The Republican National Committee this week posted a “Health Care Bill of Rights for Seniors,” which RNC Chairman Michael Steele and others have taken to the airwaves to publicize. It contains a number of claims we’ve seen and criticized before, but also contains one new one that has some truth to it, and another fresh one …
Issues: health care
Republican Infighting on Health Insurance
Never shy about training its sights on fellow Republicans, the Club for Growth is going after Utah GOP Sen. Robert Bennett with a new television ad and letter-writing campaign targeting his support for a Senate health care bill.
It’s not a Senate bill that has cleared any committee, such as the one passed in July by the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee; the HELP bill is the one that, at least for now, is generally referred to as "the Senate bill"
‘SpotCheck.org’? We Disagree.
In an Aug. 20 appearance on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” former New York Lt. Gov. (and health care legislation critic) Betsy McCaughey referred to our organization as “spot-check dot org,” claiming we failed to adequately read the House health care bill. McCaughey is the source of the false claim that the bill calls for mandatory counseling for seniors “to do what’s in society’s best interest … and cut your life short.”
As we said in our article “False Euthanasia Claims,”
Abortion: Which Side Is Fabricating?
Will health care legislation mean “government funding of abortion”?
President Obama said Wednesday that’s “not true” and among several “fabrications” being spread by “people who are bearing false witness.” But abortion foes say it’s the president who’s making a false claim. “President Obama today …
A Question Not Ignored
Q: Did Obama ignore the question when asked if he’d give up his own coverage and switch to a proposed new "universal" plan?
A: Obama wasn’t asked that question, as wrongly claimed in a chain e-mail. And he responded at length to the question he was actually asked.
Keep Your Insurance? Not Everyone.
President Obama has repeatedly said that under the health care overhaul efforts in Congress, “if you like your health care plan, you keep your health care plan.” But he can’t make that promise to everyone. In fact, under the House bill, some employers might have to modify plans after a five-year grace period if they don’t meet …
More ‘Senior Scare’
The conservative 60 Plus Association is running a TV ad saying Congress plans to pay for overhauling health care “by cutting $500 billion from Medicare.” It claims that this “will mean long waits for care” and cuts to MRIs and other imaging services, that “seniors may lose their own doctors” and that “government, not doctors, will decide …
Palin vs. Obama: Death Panels
Like many disagreements in the digital age, it all started with a post on Facebook. Last Friday, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin posted a note to her Facebook page and introduced a new term to the health care debate:
Palin, Aug. 7: The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide,
When Philosophy Meets Politics
We’ll wager that, unless you happen to be a practicing bioethicist, you’d never heard of Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel six weeks ago. But now Emanuel, the director of the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health, finds himself labeled a "deadly doctor" by Betsy McCaughey in an opinion piece in the New York Post. And controversial conservative pundit Ann Coulter recently proclaimed that "Zeke Emanuel is on my death list."
We debunked McCaughey’s charges in an Ask FactCheck item we posted today.
‘Deadly Doctor’?
Q: Does Ezekiel Emanuel advocate sacrificing medical care for senior citizens and disabled youths for the good of society?
A: No. Critics of health care legislation are distorting the meaning of Emanuel’s academic writings on medical ethics. And Emanuel tells us, "I am not advocating this."