Redstate.com is another conservative website that publishes a lot of items attempting to prove that PolitiFact (PF) is liberally biased. One particular article aimed at PF’s Lie of the Year, the Republican claim that “Obamacare” is a government takeover of healthcare. It used Bryan White’s Sublime Bloviations review of it as most of its support.
It was particularly funny how the writer “Freedoms Truth” (of Austin, Texas—another Weston Hicks?) referred to it without actually quoting it or using it in his own arguments; probably because he had as hard a time “wrapping himself around” Bryan’s sentence construction as everyone else does. He loosely re-words probably the only statement of Bryan’s he could understand, the false choice message that any increased regulation = government takeover.
And again, I have to ask, where the line is drawn as to where the “partially” regulated private sector insurance ends and where government take over begins. I also am told there is no scaled line or measure 1-100%: "Obamacare" is not even close to a single-payer system, medicare for all, or total nationalization. Yet I am supposed to believe they are all one in the same; I suppose it’s due to that black/white only conservative view, with no room for shades of grey.
To quote Freedoms Truth, this is his “truth”:
Many lies have been told about ObamaCare, but most have been told by Obama and the sponsors and supporters. They lied about getting to keep your care (nope, regulations have forced millions to lose coverage they had, from children-only to medicare advantage), lied about the deficit impact (it is going to cost trillions when fully implemented), lied about ‘death panels’ (denied they existed then tweaked the policy on QALY that was in question), lied about alternatives (claimed there was none), lied about constitutionality (denied the fact that Obamacare mandate really is NOT in the Constitution at all and an honest Judge - like happened this week - would rule it unconstitutional).
Let’s take these *lies* one at a time: “They lied about getting to keep your care—nope, regulations have forced millions to lose the coverage they had….” Well, you can’t have it both ways, Freedom. You Republicans have said that illegal immigrants will be covered by “Obamacare”—so they will be covered and not those millions of regular citizens? Sounds like Freedom’s only worry is about the welfare queen getting another limo, so to speak. But he provides no backup to this claim. One would think that the rule (or regulation!) for insurance to include children up to 26 years of age in a family policy would bring in more children, not less. I’m assuming Freedom got this direction from the Republican “Pledge to America” which reads on Page 26: “The Obama Administration has been forced to acknowledge that the new law will force some 87 million Americans to drop their current coverage.” Factcheck.org, another “biased source” (I can’t seem to find any that meets Freedom’s approval except for Heritage.org) reports that this is a misrepresentation.
