Frum: Seniors Are Already in Public Plan – Medicare – Govt ‘Could Kill Them All Now If It Wanted to’

A poll last week about who believes what lies about health-insurance reform proved to be a damning indictment of Fox News and of the insurance lobby’s use of the Republican Party’s propaganda machine to disinform the public about reforms.

“The thing that is so wacky about this debate is that it is already true that virtually everybody over 65 is enrolled in a public plan. The government could kill them all now if it wanted to.”
– David Frum

The NBC poll found that a whopping 75 percent of Fox viewers, versus 45 percent of the population overall, believe that Democratic reforms include provisions that would require senior citizens to be evaluated for euthanasia by “death panels.”

This lie, which was first floated by health-industry lobbyist Betsy McCaughey and Facebook blogger Sarah Palin and has been heavily promoted on Fox, has been disproved by non-partisan evaulators like Factcheck.org. And yet, like the good soldiers that they are, Republican pols and pundits have fallen in line to promote this disinformation to their followers.

The latest is Sen. John McCain (R-Maverick), who flushed away what was left of his credibility in an interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week” yesterday:

STEPHANOPOULOS: The president … says that the debate has been infected by falsehoods. And probably the most notorious one is the one made by your former running mate, Sarah Palin, who said that his bill would encourage death panels that would encourage euthanasia. He called that an extraordinary lie and he is right about that, isn’t he?

MCCAIN: Well, I think that what we are talking about here is do – are we going to have groups that actually advise people as these decisions are made later in life and …

STEPHANOPOULOS: That’s not in the bill.

MCCAIN: But – it’s been taken out, but the way that it was written made it a little bit ambiguous. And another thing …

STEPHANOPOULOS: I don’t think that’s correct, Senator. The bill, all it said was that, if a patient wanted to have a Medicare consultation about end-of-life issues, they could have it at their request and the doctor would get reimbursed for it, no panel …

MCCAIN: There was a provision in the bill that talks about a board that would decide the most effective measures to provide health care for people, OK? Now, we had amendments, we republican have said that in no way would that affect the decisions that the patients would make and their families. That was rejected by the Democrats and the health committee.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But that’s not a death panel.

MCCAIN: So what does – what does that lead to? Doesn’t that lead to a possibility, at least opens the door to a possibility of rationing and decisions made such are made in other countries?

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, every single independent group that looked at it said it just wasn’t true.

MCCAIN: Well, then why did the Democrats turn down our amendments that clarified that none of the decisions that would be made by this board would in any way affect depriving of needed treatments for patients? I don’t know why they did that then.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So you think Sarah Palin was right?

MCCAIN: Look, I don’t think they were called death panels, don’t get me wrong. I don’t think – but on the best treatment procedures part of the bill, it does open it up to decisions being made as far – that should be left – those choices left to the patient and the individual. That’s what I think is pretty clear, which was a different section of the bill.

Of course, nothing has been taken out (or put in the Senate bill) in the past few weeks because, as McCain and Stephanopoulos — and even viewers at home — know, Congress is on vacation. McCain is just lying.

Meanwhile, one lone Republican voice did speak the truth about death panels on a Sunday show yesterday. On CNN, David Frum, the Canadian conservative who was a speech writer for George W. Bush, cut through the pretzel illogic in his party’s propaganda:

The thing that is so wacky about this debate, of course, is that it is already true that everybody, or virtually everybody over 65, is enrolled in a public plan. The government could kill them all now if it wanted to.

That’s right. It is not only a lie that the Democrats’ bills include a death panel provision, such a provision is not even necessary. Nearly every senior in the country is already signed up with a “public plan” — i.e., Medicare — so the government could start forcing euthanasia now, if, as Frum puts it, it wanted to.

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