the government to work with doctors and hospitals to determine the best care possible, as a rule, for specific ailments.

Sturm said the doctor originally balked at giving her 99-year-old mother a pacemaker because it would cost Medicare $30,000. But Sturm argued the pacemaker saved the taxpayers money by keeping her mother out of the hospital for lengthy alternative therapy.

The president said it's this kind of cost weighing that health care reform should focus on.

"If we've got experts who are looking at this and they are advising doctors across the board that the pacemakers are saving money," he said.

Such studies, known as "comparative effectiveness" touch on an important issue, according to many Republicans, particularly Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, a practicing doctor. He sees a government hand in determining the best practices for health care leading to the rationing of care to what the government thinks is best and not what doctors want for their patients.

Coburn has tried to change a reform proposal being considered in the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee to ban such comparative effectiveness research. The issue snarled that bill in committee earlier this week.

President Obama said that a public option for health care won't drive private insurers out of business -- that it will "keep private insurers honest."

Private insurers, he said, should be able to compete with "just one other option," as long as the public alternative is subjected to the same fees and regulations as private insurers.

"We're not talking about an unlevel playing field; we're talking about a level playing field," the president said.

But many of the president's Republican critics argue that a public plan by definition would present an unlevel playing field. The public entity wouldn't have to make a profit, but would be run by the same government bodies that currently regulate the industry.

"It's like putting an elephant in the room with some mice and saying, 'Okay fellas, compete,'" Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said last month.