MoveOn.org Political Action’s latest video is a satirical send-up of a public service announcement titled "Protect Insurance Companies." It features a collection of actors – including "Saturday Night Live" alum (and Dodge Stratus driver) Will Ferrell, "Mad Men"’s Jon Hamm and "The State"’s Thomas Lennon – who defend, among other things, the right of insurance CEOs to pursue an American dream that includes a "mini-zoo in your backyard for exotic animals like a white tiger and pygmy horses."
A Zero Pay Raise for Congress, Too
The current Congress is being falsely blamed for the fact that Social Security recipients are not due to get a cost-of-living increase in January. As we noted in an Ask FactCheck item posted Sept. 23, the real reason for the freeze is volatile oil prices and the formula that Congress adopted, and President Richard Nixon signed and claimed credit for, in 1972.
That hasn’t stopped some from claiming that the current Congress is not only to blame,
McDonnell Ad Cites Praise, Leaves Out Criticism
More on that governor’s race in Virginia: Bob McDonnell, the GOP candidate and the former state attorney general, is running an ad that’s meant to bathe his "comprehensive transportation plan" in a warm glow. Ironically, though, the ad’s only reference for its claims is an editorial from the Washington Post in July that devotes far more space to criticizing McDonnell’s plan than to praising it.
Part of the ad – the portion that cites the Post‘s critique of state Sen.
Dying from Lack of Insurance
A new study from researchers with the Harvard Medical School found that 45,000 deaths a year can be attributed to the lack of health insurance. Our readers ask: Really? And, they want to know, isn’t this finding actually from the single-payer advocacy group Physicians for a National Health Program?
We’ll answer the latter first: The study was conducted by six researchers who were all with the Department of Medicine at Cambridge Health Alliance, which is affiliated with Harvard Medical School.
Boehner and the Cost of Cap and Trade
On Sept. 20 on NBC’s "Meet the Press," House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio claimed that according to the Department of Treasury, the Democrats’ proposed cap-and-trade system would be costly for American families:
Boehner, Sept. 20: It’s a cap-and-trade system, this big giant tax on the American people that this week, we just find out, the Treasury Department said will cost the average family $1,700 per year.
That’s not true.
Dueling Ads in Virginia Race, Part 2
Last week, we wrote about a TV ad from Virginia state Sen. Creigh Deeds, the Democratic candidate to be the state’s governor, which misleadingly described his opponent’s role in utility rate increases over the last few years. Deeds’ Republican challenger, former Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell, responded with a misleading ad of his own.
The ad turns the tables on Deeds, saying that he "supports Washington’s cap and trade energy scheme that will dramatically increase utility rates for families and kill 56,000 coal and manufacturing jobs."
Dueling Ads in Virginia Race
A TV ad from Virginia state Sen. Creigh Deeds, who’s running on the Democratic ticket in one of the nation’s two gubernatorial races this year, misleadingly describes his opponent’s role in utility rate increases over the last several years.
The Deeds campaign’s ad, "Power," asks viewers, "In tough times, what kind of politician sides with Appalachian Power?" The answer is "Bob McDonnell," according to the ad’s narrator. According to the narrator, McDonnell, the former state attorney general and GOP candidate,
Too Good to Check?
Slate writer Tim Noah ‘fesses up to, and dissects, his erroneous telling of an anecdote about an Illinois man whose insurance company canceled his coverage while he was in the middle of chemotherapy. Noah’s July 27 column – which said, wrongly, that "the delay in treatment eliminated [the man’s] chances of recovery, and he died" – was the source for President Obama’s careless repetition of the story in his health care address to Congress on Sept.
Denial of Claims
Insurance companies aren’t very popular these days, and it’s certainly not too difficult to dig up a horror story or two of how a patient’s medical claim was denied unfairly. But do companies really "deny payment for 1 out of every 5 treatments doctors prescribe," as a new ad says?
Health Care for America NOW, a liberal group supporting health care overhaul efforts in Congress, makes the claim in a new ad campaign:
The ad, airing for two weeks on national cable,
Thirty Million Uninsured
One of the items we noted in our Sept. 10 wrap-up of President Barack Obama’s televised prime-time address to Congress was his carefully worded estimate of the number of uninsured citizens.
Obama, Sept. 9: There are now more than 30 million American citizens who cannot get coverage.
We said that Obama appeared to be underestimating the number of uninsured, even if we subtract the estimated 10 million uninsured who are not U.S. citizens. With the Census Bureau now reporting 46.3 million people without insurance,