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 and misinterpretations. We examined each of the e-mail’s claims, finding 26 of them to be false and 18 to be misleading, only partly true or half true. Only four are accurate.
Conservatives keep coming back to the same old bogeymen, even when they don’t make sense:
[The chain email] claims that a section about “Community-based Home Medical Services” means “more payoffs for ACORN.” ACORN does not provide medical home services. The e-mail interprets any reference to the word “community” to be some kind of payoff for ACORN. That’s nonsense.
How are we supposed to have a discussion about health care when one side is so completely unhinged? I think it’s important to have a debate, but there’s really no way to do that when we can’t even agree on basic facts.
Read FactCheck.org’s entire analysis here.
“How are we supposed to have a discussion about health care when one side is so completely unhinged?”
You could have started by not trying to jam major healthcare reform through in three weeks prior to the August recess. Nobody (including congress) new what the hell was in the bills, and it bred chaos. The democrats brought that on themselves. Is it any wonder that the American people questioned what was taking place and how quickly it “had” to happen. One can only surmise that the democrats knew there was so much embedded in these bills that the American people would reject, that they tried to run it through before anyone was aware. And now you wonder why there is
Way to completely dodge the fact that the opponents are using flat out lies and fear to try and defeat reform. Why? Because they KNOW that if they debate it on the actual facts, they lose. Big time.
I know that to you, CMan, hearing the words of the New York Times is like holy water on a vampire but try to get through a few paragraphs of this: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/30/opinion/30sun1.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
Not a problem reading through this. You’re right, the Times is one of the most biased papers in the land. But, we have to read all sides to make fair assesments. Right? I’m sure you catch a few hours of Fox News to do the same. Right? Here is the portion that stood out to me:
“comprehensive reforms with broad public support. But the ideological split between the parties is too wide — and the animosities too deep — for that to be possible.”
Here in lies the problem. It’s really black and white. So, I must repeat myself. The democrats have the numbers to pass their agenda. You first have to convince the Blue Dogs. Once you get them on board, do what you want. Then we will wait to see how the public reacts and if you are governing with the majority of America. Simple huh?
This is another false meme, that we are trying to ramrod reform through and need to slow down. We have been trying to reform health care since the Truman administration. This is no knee jerk movement folks.
For my job in any three week period, I routinely read a thousand pages of electronics specs, make software design decisions about them, discuss and modify them with my colleagues (often with heated disagreements), and are well on the way to implementation of the design. We do it all the time. It’s what happens when the bottom line is doing the right thing and not posturing for the press and constituents.
It’s like Rep. Rick Larsen said-“I’ve got facts on my side and you’ve got Glenn Beck on your side”
Actually we don’t have to wait on the Blue Dogs. We simply need a handful of them to pass health care via reconciliation.
And I don’t get Fox News this far north. I big difference is that the article I linked to is clearly marked as Opinion; on Fox, it is all opinion, masquerading as news.
*1 big difference; my apologies for the typo.
From Factcheck.org:
http://www.factcheck.org/2009/08/abortion-which-side-is-fabricating/ — “Despite what Obama said, the House bill would allow abortions to be covered by a federal plan and by federally subsidized private plans.”
http://www.factcheck.org/2009/08/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.
Seems as if there are deceptions on both sidess. And we should hold public officials much more accountable that private citizens, so Obama’s lies and deceptions, even if fewer (the above is not extensive), are more egregious.
To the first:
except in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother
So, Sean you would force a woman to bear a child that was the result of rape or incest? You would force a woman to bear a child even if it meant her life was endangered by that pregnancy?
Businesses, however, would have to meet minimum benefits standards and would have a five-year grace period to do so under the House bill.
A minimum standard and five years to meet it. Wow, that’s a huge power grab there. Fact is, compared to the right, the inaccuracies listed above are just GOP’ers clutching at straws. How come you didn’t list the following:
http://factcheck.org/2009/08/twenty-six-lies-about-hr-3200/
or:
http://factcheck.org/2009/08/rncs-bill-of-rights/
Those seem to me, much more egregious use of lies and deception.
Why don’t Democrats just go pass their bill instead of complaining about Republicans? You have the votes. Shut up and start governing.
As I’ve said before, we on the blogosphere are, for the most part, not legislators. And we DON’T have the votes in the senate, to end a filibuster.
Shut up yourself, you irrelevant old goon.
No party has been in such a position of power in recent history. The world is your oyster right now, Dems. Pass a health care bill and let’s see if it works.
But yet… you insist on spending your precious time blaming Republicans. Obama insisted on spending a primetime press conference blaming Republicans.
Take a page out of Bill Clinton’s book. Find common ground, and a few reasonable people from across the aisle, and then get it done. And if your response to that is that you can’t find those reasonable people, then it means you are attempting to govern from too far left.
If you can’t find reasonable people, it could mean that there are none, or that they have been cowed into silence.
I bet you can’t find three statements from that presser which “blame republicans.”
NorthernMner,
Thanks for the link. The last two sentences in the article are very telling:
“It is barely possible that the Senate Finance Committee might pull off a miracle and devise a comprehensive solution that could win broad support, or get one or more Republicans to vote to break a filibuster. If not, the Democrats need to push for as much reform as possible through majority vote.”
Regarding the first sentence:
It would not take a “miracle” to devise a comprehensive solution. Models for comprehensive solutions already exist domestically, as in the VA system, and in all of the other industrialized countries. Winning broad support will never happen unless the details of any reform and the rationale that support the plan are made clear to the public. The process has been very opaque and political thus far.
If the Republicans do not want to participate in productive debate and the Democrats must outline the plan by themselves, it should still be reasonable and balanced because it will still need to be explained to, and accepted by, the majority of citizens; not just Tea baggers or Progressive Liberals. The political demands of the far right or the far left should not be part of the equation. The facts should prevail. Not Fox Facts, real facts. We should not be focused on whether the Republicans will filibuster. We should be focused on whether the plan that is proposed is the plan that is most likely to reduce cost and complexity, improve quality and efficiency and cover all citizens. You don’t arrive at a plan like this via the political horse trading that is going on now.
Once we are confident that we are proposing the best possible plan then we need our highly intelligent, calm, sincere and oratorically gifted President to explain to all of the American people in the clearest, simplest terms why this plan makes sense, how it will work, how long it will take to implement and how we will pay for it. If the Republicans want to filibuster such a plan, let them. The public needs to see the plan and make its own judgments about it. In the end citizens will reward good behavior and punish bad behavior but they can’t do that if they don’t know what is going on.
Regarding the second sentence:
It would be very foolish for the Democrats to push through reform that is not clearly thought out, clearly presented to the public and likely to solve the problem. This debate is being managed entirely politically. I follow these issues carefully and I can say that those who are known to be managing the reform effort in the White House have been very vague on the details and seem to be pushing for a political victory rather than a moral one. Isn’t that what brought down the Republicans? Democratic strategists like Rahm Emmanuel have spent so much time admiring the political prowess of Karl Rove and attempting to emulate his practices that they have failed to notice that he was morally bankrupt and has now been demoted from Political Genius to occasional contributor on Fox News where he and Dick Cheney use our airwaves to spread lies in a desperate attempt to save their asses. Emmanuel should be more careful than he has been in not heading down that path.
Without taking any sides in this I have several concerns regarding what seems to be the current plan.
•I can’t even be sure what the plan is. It is vague, complex, opaque, fluid and incoherent.
This is because_____________?
•It apparently expands the employer mandate. This is because__________?
•It maintains the current situation as the base plan with some modifications that would appear to me
to be more likely to raise, not lower costs. This is because__________?
•It offers a private plan with a public option to be negotiated away rather than offering a public
plan and making a private option available as an inducement to gain Republican backing. This is
because__________?
•It is sort of universal in the most expensive way known to man. The way we are doing it now. This
is because__________?
•It appears to be addressing the needs of the insurance companies quite well but the public not so
well. This is because___________?
The fill-in-the-blanks sections at the end of each sentence need to be completed by those proposing the plan. Otherwise special interests groups will be more than happy to continue to provide the answers.
Ron,
I completely agree. I have been following the reform news, and yet feel that I have no idea how exactly health insurance will change, and for whom.
I fault this “gang of six” nonsense that Senator Baucus has been using to craft a bill. Their secretive, insular group has been putting out vague and deliberately ambiguous statements on their work, so it is almost impossible to discern what exactly a draft will look like. However, I am confident that the gang of six will soon fall apart, leaving two options:
1) The Senate Finance Committee will draft and pass a bill
OR
2) The bill will go through reconciliation, with certain portions being passed that way.
Either way, its time to let go of this gang of six nonsense.
What is deeply disturbing is the eviceration of the social contract that conservatives have engaged in during this healthcare debate. They have implicitly or explicitly encouraged all manor of paranoid conspiriacy in order to stop meaningful reform. I have always been someone who had strong beliefs but held that debate should be respectful and based on the facts and though I have been mindful of some underhanded moves by both parties in the past, I have never seen anything like this. It is absolutely disgraceful. I am having a difficult time seeing conservatives as being like me in even the most basic ways and am really questioning whether we can live together in one nation.
“questioning whether we can live together in one nation.”
Wow! What are you suggesting?
I like how a chain email that originated from one conservative blogger’s tweets as he read through the bill has now become “the conservatives’ claims” and how this one chain email speaks for “the other side” which is “unhinged”.
Glad Factcheck debunked one chain emailers claims. The sad part is that the Factcheck editorial where they set the record straight doesn’t make me feel any better about this bill.
“The sad part is that the Factcheck editorial where they set the record straight doesn’t make me feel any better about this bill.”
Not really “sad” per se. You are not going to feel better about the bill ever, because you are biased against reform. You have hung your hat on obstruction.
Democrats have finally realized they dont have a mandate to make America like San Francisco.
San Francisco has universal health care?
No. Of course, Yaz is talking out of his/her ass.
Wow, I wish I could edit. San Francisco does indeed have a public option. Good for them!
Appologies to Yaz in THIS SPECIAL INSTANCE.
That being said, we do indeed have a mandate.
we do indeed have a mandate
Keep in mind that mandate was given to a Democratic President who campaigned pretty close to center, and a group of Democratic Congresspeople made up of a healthy group of Blue Dogs.
So naturally the Democrats should let the far right fruitcakes like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh drive the debate.
Are you talking about our black communist Kenyan Hitler overlord? Shame on you.
And less than 20% of democrats are blue dogs. What is your point, exactly?
He also campaigned on health care reform including a public option.
DTM,
Keep in mind that those who voted for and continue to support Obama are the ones to define what his mandate is. The constitution protects the rights of the minority but free speech is not a platform to project the wishes of the minority onto the majority. The voice of a shrinking but ever more shrill minority is being amplified by a media corrupted by money and is seeking to hold on to its power and impose its will on the majority. This won’t happen. The far right wing lunatics might be stupid enough to drag us to the precipice but, ironically, this will result in their own demise because they are the only ones stupid enough to jump. (or slit their wrists, if you prefer)