First the Republicans claimed President Obama’s health care law taxes “sick puppies,” and now Mitt Romney’s campaign claims the law taxes “wheelchairs.” Wrong again.
At issue is a new 2.3 percent excise tax on certain medical devices. The tax is set to kick in next year to help offset the cost of expansion of health coverage for the uninsured in the new health care law. According to the Romney ad, the law will mean “taxing wheelchairs and pacemakers.”
Thomas Hobbes’ oft-cited phrase from 1651, “nasty, brutish and short,” does not describe the 2012 presidential campaign — unfortunately. The contest so far has been nasty all right, and disregard for the truth has been brutish on both sides, in our judgment. But alas, it won’t be over until Nov …
A Republican claim that the federal health care law taxes “heart attacks, sick puppies and even new babies” is a dog. Turns out it’s a reference to excise taxes on certain medical devices.
The National Republican Congressional Committee crams a highlight reel of misleading claims about the health care law into a 90-second video that encourages viewers to sign an “I Want Repeal” petition. We’ve seen most of these before, but the claim about puppies and babies was new to us.
Mitt Romney counts both public and private health care spending to come up with the exaggeration that government will make up “almost 50 percent” of the U.S. economy once the federal health care is fully in effect.
See our May 10 article, “Romney’s ‘Gross’ Exaggeration on ‘Obamacare,’ ” for more.
A long-running chain email claims that Medicare premiums are going to shoot up to $247 per month in 2014 because of the health care law. That’s not true no matter how many times this email is forwarded.
See our April 30 Ask FactCheck — “Realtors, the 3.8% ‘Sales Tax’ and $247 Medicare Premiums” — for more.
Claims that the health care law kills jobs are greatly exaggerated.
Read more about the claim in our Feb. 21 article, “GOP’s ‘Job-Killing’ Whopper, Again.”
The latest multimillion-dollar attack ad from Crossroads GPS claims President Obama broke a promise to not increase taxes for families making less than $250,000 a year. That’s almost entirely false.
The truth is that Obama repeatedly cut taxes for such families, first through a tax credit in effect for 2009 and 2010, and beginning in 2011, through a reduction in the payroll tax that is worth $1,000 this year to workers earning $50,000 a year.
Mitt Romney falsely claims government will “constitute … almost 50 percent” of the U.S. economy when the new federal health care law takes full effect. But Romney gets to 50 percent by erroneously counting all health care spending — private and public — as “effectively under government control once Obamacare is fully implemented,” as his spokesman put it.
That’s nonsense — just as it was two years ago, when Rep. Michele Bachmann made a similar bogus claim.
The Obama campaign depends on some false or dubious assumptions in its “Life of Julia” slide show. The infographic depicts a fictional woman whose life from age 3 to 67 is better under the president’s policies than under those of Republican Mitt Romney. But in reality …
Q: Did an emergency-room physician in a Tennessee hospital say the new health care law is currently denying dialysis to some Medicare patients, and will deny care to those over 75 in 2013?
A: No. A spokesman for the hospital says the doctor never said the things attributed to her in a chain email, and they are not true. A guest in the doctor’s home fabricated the account.