Prophecy Fulfilled...Ha ha!

Well, I guess they did it, as I predicted about a month ago.  I watched Angie Drobnic-Holan talk about it on Jake Tapper's Show on CNN (above pic is a snippet).  Now, I must say, if she's going to say previous rulings on Obama saying the same thing should  "both be Pants on Fire" I suppose she could go back and change the previous Half True to Pants on Fire so my conservative counterpart doesn't have a cow?  She explained it as a progression from an inconclusive to a verifiable, just as I did in my post. 

 

Anyway, this year it seemed pretty obvious and now I kind of see how they pick them:  notoriety associated with the claim seems to hold more importance than prevalence of fact-checking the claim; that is, even if it's repeated quite a bit (as well as fact-checked), if there's a lot of publicity surrounding it, or I suppose you might call it, getting a lot of Lexis-Nexis results may matter more.

 

But Obama's had a bad year in 2013, and perhaps PolitiFact wanted to give it some credence.

PolitiFact 2013 Lie of the Year?

As the end of the year approaches, I've started thinking about PolitiFact's 2013 Lie of the Year. Are they even going to do it again this year? Was it Bill Adair's "thing" and not Angie Drobnic-Holan's? Well, if they do, it seems to me there's one very, very strong candidate. That's Obama's repeated statement that under Obamacare, "if you like your current insurance plan, you can keep it"....conveniently changed to... "you can keep (your plan) if it hasn’t changed since the law passed." Making it Pants on Fire.

Let's look at the history of how PolitiFact rated the "if you like your current insurance plan, you can keep it" statement from Obama:

During Obama's campaign in 2008, he was actually given a True: but at that time, his vision of that which came to be known as Obamacare was much different than what it turned out to be. Things were a bit different at the fledgling PolitiFact as well, as this True ruling was a brief 267 words. The important paragraph which shows how things had changed was this one:

Obama has said he would like his plan to be universal, in that everyone has health care coverage. But currently it includes a mandate only for children. Obama has said that he did not include a mandate for adults so as not to penalize people with modest incomes.

This was a far cry from what it developed into after he was elected president.  "The mandate for adults" was practically the heart of the healthcare proposal which survived to the law itself, meaning that, at the time,"keeping your healthcare plan" was more likely than not. 

In 2009, before the ACA was even passed, and oops, Obama said it again. But now there was a mandate for adults  This was when there was a lot of debate in congress over adding a "public option", a sort of Medicare for those under age 65, and the details had still not been finalized.  This time the Truth-o-Meter throttled down half way on Obama:

Until the legislation gets closer to a final stage, it's difficult to say how many employers will likely opt to change coverage. But clearly some change is coming. It's not realistic for Obama to make blanket statements that "you" will be able to "keep your health care plan." It seems like rhetoric intended to soothe people that health care reform will not be overly disruptive. But one of the points of reform is to change the way health care works right now. So we rate Obama's statement Half True.

Fast forwarding to 2013, as the reality of Obamacare rolled out, he was prudently advised he had better "tweak" it and put some caveats on it...like, if your insurance has the coverages the ACA requires, you can keep it.  If your insurance company won't upgrade it, then you might get cancelled...or your rates adjusted accordingly. Obama chose to back peddle, however: "What we said was, you can keep (your plan) if it hasn't changed since the law passed."

So it went from let's give Obama the benefit of the doubt (True), to we don't have enough information (Half True) to "oh no you don't!" (Pants on Fire).

The qualifiers having made it a Pants on Fire lie, and with PolitiFact in a special report including a compilation of 37 recorded occasions where Obama said it without the qualifier, what we now have is a pretty humongous lie. Along with the start-up failures of the healthcare.gov website we have quite a Lie of the Year combustible combination.

Last year, a Republican got the honor, and it was for something that was capturing the public's attention at the height of the presidential campaign. But this year, the Democrats are over due, and it might be okay to go back to the subject of healthcare, since that's dominated the Lie of the Year position since PolitiFact created the award. 

 

The announcement is right around the corner, and the timing could not be better. So it's my prediction. We'll see in a few weeks.

Truth Index+: The PolitiFact Saga on Obamacare

In the history of PolitiFact rulings, from its beginnings in 2007 to the election of 2012, the most covered subject was healthcare. PolitiFact currently has 42 pages of rulings related to healthcare. While there's a lot of overlap with other subjects (particularly fiscal ones) as designated in every ruling, my counts for 6,535 PolitiFact rulings show healthcare and Medicare were the "main" subject(s) for over 10 percent of them.

 

In 2007, the very first characterization of a Democrat national healthcare reform plan as "socialized medicine" which earned a False was from budding 2008 presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani. PolitiFact called it "pure hyperbole."   In early 2008, eventual 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney was the first person fact-checked for what would become the PolitiFact 2010 Lie of the Year--that "Obamacare" (the meme not yet invented for healthcare reform) was a "government take over" of the healthcare system.

Click to enlarge:  Low number of Democrat rulings caused larger swings

There were very few fact-checks (12) evenly divided between party on healthcare reform as it related to Obama's proposals in 2007 and 2008, compared to what happened after he became president. So the Truth Index+ at that time did not tell us much. Indeed, as I noted in a previous post on what caused the big increase in Pants on Fire assignments to Republicans, the year 2009 was a very big ruling year when it came to healthcare reform and Obamacare. In that year, over 1/4 of PolitiFact rulings related to that topic.

Obamacare, however, was the leading PolitiFact ruling topic in 2009: healthcare was the subject of over 30% of the rulings with about 27% relating to healthcare reform, and made up over 1/3 of the Pants on Fire. With the majority coming from Republicans, this was for the most part what drove up the Pants on Fire factor against them.

The year 2010 was not as important in terms of PolitiFact's concentration on Obamacare; it was a pivotal year, however, in terms of the Republicans doubling down on attacking it. Republicans dominated on dubious healthcare claims as 64 fact-checks brought their Obamacare Truth Index+ down to under 34. It continued into 2011 and worsened in 2012. The number of Obamacare-related rulings doubled from 2011 to 2012, when it seemed as if the Republicans thought the public dislike of it would get them the same type of election results as in 2010.

Tchotchkes: Papa John's Doesn't Deliver

Grading PolitiFact *Liberal*-Style: Pelosi and the ACA

Nancy Pelosi, according to a Truth Index/Politi-Score review done on her last year, is sort of the Democrat version of Michele Bachmann—she has a penchant for making way-out, almost indefensible statements that often catch her Pants on Fire. In this PolitiFact ruling, she claimed that under the new healthcare law (“Obamacare”) “everybody will have lower rates, better quality care and better access." I thought I’d take a look…and found it was “defensible” enough for Grading PolitiFact Liberal Style.

PolitFact’s writer Jon Greenberg gives two caveats to why the “everybody” isn’t true. One is that there’s a “catch” to using averages: some people would pay more than the average, some less. Yes, but if everyone “on average” pay less, they’re still paying less “overall.”

The second caveat, however, is even more “defensible.”

But in its study, the CBO number crunchers actually predict that a large number of people will want to buy better insurance. They would opt for a lower deductible, lower co-pays and a wider range of benefits. That personal choice would cause their total premiums to rise some 27 to 30 percent. For a policy covering just one person, the difference would be about $600 a year, before accounting for any of the subsidies the law provides; over half the people in the individual market would qualify for those subsidies.

PolitiFact’s Greenberg did not consider the “value” of what the person who chose to buy a more expensive policy was trading up to. For example, if the better policy had lower co-pays and deductibles, and the person buying the upgraded policy made use of them, those co-pays and deductibles could more than make up for the price paid. Or, as explained by one writer to PolitiFact in a recent mailbag issue:

I have a strong objection to one element of your analysis. Your second caveat claims that some people will pay more because the ‘discounted’ rate will entice them to purchase better coverage. I fail to see how this has anything to do with the veracity of Pelosi's statement, or lack thereof. Pelosi used the words ‘lower rates.’ Just because people buy more insurance does not necessarily mean the rate increases, since ‘rate,’ in this case, means level of services divided by cost. If people buy better insurance, they pay more, but their level of services increases as well. When people hear ‘lower rates,’ they assume you're talking apples-to-apples for level of service. It may very well be that in light of your first caveat, Pelosi's statement is still False. But the second half of your argument is bogus.

Finally, there’s the underlying argument of “something’s better than nothing"--even if everybody doesn't use it, it's available to everybody. Access to insurance for pre-existing conditions, encouraging preventative care by eliminating cost sharing, allowing young adults to stay on their parent’s plan until they turn 26 years old, closing the Medicare prescription drug donut hole, these are but a few of the many improvements to our healthcare system with ACA.

Often when PolitiFact is evaluating a statement and finds one part arguable (“average coverage”) and another part having some truth (because “rate” and “value” were not taken into consideration), and finally, deem the underlying argument (it should be better than what we have now!) as having truth, they would rate a statement, at least, an inconclusive Half True. But not Democrat Nancy Pelosi talking about the Affordable Care Act. Conservative bias, anyone?

Grading PolitiFact *Liberal*-Style: Crash on Delivery

In economic terms, the healthcare industry is somewhat like a utility. It has price inelasticity of demand because of necessity: people will pay whatever price is demanded when they require healthcare. The “supply” (medical professionals) is inelastic as well (due to scarcity). The reason insurance is required is that many times when care is needed, the cost can be so prohibitively expensive it can bankrupt you. To put this in layman’s terms (from another sort of Rude Pundit by the name of Cranky Media Guy): ["inelasticities" added]

Health care is not (and cannot become) a free market for two reasons:

1) Supply is artificially restricted [inelastic] by the government and the AMA. The scarcity of medical care drives up the cost. This is completely artificial. You might say “Well, they have to! You can’t have just anyone practicing medicine!” Fine, I agree, but that means that health care CANNOT EVER be a free market, because of the artificial restriction of supply.

2) Not only is supply artificially low, but buyers are under EXTREME compulsion to buy. [price inelasticity of demand] …What, that thought never occurred to you!?!? If you need lifesaving medical care, you either get it or you die!

This is why almost every other industrialized country in the world has some model of universal healthcare—those countries recognized that the healthcare industry does not (and cannot) operate by free market principles. It takes up more of our GDP than any other country by a wide margin, and continues to take up a higher and higher percentage (in September, 2011, it reached 18%), which is a serious national problem in and of itself:

But if health care spending continues on its same trajectory, the United States will reach the point — probably several decades from now — where every penny of the annual increase in gross domestic product would have to go for health care. There would be less and less money for other things, like education, environmental protection, scientific research and national security, that may be equally or more important to the well-being of society.

That all being said, let’s take a look at some of the reasons that John Boehner’s statement that the U.S. has the “best healthcare delivery system in the world” never reaches its destination, even with the help of PolitiFact.

According to a Harvard Medical School Study (American Journal of Public Health, December 2009), lack of health insurance is associated with as many as 44,789 deaths per year in the United States and people without health insurance had a 40 percent higher risk of death than those with private health insurance, a result of being unable to obtain necessary medical care. In 2010, the percentage of Americans without health insurance was 16.3%, or 49.9 million uninsured people (source: US Census Bureau). It should be over 50 million by now.

And what are some of our healthcare outcomes? Not too good:

In 2005, the United States ranked 30th in infant mortality. In 2011, we rank #50.

Life expectancy at birth in the United States is an estimated 78.49 years, which ranks 50th in highest total life expectancy compared to other countries ( Source: CIA Factbook [2011]).

We have the highest percentage of obese (30.6%) (And guess where it’s the highest in the U.S.?).

We are #13 for most deaths from heart disease per 100,000 people (average is 102.9 and the U.S. is 106.5).

Truth Index by Subject since 2011

In a previous post on the subject of guns, I had written a huge paragraph on the overlap of subject assignment, which I ended up taking out when I realized that all I have to do at the PolitiFact website is click the label link for the subject to get all the rulings. But it’s still easier to do it on a spreadsheet because it’s all on one page right in front of me.

Anyway, the top ten subjects by order of number of occurrences (i.e., because of that ubiquitous selection bias) are shown in the chart below: They constitute roughly one half (48%) of all the rulings for which I kept track of the subject, for all of 2011 and the first half of 2012, 1,405 rulings out of 2,923 total. The chart shows the subjects highest count to lowest (starting with “Economy” with 234 rulings, working down to “Environment” with 67 rulings). Then it shows the Truth Index for Democrats and Republicans for each subject with the Truth Index score labeling each bar.

Click to enlarge: On the subject "Federal Budget" Republicans calculated to a "zero" Truth Index.

The chart does not show the total breakdown or average for these top ten: of the 1,405 rulings, 843 (60%) were from Republicans and 488 (about 35%) were from Democrats, with the remaining 5% Independent, Non-Partisan or unknown. The Republicans had an overall Truth Index for these top ten subjects of negative 21.5 (compared to negative 24.1 for all 2,935 rulings), while the Democrats had a positive 4.4 for these top ten (compared to a negative 1 for all 2,935 rulings).

The conclusions: while the economy was the most covered subject, in terms of number of rulings and Truth Index divergence between Democrats and Republicans, healthcare was by far the worst and most lied-about subject, especially by Republicans. For the year 2011, healthcare was also Number 1, and I’m sure this continued trend has something to do with their keeping the public turned against that dreaded “Obamacare.”

You can also check my recent post of some of the more repeated statements on the topic of healthcare, as well as PolitiFact rulings for which FactCheck.Org reached the same conclusion.

The Republicans were ahead Truth-Index-wise of the Democrats two subjects, jobs and “candidate bio”. Job creation has been lackluster under Obama, and so there may be a little stretching of the truth on the topic of jobs on the part of Obama and other Democrats to make it seem better than it is. As the political campaigns for 2012 start to take shape, “candidate bio”—something said about the candidate's opponent, his background or history—has been getting more attention for fact-checking verificiation, and here it seems the Republicans are a wee bit more “truthier” than Democrats.

The largest divergence between Truth Indexes without considering count, however, was on the topic of energy. I filtered out three “underlying reasons” just looking at the statements which I labeled Drill (Baby Drill), Gas (prices), and Keystone (Pipeline). When I looked at the “affiliation” list after executing the filter for these three items, I didn’t have to do anything more: there were 25, and they were ALL Republican statements, with a combined Truth Index of very negative 66. One of my favorites was a Pants on Fire for a Florida senatorial candidate by the name of Dave Weldon who said that there was no wildlife in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge—sort of sounds like someone saying Ulysses S. Grant isn’t buried in Grants Tomb. Or a False from PolitiFact Ohio for a statement by Representative Mike Dovilla that Obama’s policy on the Keystone Pipeline was thwarting the ability to (immediately!) reduce gas prices.

Other than that, my readers can reach their own conclusions.

Tchotchkes: Sham Wow Healthcare

Brought to you by Mildly Relevant News from Cleveland, Ohio

(Plus help on tax cut addiction!)

PolitiFact vs. FactCheck.Org: Healthcare

I don’t know if the Supreme Court upholding “Obamneycare” is going to make it any less worthy of fact-checking by PolitiFact (PF), but it’s apparent that although the law has not been that popular at the polls, the topic is a very popular one for fact-checking. In a way, I might not predict a Lie of the Year in as much as a Topic of the Year, which would be all the untruths and various exaggerations (or as fellow blogger Jon Perr calls them, killer lies) surrounding the ACA , its associated Medicare and Medicaid, as well as its overlap to other topics such as the economy, jobs, taxes, the deficit and even education (student loans).  I’ve sorted out a little over 70 PolitiFact rulings relating to it since the beginning of the year.

Here are a few things “ObamaScare” is allegedly going to do (according to Republicans):

• Kill jobs, 800,000 (actually predicted in 2011), or “across America”  including 1,000 medical device jobs in the Tennessee area

• Cause up to 20 to 30 million people to lose their health insurance, including seniors

• Raise taxes (raises 19 taxes and is largest tax increase in history of world)

• Slap Americans and/or small businesses with $500 billion in new taxes and penalties

• Cut $500 billion from Medicare to pay for it (or heck, just end Medicare)

• Cut student loan programs (or over-charge students) to help pay for it

• Add trillions to our national debt, or if repealed, save $95 billion (a year)

• And the usual, ever more claims about death panels and a government take-over;

• And the wackiest, a claim about an "Obamacare slush fund” for neutering pets? (by who else but Allen West [R-FL]).

A few (maybe one?) of the above were ruled Half True, the rest less, much less, most False or Pants on Fire. Click the link(s) to find out and read the details.  Some of these are covered below, which link to the findings of both PolitiFact and FactCheck.

And a pox on those who all somehow cast the “critical vote” on “Obamacare” or to supposedly cut $500 billion from Medicare for it:

• Florida Senator Bill Nelson (by U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 60-Plus Association and superPAC American Commitment)
• Ohio Congressional candidate Betty Sutton (by opponent Jim Renacci).   In all fairness, she accused him of something similar.
• Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown ( by the National Republican Senatorial Committee)
• Virginia Senatorial candidate Tim Kaine (by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and superPAC American Crossroads)

One of my most popular posts has been comparing PolitiFact rulings to fact-checks on the same topic by FactCheck.Org. So, back by popular demand, here is a compilation of 2012 fact-checks relating to “Obamneycare”—some of the repetitions included as well.

Statement	FactCheck	PolitiFact
Rush Limbaugh: "Obamacare is the largest tax increase in the history of the world."  (Also similarly stated by superPAC American Commitment)	"Despite all these uncertainties, one thing is abundantly clear.  There's no way the ACA's tax and other revenue increases come close to being the largest in U.S. history."	Pants on Fire:  "Limbaugh's inflated rhetoric takes a wrong claim and puts it into the realm of the ridiculous."
U.S. Chamber of Commerce:  "Obamacare will kill jobs and limit further job creation."	"At the end of last year we listed this overblown claim as one of the 'Whoppers of 2011' right up there with the Democratic counter-claim that Republicans were out to 'end' Medicare."	False:  The Chamber of Commerce has failed to prove that it will, and the best projections we've seen, based on how the law is actually written, do not suggest that the law will 'kill' jobs.
Tom Price (R-GA) House Republican Policy Committee Chairman:  "CBO projection estimates that the law [Obamacare] will cost $1.76 trillion over 10 years."	“The notion that the new CBO report shows costs doubling is wrong."	False:  "When you do the math correctly, the gross cost projection increased by less than 9 percent." MPR PoliGraph also found a similar claim by Kurt Bills (R-MN) Misleading.
Mitt Romney:  "Obamacare takes $500 billion out of Medicare and funds Obamacare." (or "steals it" according to Michele Bachmann in 2011).	“But that's not a slashing of the current Medicare budget, as viewers may be led to believe." (Here's FactCheck.Org's other review of the same.)	Half True:  "So while the health care law reduces the amount of future spending growth in Medicare, the law doesn't cut Medicare."
Crossroads GPS:  "Obamacare raises 18 different taxes."	"But that's dishonest nonsense.  Only a few of the tax changes in the new health care law will fall on families making under $250,000 a year..."	Mostly False:  "The Crossroads ad wrongly implies that people of modest means are getting hit with 18 tax increases because of the health care law."
Mitt Romney:  "Up to 20 million will lose insurance they like and want to keep."	“This is another exaggerated claim that we have written about before, most recently last month....The 20 million figure comes from a March 2012 CBO report, but critics of the health care law have misused it."	False:  "That number is cherry-picked, and he's wrong to describe it as only including people who 'like' their coverage, since many of those 20 million will be leaving employer coverage voluntarily for better options."
Rick Santorum / Paul Krugman:  "RomneyCare" was the blueprint for "ObamaCare."	"There are a number of similarities between the state and national plans, and there are several differences."	Mostly True:  "So it seems that there's broad agreement that, despite some operational differences, the broad structure of the Massachusetts health care plan is quite similar to that in the U.S. Senate bill."
Mitt Romney:  "Repealing Obamacare saves $95 billion a year."	"But that only accounts for spending in the law, not spending cuts and revenue-raising provisions that potentially save even more...That makes Romney's claim misleading and, at best, inflated.	False:  "Because of the revenue sources that the law established, repealing it actually adds significantly to the deficit over the long haul, according to the CBO."
Rick Santorum: "Americans 'over-whelmingly' oppose healthcare mandate." Mitt Romney: "Most Americans want to get rid of Obamacare.”	"So, Romney and others would be correct to say that some polls show most Americans -- or at least most voters -- favor repeal.  But not all polls."	Mostly True: Opinion on the health care law is more unfavorable than favorable, but not over-whelmingly...Objection to the individual mandate, however, is resounding."



Sidebar: Is Broccoli Like Health Insurance?

Lil White Lies: The Thief Shouting Robber

Eric Levine of the blog Content in Reality correctly analyzed the “professed bias” of Bryan White and Jeff Dyberg’s blog PolitiFact Bias with a story about two dogs he named Rex and Dex:

One could theoretically argue that one political party has made a disproportionately higher number of false claims than the other, and that this is subsequently reflected in the distribution of ratings on the PolitiFact site. However, there is no evidence offered by PolitiFact that this is their calculus in decision-making." Yet they don't look for evidence that their [PolitiFact Bias’] explanation is the better one. To show the fallacy in this kind of thinking, let me present an analogy: Let's say i have two dogs that roam free in my house all day, Rex and Dex. I come home one day to find my couch clawed to pieces. I cannot find evidence that Rex did it, so I assume Dex did it (even though I found no evidence specifically pointing to Dex). This is exactly the same fallacy they employ. They don't specifically have evidence of a Republican tendency towards falsehoods so they assume it must be a Politifact tendency towards liberal bias. Like I noted earlier, the article did not randomly chose articles.

So to extend Levine’s canine example of Rex and Dex, it can be applied likewise to the logic that Grading PolitiFact employs when poster Bryan White says that Pat Boone’s statement about Medicare “rationing care to pay for wasteful spending” cannot possibly be Pants on Fire false as determined by PolitiFact, but “somewhat accurate when considered objectively.”

Republican "Death Panel"

Let’s say one of my older kids brings home two dogs, one named Rex from Red’s Pets and one named Dex from Blue’s Pets. I find that both dogs have fleas, but Rex has fleas and a bit of mange. I can see they both have had the infestations for a while. I go visit Red’s Pets and before telling him the problems with Rex I admit I’ve been to Blue’s Pets. The owner of Red’s Pets (Red) proclaims,” you don’t want to buy a dog at Blue’s Pets, they all have fleas.”

In this statatement from Red, the implication is that his dogs don’t have them. Yet Rex is actually in worse shape than Dex. Yes, Blue’s pets have fleas, but is Red’s statement a credible one?

In this case, Pat Boone is the owner of Red’s Pets. ALL the dogs have fleas—and his dogs have not just fleas but mange, but he’s telling you only his competitors’ dogs have fleas as if his dogs didn't.

Taken in context, it’s clear Pat Boone was fear mongering seniors about their Medicare, and not only that, misleading them about the alternative (to both Medicare and "wasteful spending"), which was worse….much worse.

Grading PolitiFact author Bryan White’s problem is that he does not (or refuses to) recognize that rationing exists systemically for any scarce resource, and that America’s method of rationing healthcare is very poor given what we spend as a percentage of GDP. ACA is meant to ration….more rationally, but not in the context Pat Boone was conveying.

The healthcare market is NOT a free market. It is similar to a utility: the supply is severely constricted (as one of my economics professors told my class, the most powerful union in the world is the AMA) and everyone is compelled to use it, especially in an emergency. While American healthcare in general is rationed by employment and cost, Medicare is rationed by age and price (and employment through retirement benefits): Simply put, Medicare Part A is major medical, which pays 80%, and is “free” once one reaches the age of 65, Part B is for outpatient services, for which a monthly premium is required (now about $100 monthly). Medicare pays 80% over a deductible; which means, for most people, a “Medi-Gap” insurance policy must be purchased (or is provided as an employer benefit) to cover the other 20%.

The issue with Pat Boone’s stating that a board will ration care is not just the context in which it was used, but the “pot calling the kettle black” (the Thief shouting Robber) implications of it. Unfortunately, the IPAB  provides the Republicans an easy target at which it can shoot criticisms. The systemic rationing of healthcare is often also referred to as “covert” which makes it easy to pretend that it didn’t exist until a board of experts was created with ACA to recommend cost containment measures.

Recall what happened last year when Paul Ryan came up with a plan “to end Medicare as we know it” (PolitiFact’s 2011 Lie of the Year). It basically turned Medicare over to the insurance companies and gave people what amounted to insurance discount coupons (“premium support”). Systemically, there is no doubt that this would be a much more drastic rationing method (some estimate as many as 1 million additional people would be removed from the Medicare rolls, i.e., denied treatment), and obviously people caught on as complaints mounted, and Ryan quietly re-drew the plan to “include” Medicare as we have it today.

Politi-Score: Three Debates, Part 2

Before a review of some of the rulings made on statements in the recent three Republican debates, I thought it might be a good idea to present a topic breakdown.

Click to enlarge:  Healthcare/Medicare, jobs, social security and the debt ceiling made up 66% of the fact-checked topics in the debates.

The Number One Topic of fact-checking interest was Healthcare/Medicare, followed by Jobs and then Social Security. Most reviewed Topic Number 4, the Debt Ceiling, was a one-man, or I should say, one-woman topic, as all the rulings were on Michele Bachmann, centered on her determined-to-be-false “Obama blank check” claims, mostly made during the first debate in Ames. She also Politi-Scored a hefty negative on this topic at -88. Including Bachmann’s topic of the debt ceiling, these four topics made up two-thirds of those fact-checked from the debates.

Healthcare/Medicare, besides being the most fact-checked, had one of the most negative Politi-Scores at a slightly-worse-than-Mostly-False -61. Healthcare/Medicare was also a topic dominated by Michele Bachmann, with her making 11 of the 16 statements fact-checked and the rest divided between Rick Perry and Mitt Romney (oh, and a single one by Tim Pawlenty).

There were a few miscellaneous topics that were specialties of certain debaters. A good example is the Federal Budget, which consisted of a statement by Newt Gingrich (his contention that he balanced it four years in a row, determined to be a misleading claim by the fact-checkers). Another one was Border Security and Rick Perry’s challenging claims that Obama made about it at El Paso, Texas, which PolitiFact found to be Half True and the other fact-checkers, misleading.

So now we have a pretty good over-view of the fact-checking side of the three debates. For a heads up on the next item of interest, I’ll note that there were 51 fact-checks representing 21 statements where the fact-check was re-covered, or duplicated. So please stay tuned as I sort through them.

Sidebar: Miserable in Mississippi

Earlier this year I posted about the curious trends noticeable in health statistics collected for the “Ten Most Healthy” as compared to the “Ten Least Healthy” states. The chart I originally posted listing the states may be more difficult to read, so I decided to average it together and here is what I came up with:

The Ten “Most Healthy” states are, in order: Vermont, Hawaii, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Utah, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Idaho, Maine and Washington. The Ten “Least Healthy” states are Lousiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Florida, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Nevada and Georgia. There may be some argument over how “red” or “blue” the states are, but it should be pretty obvious, especially in the case of the “Least Healthy”, that the red states predominate.

Sometimes I think this is something Liberals and Democrats aren’t considering. If I was a Democratic congressperson, I’d be on the floor of congress with bigger, more colorful graphs and asking those in Republican strongholds such as South Carolina, Texas, and Oklahoma why their policies have not resulted in healthier, more insured constituencies, and why in the hell do they have to take more Federal money than they send back. I might even ask the Congressional Budget Office, if I had that power, to calculate the costs of having a 39% higher incidence of diabetes, more obesity, more deaths from heart disease and cancer in those states, especially given the fact that more of these people go without health insurance.

On the positive side, there are better job opportunities (or opportunities to “make a living”) in the “unhealthy” states, and there is less personal debt, less than half the debt on average, than those in the healthy states. It should be noted almost every “Least Healthy” state was a “right to work (for less)” state, while most of the “Healthier” states were not. Which basically might mean that you probably can’t get as much credit with a lower-paying job (in a “least healthy” state), so you don’t get into as much debt.

Sidebar: How scarey is Perry-Care?

Previously I put together this chart comparing the ten healthiest with the ten unhealthiest states, which I think will be not only expanded upon, but referenced many more times, because it clearly shows there's a strong correlation between good health and having healthcare: 

Texas has one of the highest rates of obesity, giving new meaning to everything being bigger in Texas.

Now that it’s been found that Texas is one of the fattest, most diabetic and unhealthiest states in the union (see above), as well as having the highest percentage of citizens without health insurance, PolitiFact found Texas Governor Rick Perry might not even know this (or is denying it) in this Pants on Fire ruling from January:

It's no secret that Texas Gov. Rick Perry thinks states can do some things better than the federal government, including coordinating health care for its poorest residents.

In a Dec. 19 interview with Kathleen McKinley, whose blog appears on the Houston Chronicle's website, Perry said the state has good ideas for delivering care effectively. As an example, he pointed to a proposal that Texas submitted to the federal government with the goal of reducing the number of uninsured residents by "restructuring federal Medicaid funding." Medicaid uses federal and state funding to provide health insurance to low-income Americans.

…We confirmed that Texas had sought permission from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in April 2008 to redirect Medicaid hospital funds into a state pool intended to help some low-income Texans get private insurance. However, in August 2008, during George W. Bush's presidency, an official with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which is part of the federal health agency, sent a letter to the Texas Health and Human Services Commission stating that "a number of areas under this proposal have been identified as problematic" — making it impossible for the federal agency to approve the proposal as written.”

Maybe it should be called “Perry-Care”? Yep, states like Texas sure can do some things better, and economist Paul Krugman is here to explain (and PolitiFact to verify):

Lil White Lies: Dodging Magic Bullets

It’s been a while since I’ve taken a look at my conservative blogging counterpart’s Bashing Blumner series: he’s only done a few posts on her, because PolitiFact has been keeping him pretty busy. This recent post takes the St. Petersburg Times columnist to task for her seemingly poor reasoning with regard to the high costs of health care. And he may be right: but she has a very good point too.

In a column dated March 4, Robyn Blumner derided the Republicans' favorite method of reducing the high cost of health care, to wit, “tort reform is the magic bullet to cost containment…” Bryan White responds to that with “Blumner apparently thought it unnecessary to provide any example of the type of advocacy with which she charges Republicans.”

So, I’ll do Blumner a favor: straight from GOP.gov are here described  the first three “steps” of their “approach to health care reform” in a PDF document entitled “The Reform America can Afford Act (H.R. 5424)”:

1.  Lowering health care premiums 20% with no other explanation -- so I guess through all these steps, lowering premiums would be the “result” of their "magic bullet" reform.

2.  Reforming high risk pools – to make insurance available to those with pre-existing conditions, which if anything would increase costs because those who would be making claims and therefore would cost the insurers more would now by theory be able to get insurance, so this is more of a give-away……

3.  Ending “junk lawsuits” through “enacting medical liability reforms”--- which is another way of saying TORT REFORM….

So, PolitiFact might give Blumner a Mostly True or Half True on that one, but it’s still true that tort reform is quite high—let’s say Number Two--on the Republican List of health care reforms.

The heart of Blumner’s article, however, is this, which Bryan terms “magical thinking”:

Lil White Lies: Take-over Hang-over

When PolitiFact published its “Lie of the Year”—that the healthcare reform passed in 2010 amounted to a "government take-over” as espoused by Frank Luntz, I dutifully published my response to Bryan White’s criticism of PolitiFact…then he, of course, published his criticism of MY criticism, as PolitiFact’s choice was, in his opinion, almost the crown jewel of evidence of PolitiFact’s liberal bias. This post included one particular observation which I am devoting this post to:

… With dozens of "well-known conservative pundits/politicians” calling it "socialized medicine" you'd think Street would have thought to give an example or two. Oh, well. She probably just copied the PolitiFact method. Simply stating it makes it sufficiently true.

Yes, I must admit Bryan was absolutely right and I just copied the PolitiFact method and simply stated it (not really, he ignored my examples, see below).  Because I found out it was not socialized medicine when I watched this Michele Bachmann "Infomercial" on Fox News just last night. I found out it’s even more: it’s the crown jewel of socialism:

Lil White Lies: Refudiating the Strategery of Takeoverism (Updated)

“The healthcare reform bill now includes a tanning booth tax of 10 percent. You know what this means? This whole thing could be funded by the cast of ‘Jersey Shore.’” – Jay Leno

“In Washington, it looks like the Senate is almost done with the healthcare bill. Otherwise known as the Joe Lieberman Insurance Company Preservation Act.” – Jay Leno

PolitiFact’s “Lie of the Year”—that the healthcare reform passed in March constituted a “government take over” of healthcare—received an ambitious, derogatory (as usual) 3,000+ word review from my conservative counterpart, Bryan White, proclaiming it “a case study in disinformation” highlighted by “opinion-drenched news analysis.”

But what is precisely meant by “government take-over” according to PolitiFact? Bryan dismissed PolitiFact’s evidence with “PolitiFact has no fact-based case for the importance of its chosen ‘Lie of the Year’”, but never really provided his own, instead, offering his own opinion: “The claim that increased government control does not constitute a government takeover amounts to Reinhardt's opinion” or “Private insurance will come under greater government control through the new legislation, and it is fair to call newly instituted regulatory powers as a taking.” Increased government control as government takeover is opinion, and it’s fair to call new regulatory powers as taking? No, it’s not fair to call new regulatory powers as taking. Takeover is not even a good term for other countries’ healthcare systems regarding the government’s role (although I'd bet Bryan would have you believe all other countries that have universal healthcare have government “takeovers” of it).