The
Tampa Tribune has set itself up as the arbiter of political speech
through its PolitiFact.com feature that some naively take
seriously.
Based upon their self-proclaimed excellence at determining the truth,
the only responsible thing to do is to hold their self-described “Lie
of the Year” over the past half-decade up to similar scrutiny with the
benefit of time.
Finally,
PolitiFact woke up in 2013 to the unavoidably obvious lie of the
half-decade, President Barack Obama’s promise that “If you like your
health care plan, you can keep it.” A lie that was obvious to anyone
who read the August 2010 Labor Department regulations on employer
health plans.
So while PolitiFact got
their
Lie of the Year correct in 2013, it was at least three years after the
Obama Administration itself revealed the deception – too late to have
any real meaning.
In 2009, the publication declared that Sarah Palin’s assertion that
Obamacare would lead to government “death panels” as the lie or the
year. Of course, subsequent review of the law reveals that the
law
does set up a Medicare board that makes determinations over which
treatments can be provided and which cannot. This refusal to fund
certain treatments which might be life-saving or life-extending due to
a cost benefit analysis clearly makes one wonder if PolitiFact issued
an apology to Governor Palin for this mischaracterization of her death
panel statement.
In December 2010, PolitiFact.com decided that the contention that
Obamacare represented, “a government takeover of healthcare” was their
Lie of the Year. Given Obamacare architect Jonathan Gruber’s recently
discovered admission that the system is designed to drive out private
employer health plans within twenty years, and the knowledge that
government regulations dictate what treatments can be received due to
coverage terms, it is hard to hold on to the illusion that Obamacare
was anything but a government takeover of health care.
When you add in the requirements that patient information be supplied
by doctors to the government, and the inability to keep your doctor if
you like him/her, the case that this was a government takeover of the
health care system is hard to refute, even if they use private carriers
to deliver the actual services. The only question is can
PolitiFact
get four Pinocchios for its Lie of the Year Award for 2010?
PolitiFact actually got their Lie of the Year right in 2011. The
Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) deliberately
mischaracterized the Paul Ryan budget proposal as meaning that,
“Republicans voted to end Medicare.” The Ryan proposal clearly
left
Medicare in place, albeit with some cost changes to make it more
affordable ...
[Full
'PolitiFact’s tainted lie of the year']
