Q: Did Obama ignore the question when asked if he’d give up his own coverage and switch to a proposed new "universal" plan?
A: Obama wasn’t asked that question, as wrongly claimed in a chain e-mail. And he responded at length to the question he was actually asked.
Issues: health care
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. In fact, under the House bill, some employers might have to modify plans after a five-year grace period if they don’t meet …
More ‘Senior Scare’
The conservative 60 Plus Association is running a TV ad saying Congress plans to pay for overhauling health care “by cutting $500 billion from Medicare.” It claims that this “will mean long waits for care” and cuts to MRIs and other imaging services, that “seniors may lose their own doctors” and that “government, not doctors, will decide …
Palin vs. Obama: Death Panels
Like many disagreements in the digital age, it all started with a post on Facebook. Last Friday, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin posted a note to her Facebook page and introduced a new term to the health care debate:
Palin, Aug. 7: The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s “death panel” so his bureaucrats can decide,
When Philosophy Meets Politics
We’ll wager that, unless you happen to be a practicing bioethicist, you’d never heard of Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel six weeks ago. But now Emanuel, the director of the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health, finds himself labeled a "deadly doctor" by Betsy McCaughey in an opinion piece in the New York Post. And controversial conservative pundit Ann Coulter recently proclaimed that "Zeke Emanuel is on my death list."
We debunked McCaughey’s charges in an Ask FactCheck item we posted today.
‘Deadly Doctor’?
Q: Does Ezekiel Emanuel advocate sacrificing medical care for senior citizens and disabled youths for the good of society?
A: No. Critics of health care legislation are distorting the meaning of Emanuel’s academic writings on medical ethics. And Emanuel tells us, "I am not advocating this."
Seven Falsehoods About Health Care
So much for a slow news month. August feels like campaign season, with claims on health care coming at us daily. Does the House bill call for mandatory counseling on how to end seniors’ lives sooner? Absolutely not. Will the government be dictating to doctors how to treat their patients? No. Do the bills propose …
Private Insurance Not Outlawed
Q: Will the House’s proposed health care plan outlaw private insurance?
A: No. Those who are claiming that the plan would get rid of private insurance or make it illegal are misinterpreting the bill.
Obama Wrong on AARP Endorsement
At his town hall event in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, President Obama went too far in claiming the support of AARP:
Obama: We have the AARP on board because they know this is a good deal for our seniors. …
[A]nother myth that we’ve been hearing about is this notion that somehow we’re going to be cutting your Medicare benefits. We are not. AARP would not be endorsing a bill if it was undermining Medicare, okay?
But AARP,
There He Goes Again: Obama’s False $6,000 Claim
At a nationally televised "town hall meeting" in Portsmouth, N.H., today, President Obama repeated a claim about health care that we’ve disputed in the past.
Obama: So we want – if I’m a customer, if I’m a consumer and I know that I’m overpaying $6,000 for anything else, I would immediately want the best deal. But for some reason, in health care, we continue to put up with getting a bad deal. We’re paying $6,000 more than any other advanced country and we’re not healthier for it –