Designated as Veterans Day in 1954, Nov. 11 is the day Allied powers signed a cease-fire agreement with Germany in 1918, ending World War I.
Source: Library of Congress
Health Care Overhaul and TRICARE
Q: Would health care overhaul efforts eliminate TRICARE health coverage for members of the military and military retirees?
A: No. This claim in a chain e-mail is false. Neither Congress nor President Obama has proposed legislation to that effect.
FactCheck Mailbag, Week of Nov. 3-Nov. 9
This week, readers sent us comments on energy costs, osteopathy and the New Jersey governors’ race.
In the FactCheck Mailbag we feature some of the e-mail we receive. Readers can send comments to editor@factcheck.org. Letters may be edited for length.
November 10, 2009
The children’s show "Sesame Street" has won 97 Emmy Awards. That’s the most Emmys won by any television show.
Source: Sesame Workshop
November 9, 2009
The Berlin Wall’s Checkpoint C (Checkpoint Charlie), where Allied forces crossed into East Berlin from West Berlin, got its name from the NATO alphabet.
Source: Governing Mayor of Berlin (Berlin.de)
November 8, 2009
Illinois produced 496 million pounds of pumpkin in 2008, the most of any state in the U.S.
Source: Census Bureau
November 7, 2009
Ninety-three percent of U.S. households with residents considered their neighborhood to be safe, according to 2003 Census data.
Source: Census Bureau
Clunker Claims and Cadillac Plans
The AFL-CIO is running a print ad this week arguing that "the House bill gets it right" on health care. The Senate bill? Not so much, says the labor federation.
Its beef is with the tax in the Senate Finance Committee bill on high-cost (a.k.a. "Cadillac") health care plans. Unions have come out against the tax, saying many of their middle-class members would be affected. The proposal calls for a 40 percent tax on the value of insurance benefits that exceed $21,000 a year for a family or $8,000 for an individual.
Using H1N1 to Sway Health Care Debate
The American Future Fund, a conservative advocacy group, has released a new ad that uses the H1N1 vaccine as the crux of its argument against health care overhaul legislation.
The ad asks: "If the government can’t run a flu program, can we trust it to run America’s entire health care system?" But the question assumes a false premise. The health care proposals that are nearing full chamber votes are not empowering the government to run an entire health care system,
The “Government-Run” Mantra
The claim that the House bill would amount to "government-run health care" suffered a blow last week, when the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the so-called "public plan" in the revised bill wouldn’t offer much in the way of competition to private insurers. But that hasn’t stopped Republicans from repeating the claim.
For several months, we’ve been debunking assertions that Democratic health care bills call for a Canadian or British-type system in which everyone is insured,