There was no shortage of media fact checking after last week’s presidential debate, much of it focused on healthcare, much of it good. Still, reporters left a lot of healthcare “facts” on the table, unexamined, too. Let’s take a look.
The New York Times devoted seven graphs to accurately explaining why Obamacare is not, despite Mitt Romney’s assertions, a government takeover of healthcare. Glenn Kessler, the Pinocchio-dispensing fact-checker at The Washington Post, once again explained what the infamous “$716 billion Medicare cut,” another familiar Romney assertion, is all about. By now most in the media get it: The “cut,” mostly a reduction in Medicare spending growth, falls on providers—not on seniors, who won’t see any cuts to their basic benefits.
On WaPo’s Wonk Blog, Josh Hicks tackled Romney’s claim that no taxes were raised in Massachusetts to pay for reform, a claim that, as he put it, “deserves some context.” Cribbing details from The Boston Globe, Hicks noted that the state, in fact, had to increase tobacco taxes and levy an assessment against hospitals and insurers in order to fund provisions in the law. Romney has made that no-taxes claim before. On Fox News Sunday in late August, Romney claimed he passed health reform in the Bay State without raising taxes. CJR debunked the claim at the time.
From the Los Angeles Times came three posts. One pointed out that Romney’s claim—that the president’s promise that health reform would reduce health insurance premiums by $2,500 has not materialized—was true. Another post focused on Romney’s $716 billion claim, and the third made the point there is no government body that will decide what kinds of treatments patients get—Romney’s claims during the debate to the contrary. (The Independent Payment Advisory Board is supposed to advise Medicare on controlling costs, but the law specifically says the board cannot make “any recommendation to ration healthcare or otherwise restrict benefits or modify eligibility criteria.”
NPR’s blog pretty much rehashed what other news outlets had already fact-checked. Politico went further, actually adding to the fact-checking literature that’s building up. It checked Obama’s claim that shifting Medicaid funding to the states through a block grant was “potentially a 30 percent cut in Medicaid over time.” That’s true, Politico said.
But eager beavers in fact-checking land missed some big ones— Romney whoppers, mostly—and they still need to be addressed.
For starters: toward the end of he debate, Romney explained how he got reform passed in Massachusetts:
We didn’t put people in a position where they’re going to lose the insurance they had and they wanted. Right now the CBO (Congressional Budget Office) says up to 20 million people will lose their insurance as Obamacare goes into effect next year. And likewise a study by McKinsey & Company of American businesses said 30 percent of them are anticipating dropping people from coverage.
Whoa! That needs some serious fact checking. CJR examined it back in March, and found the McKinsey study was flawed and had been immediately discredited by the policy community. In fact, McKinsey walked back its study, saying it “was not intended as a predictive economic analysis of the impact of the Affordable Care Act.”
And when we checked on the CBO study, we learned that the estimate of 20 million people losing employer coverage was a worst-case scenario, which the CBO said wasn’t likely to materialize. These errors, we reported, have not stopped some in the press from repeating them. Nor certain presidential candidates either, it seems.
But for me the biggest whopper of all kind of hides in plain sight. It was Romney’s remark that the US health system “has produced the best health records in the world.” Old canards don’t die easily. Shortly before the debate, pollster Humphrey Tayor spoke to a meeting of New York health reporters and left them with some dismal stats about how bad the system really is.

Ah. So this is why the MSM omitted, caricatured, and flat-out lied about Ron Paul these past few years. Candidate Romney's arguments are easy to "fact-check" against your Dear Leader's because they involve technicalities that fit easily into your Rep v Dem Kabuki match. Ron Paul's arguments are practically impossible to "fact-check" because they question the role of govt and expose the entire system as corrupt, unconstitutional, fraudulent. And the MSM are too lazy and too cowardly and too connected to the system to put the effort in to refute him; same with foreign policy, drug war, TSA, NDAA, bailouts, and on. Thanks, MSM, for delivering to us yet another evil and less-evil. I choose neither, therefore I am not responsible for evil at all. Good luck with George Bush IV, or whoever makes the most BS promises and "gets more votes."
#1 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Mon 8 Oct 2012 at 04:47 PM
Oh yeah, and this: http://youtu.be/bAOTj4x_lY4 LMAO!
I know you MSM types luuuuvvv having Baritt Obamney squaring off against himself.
#2 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Mon 8 Oct 2012 at 05:05 PM
Dan, you really REALLY don want to get started on Paul's approaches to healthcare issues.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mobileweb/2011/09/14/ron-pauls-health-care-campaign-manager-kent-snyder_n_961812.html
http://youtu.be/3qojv1bR-S0
Hope that a church will take care of the preexisting conditioned uninsured because Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security are unconstitutional and "OMG inflation!!" is not workable policy.
And the problem with people who dream utopic and derive unworkable ideas from these dreams is that they get people killed.
#3 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Mon 8 Oct 2012 at 07:48 PM
Who says that's his policy? Oh yeah: the statist MSM and other assorted liars and dupes. The HuffPo article and the YouTube video to which you linked are prime examples of the distortions, omissions, and flat-out lies I mentioned above.
-- The comments below the HuffPo article, by themselves, destroy the author's fallacious premises; but, for a more thorough demolition, see these comments and this article. (And how grotesquely cynical of the author to even go there. *smh*)
-- Besides the YouTube video's negative overall effect on your position, the TheYoungTurks editor wrote a particularly audacious lie about Ron Paul, in the description below the video: "Ron Paul Admits He's [sic] cut Social Security & Meidcare [sic] if elected President: 04:42." In fact, RP said the opposite: (1) he'd cut overseas spending to help save those programs, and would not try to phase out Medicare or SS without a consensus of the people through Congress; (2) though the programs are unconstitutional, they'll eventually end rather for economic reasons if fundamental changes are not made. This has been his stance all along.
So, Thimbles, are you distorting RP's position because you are an ignorant product of MSM propaganda or are you just being malicious? Or both?
#4 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Tue 9 Oct 2012 at 09:14 AM
Only in Lieberman Liberal La La Land does a HALF A TRILLION DOLLAR CUT in payments to health care providers have absolutely no impact on benefits...
See, in Lieberman Liberal La La Land, doctors, nurses, lab techs, janitors, drivers, etc.. They all just start working for free when the Gubmint cuts their pay by a HALF A TRILLION DOLLARS and dole out health care to Medicare recipients out of the goodness of their hearts.
The drug companies dole out free pills. Cafeterias dole out free meals. Free Band-Aids for all!
#5 Posted by padikiller, CJR on Tue 9 Oct 2012 at 11:00 AM
"The comments below the HuffPo article, by themselves, destroy the author's fallacious premises; but, for a more thorough demolition, see these comments and this article. (And how grotesquely cynical of the author to even go there. *smh*)"
Did Synder choose to not have insurance?
Did Snyder have to wait until he was in the emergency room to get care?
Who paid his $400,000 bill after he got care?
Ron Paul's charity brigade got together maybe $50 measly grand. The rest of the liability fell on Snyder's mother. The hospital will probably write off that debt one way or another, whether they choose to pursue the family to bankruptcy or not.
And that's not workable policy.
It was to get cases like Kent's off the hospitals' books that hospitals took that deal with medicare. It was worth 700 billion to them to get more coverage and more preventative care.
You guys need a little less of that old man and a little more of this old guy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DChD5NPgA7Q
Who's been doing it right, on the right topics against the right people, for decades:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPh-qGcYruw
You don't think the young turks vid where Paul says he will give people the option to let those unconstitutional programs wither and die while yapping about hyper-inflationy austrian blardy blar which is ALWAYS around the corner is fair.
What I think is fair is that Paul has the right course for the wrong reasons on foreign policy, domestic surveillance, and the intrusive nature of the police state. It is admirable that he goes against his own conservative leadership on these issues.
What he believes domestically is free market fairy tale garbage. Money is a government created, government enforced medium of exchange. Consumers need to be able to trust in the basic standards of the market place before they can make a decision to purchase a product. Unaccountable private power cannot be allowed to fill the void of accountable democratic governance cut through the bone.
You Paul folks keep relying on faith and hope in individuals that they will all do the right thing in the absence of accountability. That does not happen. Human nature doesn't work that way. When you rely on churches and charities to do the work we should do as a people, that work does not get done. When you rely on the good nature of bankers and traders to protect the investor from risk and good jobs from off-shoring, that protection does not get done. When you rely on the absence of malice from the public to secure the wealth in your bank, you get robbed.
And when you make the argument that the problem with the health care system is that it just needs to be more free to make more profit, then the system squeezes blood from the people who can make profit and lets the people who can't make profit die.
So the question you have to ask is "Are you okay with this?" and, if not then, "How would you change the system so it doesn't act in this way?"
What's your solution? And really think about this, don't just post another Robamney gif kthx.
#6 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Tue 9 Oct 2012 at 02:45 PM
Okay, Thimbles. Keep your religious faith in fantastical ideals of a socialistic utopia, with chocolate waterfalls and unicorns that poop golden lava. Keep believing that Bernie Sanders is God incarnate and that Obama is his misunderstood, bastard son. [/sarcasm]
See? I, too, can do the Thimbles Shuffle!
Seriously though. Go back an rethink your first reply. This time, do it w/o ignoring the facts that destroy your position, and w/o using distortion, fallacy, etc. Then, I might take you seriously again.
#7 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Wed 10 Oct 2012 at 11:29 AM
"Keep believing that Bernie Sanders is God incarnate and that Obama is his misunderstood, bastard son."
Okaaay, I brought up Bernie once and therefore I supposedly believe he's God and you bring up Ron Paul in every second post and you're supposedly the free thinker...
Suuure dude.
(ps. more than half the time Bernie is in opposition to Obama:
http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=59a8bffa-48dc-499f-889c-1c3cd3cc62e0
http://billmoyers.com/segment/bernie-sanders-on-the-independent-in-politics/
but whatever)
#8 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Wed 10 Oct 2012 at 06:16 PM
Getting back to my question though, which you avoided:
"the problem with the health care system is that [when it's just left] free to make more profit, then the system squeezes blood from the people who can make [it] profit and lets the people who can't make [it]... die.
What's your solution?"
You or Paul got an answer for that? Because your answers on this subject won't just be sh*t filling the air for politico to pick the corn out of.
The words on this topic have serious goddamn consequences and deserve some serious goddamn thought. These are people, vulnerable people, we are talking about here and how we choose to handle them defines us as people.
What kind of people are you and Paul? What is your solution?
#9 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Wed 10 Oct 2012 at 06:20 PM