In the past week, we've noted how GOP gubernatorial candidate Bill Brady and Congressman John Shimkus have advanced baseless projections of how much the Medicaid expansion included in the Democratic health care reform bill will end up costing Illinois.  But they aren't the only local Republicans misleading the public about the bill in local media appearances.

On Wednesday evening, Republican Rep. Peter Roskam showed up on Fox Chicago's evening newscast to discuss the bill.  Below is the full segment:

Towards the end, after Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. denied that the reform bill represents a "massive federal intervention into the lives of the American people," Roskam said the following:

I think Congressman Jackson is arguing in the alternative.  In one case, he's saying this isn't a massive undertaking and, in the next breath, he's saying it helps 40 million Americans. You really can't have it both ways.  I think you look to the Congressional Budget Office, who said in the first year alone the enforcement of this is going to cost $1 billion in an increased IRS budget.

Contrary to Roskam's suggestion, most of that increase in the Internal Revenue Service budget will not be dedicated to "enforcement" of the new mandate that individuals have health insurance, as FactCheck.org explained in a March 30 article:

The IRS’ main job under the new law isn’t to enforce penalties. Its first task is to inform many small-business owners of a new tax credit that the new law grants them — starting this year — which will pay up to 35 percent of the employer’s contribution toward their workers’ health insurance. And in 2014 the IRS will also be administering additional subsidies — in the form of refundable tax credits — to help millions of low- and middle-income individuals buy health insurance.

The law does make individuals subject to a tax, starting in 2014, if they fail to obtain health insurance coverage. But IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman testified before a hearing of the House Ways and Means Committee March 25 that the IRS won’t be auditing individuals to certify that they have obtained health insurance. He said insurance companies will issue forms certifying that individuals have coverage that meets the federal mandate, similar to a form that lenders use to verify the amount of interest someone has paid on their home mortgage. "We expect to get a simple form, that we won’t look behind, that says this person has acceptable health coverage," Shulman said. "So there’s not going to be any discussions about health coverage with an IRS employee."

On the April 8 edition of WTTW's Chicago Tonight, GOP Rep. Aaron Schock was asked directly if he supported repeal of the Democratic health care package.  Schock responded that there are certain provisions he would like to see repealed -- such as the "huge entitlement expansion and the tax increases that go along with it" -- but there are others that he would preserve, like the ban on refusing coverage because of preexisting conditions.  Watch it (full video here):

Schock is clearly taking a page out of GOP U.S. Senate candidate Mark Kirk's book here.  Kirk has similarly stated that he would like to roll back any tax increases while ensuring that the protections remain for individuals with preexisting conditions.  But as we noted, such a position betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of how the bill works.  Here's Ezra Klein's succint explanation of why the preexisting condition provision requires an individual mandate and subsidies for low-income Americans:

If you're going to change the insurance market such that the sick can't be left out, you have to make sure that the risk pool doesn't become so sick and expensive that the healthy flee. That's why you do the mandate. And if there's a mandate, there needs to be subsidies to make sure people can afford what they're being asked to buy. And then of course, we need to define what they're being asked to buy, and so you get minimum benefit regulations.

Finally, we have downstate Republican Rep. John Shimkus' comments at a meeting with business owners this week in Wood River, as reported by The Telegraph:

[Dr. Steven Zenker] said that because primary care physicians are offered very little reimbursement for care, more public aid patients are being seen in the ER. [...]

[Shimkus] said because more doctors are opting not to treat Medica[id]/public aid patients, the people are showing up in emergency rooms. He said he also doesn't see that lessening any under the new law.

Shimkus is dead-wrong in his suggestion that the reform package won't "lessen" the occurence of primary care doctors turning away Medicaid patients. In fact, President Obama has repeatedly highlighted this problem and the Democratic health care bill includes a provision raising the Medicaid reimbursement rate.