As my previous post was about the most covered topics at the three recent Republican presidential debates, let's see how the candidates fared truth-wise by the three biggest ones: healthcare/Medicare, jobs and social security. I'm looking at the most frequently reviewed statements in those categories.
Healthcare if you dare. On the most covered topic of healthcare, there were some statements which the fact-checkers noted had been checked long before these debates.
The group of fact-checked statements that caused quite a stir in the media, however, all related to the same healthcare topic: Rick Perry’s defense of his executive order to require young girls to get a HPV vaccine called Gardasil, which prevents cervical cancer. Michele Bachmann decided to tie it into political contributions Perry received from the company that makes the vaccine, Merck. FactCheck.org verified that Perry had indeed received thousands in contributions, but his response to Bachmann’s accusation gave pause even to Rush Limbaugh, as he commented that his first thought when Perry said he couldn’t be bought for $5,000 was-- what IS his price then? (Yes, I heard Rush say that on his radio show on September 12, and yes, I do occasionally listen to Rush Limbaugh.) FactCheck.org also confirmed two other untruths of Bachmann’s: that Merck made millions of dollars off the drug (False) and that it was potentially dangerous (False). They also confirmed as true that Perry’s former chief of staff was a lobbyist for Merck.
Her controversial anecdote following the debate, about the drug causing retardation, did not make my review list, because not only was it after the debates, but the fact-checkers have no way to verify it as some woman who told Bachmann personally. But no worry—a University of Pennsylvania bioethicist has decided to try to validate it the only way possible: by offering “… to donate $10,000 to the charity of Bachmann’s choice if she can produce such a patient” because as they say, money talks and bullsh*t walks. So far, as usual, her campaign hasn’t responded (where have I heard that before?). So I guess Bachmann’s walking.
“Romney says his health care bill affected far smaller percentage of people than Obama's”—which was a statement he first made in a presidential candidate forum in South Carolina, presumably to differentiate as much as possible the two very similar healthcare systems--as the Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler put it “… an inconvenient fact that Romney tries hard to run away from.” He continued to make the claim into the Reagan Library Debate, where all three fact checkers concluded that Romney was making a faulty comparison. Here’s FactCheck.org’s explanation:
The main goal of both is to cover more of the uninsured, and to do so while preserving the primarily employer-based insurance structure. In 2004, before the Massachusetts law was passed, 7.4 percent of Massachusetts residents were uninsured, according to the state Division of Health Care Finance and Policy (see page 12). Romney said 8 percent, but that statistic can vary, depending on how being uninsured is measured. Under the Massachusetts plan, that figure went down to 1.9 percent in 2010. Nationally, 16.7 percent of the population is uninsured, as of 2009, according to the Census Bureau. And, like the Massachusetts endeavor, the federal overhaul is aimed at reducing that figure.
PolitiFact’s Louis Jacobson felt the “wildly divergent” percentages deserved a Pants on Fire, even soliciting an agreement from the Cato Institute:
