Our inbox has been overrun with messages asking us to weigh in on a mammoth list of claims about the House health care bill. The chain e-mail purports to give “a few highlights” from the first half of the bill, but the list of 48 assertions is filled with falsehoods, exaggerations …
August 28, 2009
Only two U.S. presidents are buried at Arlington National Cemetery: John F. Kennedy and William Howard Taft.
Source: Arlington National Cemetery
August 27, 2009
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy authored more than 2,500 bills during his 46-year career in the U.S. Senate. Several hundred of them became law.
Source: kennedy.senate.gov
RNC’s “Bill of Rights”
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 …
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"
August 26, 2009
Family health insurance premiums increased 130 percent from 1996 to 2006; individual insurance premiums went up 107 percent over the same time period.
Source: Kaiser Family Foundation
‘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,”
FactCheck Mailbag, Week of Aug. 18-Aug. 24
This week, readers sent us comments on abortion funding, "The Daily Show" and keeping your insurance.
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.
Health Care for Members of Congress?
Q: What type of health insurance do members of Congress receive? Is it a single-payer, government-run system?
A: Until 2014, members of Congress were covered by private insurance under the same system that covers all federal workers.
August 25, 2009
More than 50 percent of births in nine states were financed by Medicaid in 2003.
Source: Kaiser Family Foundation