Last week, the House of Representatives voted to repeal the PPACA. One of the Representatives voting for repeal was Scott Tipton, a Republican from Colorado’s 3rd congressional district. Obviously each Representative had to vote according to his or her own conscience and the general consensus from constituents, but one would also hope that prior to voting, each Representative would clearly understand the facts surrounding the various issues within the law.
Last week, Colorado Public News interviewed the seven Colorado Representatives regarding their understanding of the PPACA. There was plenty of partisan disagreement among the Reps in terms of how the law will impact the country’s finances. This is understandable given that everybody who crunches the numbers seems to come up with different results based on how much weight they give to various unknowns that will play out over the next decade as health care reform proceeds. But one item stood out to me in the CPN interview: Scott Tipton’s belief that the PPACA “enacts a 3.25 percent tax on the sale of homes valued at more than $250,000.” That rumor has been thoroughly debunked, and people with a clear understanding of the PPACA know that the new Medicare tax would only impact a tiny fraction of home sales. It’s disconcerting to know that in an interview published on the same day that the House voted to repeal the PPACA, one of the Representatives involved seemed to be getting at least some of his understanding of the law from fear-mongering email forwards.
You can see the text of the email fwd HERE. You may have gotten a sampling of these email fwds from friends or family as well. If not, you can see a collection of them HERE. Before you forward these emails to your friends or family (or use the information to cast a vote in Congress), you may want to fact check these using Google. The emails usually contain all CAPS, or bold, brightly colored font. Snopes and factcheck.org are good places to start.
