FactCheck.org

Thirty Million Uninsured

September 16, 2009

One of the items we noted in our Sept. 10 wrap-up of President Barack Obama’s televised prime-time address to Congress was his carefully worded estimate of the number of uninsured citizens.

Obama, Sept. 9: There are now more than 30 million American citizens who cannot get coverage.

We said that Obama appeared to be underestimating the number of uninsured, even if we subtract the estimated 10 million uninsured who are not U.S. citizens. With the Census Bureau now reporting 46.3 million people without insurance,

How Many Protesters?

September 16, 2009

We’ve often observed an odd quirk in the behavior of political partisans; they tend to exaggerate even when they could make their point without doing so.
The most recent example is the weekend protest in Washington, D.C., at which a very large number of people turned out to criticize the Obama administration. Fox News reported that "tens of thousands" turned out, as did all major news outlets. The Washington, D.C., Fire Department put the number between 60,000 and 70,000,

Retraction: Health Insurance Market Concentration

September 16, 2009

Note: We are retracting one of our Sept. 10 criticisms of President Obama’s speech on health care. We said that he "overstated the degree of concentration in the insurance industry." We have continued to research the subject, and the following information turned up by our reporter D’Angelo Gore has led us to change our judgment. While the president may have overstated the findings of one study, we have now found others that show market concentration at least as severe as he described.

Sweet: Another Stretch by Obama

September 13, 2009

The Chicago Sun-Times’ columnist and Washington Bureau Chief Lynn Sweet reports on an Obama exaggeration that we missed.
Sweet said Obama "went too far" when he said, in his health care speech to Congress and the nation Sept. 9:

Obama, Sept. 9: One man from Illinois lost his coverage in the middle of chemotherapy because his insurer found that he hadn’t reported gallstones that he didn’t even know about. They delayed his treatment, and he died because of it.

Immigrants and Insurance

September 11, 2009

Several readers have e-mailed us about a report from the Congressional Research Service that they say proves illegal immigrants will have coverage under the proposed House health care plan. In fact, that report says exactly what we concluded yesterday: The bill does not provide coverage for illegal immigrants, but there’s no enforcement mechanism explicitly specified. The newly created Health Choices Commissioner would be responsible for deciding how applicants for the affordability credits would need to prove their eligibility.

TGIF

September 11, 2009

The last weekend of summer may have knocked a day off of the work week, but the false and misleading claims didn’t take a break. As always, we were on the case.
The highlight of the week, of course, was President Obama’s Sept. 9 address on health care to a joint session of Congress. Contrary to at least one now-notorious critic, the president did not lie about illegal immigrants: The House bill specifically states that no affordability credits will go to anyone in the country illegally.

Boustany’s Response

September 10, 2009

Barack Obama wasn’t the only person misstating health care facts during prime time on Sept. 9. Louisiana Rep. Charles Boustany delivered the Republican response to Obama’s speech. We found a couple of factual flaws.
Bureaucracies vs. Bureaucrats
Boustany exaggerated when he stated that the Democrats’ bill "created 53 new bureaucracies." The claim is based on an analysis of H.R. 3200 conducted by the House Republican Conference. The Republicans’ analysis charges that "the House Democrats’

Cantor’s Gender Problem

September 9, 2009

At a press stakeout on Capitol Hill today, House GOP Whip Eric Cantor sounded bullish about his party’s success in pouring cold water on the idea of a "government option," or a federal health insurance plan that would compete with private plans. That’s fine, but he made one statement that puzzled us:

Cantor, 9/9: I think intuitively that most Americans believe that more government in health care means more rationing and more forced discrimination on the basis of gender and age.

‘No Guarantee’ — With Plan, or Without

September 9, 2009

Conservatives for Patients’ Rights, whose ads we have faulted in the past, is airing a new spot that calls for dropping any federal insurance option from the health care overhaul bills.
"Despite what the president or Congress say," the narrator tells us, "their health care proposals do not guarantee you can keep your own doctor." And there’s no guarantee you won’t "wait longer for care," face "rationing," or "lose your insurance," either, she says.
Why not?

Obama and Kenya. Again.

September 3, 2009

We’ve burned through rather a lot of pixels combating the claims of those who deny that Barack Obama is eligible to be president of the United States. He is, by virtue of having been born in Hawaii, as attested to repeatedly by state officials and even by the flagship of conservative publications, the National Review. And, for the 10 percent of you out there who aren’t entirely sure, yes, Hawaii is part of the United States.