Palin given dubious honor of Biggest Lie of 2009

She's a big liar, you betcha!


PolitiFact's Lie of the Year: 'Death panels'
By Angie Drobnic Holan
December 18, 2009 |  PolitiFact

URL: http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2009/dec/18/politifact-lie-year-death-panels/

Ratigan eats Betsy "Death Panel" McCaughey for breakfast

Dylan Ratigan is becoming a legend before our eyes. He is almost O'Reilly-like, which is kind of scary, but instead of telling the inventor of the "death panels" lie to shut up like O'Reilly would, he keeps asking her to answer his questions instead of spouting her prepared talking points! I remember when Ratigan used to only report from the floor of the NYSE, occasionally appearing on the McLaughlin Group. Ratigan serves up "the woman who killed health care," Betsy McCaughey, on a plate then sticks his fork in her. Betsy's only ideas to contain health care costs are eating right, and tort reform. (The Congressional Budget Office said tort reform would decrease health costs by less than 2%.) In other words, she said we pay 2x more than the rest of the developed world because we have too many lawyers and too much fast food.

Thanks to Ratigan, I learned at least two very interesting things. First, that health insurers are given an exemption in states from anti-trust legislation, meaning one insurer can capture a monopoly in the state. That said, I'm not sure that more competition among insurance companies is the answer, since that would mean smaller pools of risk, and less negotiating leverage, and anyway, they are not generating most costs (except admin. overhead), medical professionals are. Ratigan said, "I just want capitalism back! ... I want an end to corporate communism!" Like I said, I'm skeptical, but anyway...

...Second, I learned that American seniors today receive, on average, $3 in Medicare for every $1 that they paid in during their lifetimes ($65,000 paid in vs. $174,000 paid out.) That means that the Greatest Generation and their Boomer kids are technically welfare queens. And they're fighting to keep every dollar at our expense, including the $12 billion annual federal subsidy for "private" Medicare Advantage. For shame!

Morning Meeting with Dylan Ratigan

October 6, 2009 | MSNBC

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Top 10 ridiculous quotes on HC reform

Top 10 Ridiculous Quotes by Health Care Reform Opponents

By Daniel Kurtzman | About.com

As anyone following the hysterical "debate" over health care reform knows, President Obama and his fellow socialists are trying to create death panels in order to pull the plug on grandma and kill off other undesirables, just like Hitler did in Nazi Germany. Or so the wingnuts would have us believe.

Because we like to chronicle and catalog political insanity, here are the 10 most patently ridiculous quotes about health care reform from the likes of Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and Michele Bachmann.

1. "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, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil." —Sarah Palin, in a message posted on Facebook about Obama's health care reform plan, (Source)

2. "Obama's got a health care logo that's right out of Adolf Hitler's playbook … Adolf Hitler, like Barack Obama, also ruled by dictate." —Rush Limbaugh, Aug. 6, 2009 (Source)
3. "People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless." —a July 31 editorial in Investor's Business Daily warning about end-of-life counseling in health care reform. Hawking, in fact, lives in England and has been treated by their National Health Service, which, by his own account, saved his life (Source)

4. "What we have to do today is make a covenant, to slit our wrists, be blood brothers on this thing. This will not pass. We will do whatever it takes." –Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), on what is needed to defeat health care reform, Aug. 31, 2009 (Source)

5. "You have three people in the White House that are in love with eugenics or whatever it is you would call it today. … Please dear God, read history. Please dear God read the truth of what these people have said in their own words, and ask yourself this one question: Do you trust these people enough to give them control over who lives and who dies? Because that's what health care is when you have no other choice but to go to the state." —Glenn Beck, comparing health care reform to Nazi eugenics (Source)

6. "Congress would make it mandatory — absolutely require — that every five years people in Medicare have a required counseling session that will tell them how to end their life sooner." —Betsy McCaughey, former New York lieutenant governor and originator of the "death panel" lie, July 16, 2009 (Source)

7. There is some fear because in the House bill, there is counseling for end-of-life. And from that standpoint, you have every right to fear. ... We should not have a government program that determines if you're going to pull the plug on grandma." —Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Aug. 12, 1009 (Source)

8. "We're gonna have a government rationing body that tells women with breast cancer, 'You're dead.' It's a death sentence." —FOX News Channel's Sean Hannity, June 19, 2009 (Source)

9. "That's why people need to continue to go to the town halls, continue to melt the phone lines of their liberal members of Congress, and let them know, under no certain circumstances will I give the government control over my body and my health care decisions." —Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), a pro-lifer who completely missed the irony of using the same slogan as the pro-choice movement (Source)

10. "Exercise freaks ... are the ones putting stress on the health care system." —Rush Limbaugh, June 12, 2009 (Source)

Rush: Docs shouldn't say the 'd-word' to old people

Rush can't stop himself. He can't stop trying to scare old people, not even when a Republican physician calls in and tells him that simply talking with old people about their end-of-life options, if they want to, is a good thing.

Rush himself is probably planning to live forever. He's probably given $ millions to quacks who will cryogenically freeze him in a metal tube until the cure for fatness or stupidity is discovered, then they'll re-animate him. (The sci-fi irony will be that, in the future, there really will be One World Government that meets everybody's needs; there won't be any war or hunger, no more rich and poor; and so Rush will re-awaken to find himself in Hell on Earth). Or Rush is going to have his head preserved in a bell jar like in Futurama, so that he can go on running his mouth for centuries…. But no matter what, Rush doesn't want to talk to his doctor about what happens if he gets really sick or just plain old. He doesn't want to actually talk about d-d-d-death. Yuck. No way. Mortality is for other people, not for him. Jeez, what a typical spoiled, self-absorbed Baby Booomer he is.

Obamacare is Really "End of Care"

July 30, 2009 | The Rush Limbaugh Show

CALLER: I am a physician and I practice geriatric medicine and I wanted to make a comment on this-every-five-year conversation on advanced care planning. First of all, I'll say that I hope this health care reform bill does not pass. In fact, I'd love to get rid of Medicare altogether. But I think this-every-five-year discussion is actually a good idea. It's something that I do with my patients often, have discussions about who their health care power of attorney should be, their advanced care plan, but I cannot reimburse Medicare for doing that. Medicare won't pay me for that, and so this is actually one piece of the legislation I think is a good idea.

RUSH: Well, if you think it's a good idea, and you want to have death care discussion with your patients and they wish to consent to death care discussions with you, then that's fine. If you want to run your practice that way and your patients are cool with it. But I will be damned if it's going to be become federally mandated law that the government hires a bunch of counselors that has these death care -- as you call it, death care -- discussions, "end-of-life discussions." Really what those discussions are, when you call it "death care" or "end of life," it's "end of care." That's what the counselors are preparing these people for: end of care, 'cause they're getting old and it isn't going to be worth of investment. It's right in the House bill!