A number of opponents of new health care legislation, most recently our old friend Betsy McCaughey on "The Daily Show," have claimed that cancer survival rates are higher in the U.S. than in countries with nationalized health care. They conclude from this that the state of general health and health care quality in the U.S. must therefore be higher. Does the U.S. really have a higher cancer survival rate? And what does that mean about our health care system?
Month: August 2009
August 31, 2009
The US Open began as a men’s singles and doubles tennis tournament in 1881.
Source: USOpen.org
August 30, 2009
In 1972 Sen. Edward M. Kennedy pushed the Meals on Wheels Act and the Women, Infants, and Children Nutrition Program (WIC).
Source: kennedy.senate.gov
TGIF
August traditionally may be a slow news month in the nation’s capital, but the bogus claims have continued to fly in the final full week of meteorological summer. This week, we’ve written about health care, health care and, oh yeah, more health care.
An article from Aug. 21 addresses abortion funding in H.R. 3200, the House version of the health care overhaul backed by the White House. We found that President Obama is stretching when he claims that the bill won’t provide any abortion funding.
Twenty-six Lies About H.R. 3200
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