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Health care reform: A summary of recent distortions

Sat, 24 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

PolitiFact - By Angie Drobnic Holan - Oct. 24 (News Analysis) - The debate over health care reform has been defined by exaggerations and falsehoods. Republicans have falsely labeled the Democratic plan "government-run health care" and warned of death panels for the elderly and taxpayer subsidies for illegal immigrants. Democrats, meanwhile, have exaggerated the savings of their plan and made false claims about their favorite villains, the insurance companies.

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Records not as vulnerable as group claims

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

PolitiFact - By Louis Jacobson - Oct. 22 (Special Report) - Could Big Brother -- or garden-variety snoopers -- soon get their hands on your medical data? The Senior Citizens League -- a group that boasts 1.2 million members and is affiliated with the Retired Enlisted Association -- recently sent out a mailing saying it was possible. According to a copy obtained by the Huffington Post, the group sent a four-page letter, along with a questionnaire and a cover letter signed by former Rep. David Funderburk, R-N.C., to seniors, expressing two related concerns about Democratic health care reform plans now being debated on Capitol Hill. One is that they could lead to the rationing of care. The other is that the government is assembling a "national government computer network" that will contain Americans' medical files.

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Truth-O-Meter: Statements on Health Care

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

PolitiFact - Oct. 08 (Special Report) - PolitiFact fact-checks statements about health care by members of Congress, the White House, lobbyists and interest groups -- and rates them on their Truth-O-Meter.

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Speed-reading the health care reform bill?

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

PolitiFact - By Angie Drobnic Holan - Oct. 08 (News Analysis) - With the massive health care bill about to come to the House and Senate, members of Congress are arguing about a reading assignment: How long should they have to read a bill that could be 1,000 pages long? House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has promised 72 hours -- three days -- for a final bill to be available online before a vote. Centrist Democratic Senators have asked Majority leader Harry Reid for guarantees of 72 hours for bills in the Senate.

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Health care reform: A simple explanation

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

PolitiFact - By Angie Drobnic Holan - Aug. 14 (News Analysis) - From death panels for the disabled to euthanasia for Granny, blatantly, patently wrong information about health care has gotten a lot of attention. (See our Greatest Hits list for the ones we found most significant.) But set aside the shouting, and there are still many legitimate areas for debate. Details on health care are very much works in progress, and Congress is considering a number of measures. With President Obama and the Democrats largely on the defensive, a lot of the debate has focused on what the bills are not. Here, we'll explain what's actually in the bills, and where the genuine disagreements lie.

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Sarah Palin falsely claims Barack Obama runs a 'death panel'

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

PolitiFact - Aug. 11 (News Analysis) - We have read all 1,000-plus pages of the Democratic bill and examined versions in various committees. There is no panel in any version of the health care bills in Congress that judges a person's "level of productivity in society" to determine whether they are "worthy" of health care.

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Statements on Health

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 00:00:00 -0700

PolitiFact - Aug. 07 (Investigative Report) - "Under the Obama plan . . . all the health care in this country is eventually going to be run by the government."

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Obama reverses on release of abuse photos

Fri, 15 May 2009 00:00:00 -0700

PolitiFact - May. 15 (News Analysis) - President Barack Obama announced his administration was reversing course about the release of photographs depicting the abuse of foreign prisoners. We're rating this the first Full Flop of the Obama presidency.

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First 100 Days: Obama's two biggest promises

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

PolitiFact - By Bill Adair - Apr. 29 (Editorial) - For the final installment in our coverage of President Barack Obama's first 100 days, we decided to look at the 514 campaign promises in our Obameter database and choose two -- one Kept and one Broken -- that we consider the most significant because they illustrate the early accomplishments and setbacks of his presidency.

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First 100 Days: Obama and the big picture

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

PolitiFact - By Robert Farley, Angie Drobnic Holan - Apr. 28 (News Analysis) - President Barack Obama's first 100 days have at times seemed a blur of activity, but he mostly has stuck to a blueprint outlined in his presidential campaign, according to an analysis of campaign promises by PolitiFact.

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First 100 Days: Obama's Promises Broken

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

PolitiFact - By Angie Drobnic Holan - Apr. 27 (News Analysis) - As the 100-day mark of his presidency approaches, President Barack Obama has broken six promises, according to a PolitiFact analysis. That's a small portion of the 514 promises we're tracking, but the six represent some of Obama's key campaign themes.

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First 100 Days: Obama's Promises Kept

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

PolitiFact - By Robert Farley - Apr. 23 (News Analysis) - Barack Obama promised change -- lots of it. And in his first 100 days, a PolitiFact analysis finds he has already fulfilled 27 promises and begun work on 61 others that we've rated In the Works.

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The Obama White House vs. the Truth-O-Meter

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

PolitiFact - By Bill Adair - Apr. 23 (Special Report) - President Barack Obama and his top administration officials have faced the Truth-O-Meter 21 times since they took office, and they can claim a small victory: They haven't earned any Pants on Fire ratings. But their record for their first 100 days is far from perfect. We've given the Obama White House four False and two Barely True ratings. The Barely True ratings, along with a couple of the Half Trues, illustrate that the Obama White House has quickly learned the art of cherry-picking, selectively choosing the best scenarios and most favorable numbers for their claims.

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Sorting out the truth about guns in Mexico

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

PolitiFact - By David Adams, Robert Farley - Apr. 17 (News Analysis) - With growing violence on the U.S.-Mexico border fueled by powerful drug cartels, officials from both countries have been repeating a shocking statistic to suggest this isn't just a Mexican problem.

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No proposal to end taxes for seniors making less than $50,000

Thu, 16 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

PolitiFact - By Angie Drobnic Holan - Apr. 16 (News Analysis) - President Obama's campaign pledge to end taxes for seniors making less than $50,000 has fallen off the radar. It wasn't part of the tax cuts in the economic stimulus bill, also known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. It wasn't in Obama's first budget outline, which was approved by Congress on April 2, 2009. And it's not part of any proposed legislation that we can find. Today, on Tax Day, Obama gave a speech in which he talked about his other tax promises and how he wants to reshape the tax code to make it simple and more efficient. But he never mentioned his promise of curtailing the income tax for seniors. The Obama administration has done other things for seniors. Thanks to the stimulus bill, for example, everyone who gets Social Security benefits will receive a $250 check from the government in May. But the bold promise to end taxes for seniors if they make less than $50,000 seems to be forgotten.

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The Obameter: Tracking Barack Obama's Campaign Promises

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700

PolitiFact - Apr. 15 (Special Report) - PolitiFact has compiled about 500 promises that Barack Obama made during the campaign and is tracking their progress on our Obameter. We rate their status as No Action, In the Works or Stalled. Once we find action is completed, we rate them Promise Kept, Compromise or Promise Broken.

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Not a radical group, and Ayers didn't run it

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 00:00:00 -0700

PolitiFact - Oct. 13 (News Analysis) - In short, this was a mainstream foundation funded by a mainstream, Republican business leader and led by an overwhelmingly mainstream, civic-minded group of individuals. Ayers' involvement in its inception and on an advisory committee do not make it radical – nor does the funding of programs involving the United Nations and African-American studies. This attack is false, but it's more than that – it's malicious. It unfairly tars not just Obama, but all the other prominent, well-respected Chicagoans who also volunteered their time to the foundation. They came from all walks of life and all political backgrounds, and there's ample evidence their mission was nothing more than improving ailing public schools in Chicago. Yet in the heat of a political campaign they have been accused of financing radicalism. That's Pants on Fire wrong.

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Fact-Checking the Debate: McCain and Obama Less Than Perfect

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

PolitiFact - By Bill Adair - Sep. 29 (News Analysis) - The debate at the University of Mississippi was supposed to focus on foreign policy, but with the nation teetering on the brink of catastrophic financial collapse, much of the talk was about Wall Street -- and Main Street. Indeed, both Barack Obama and John McCain spoke of Main Street and said it should be the focus of any federal rescue effort.

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Sorting out the truth on taxes

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

PolitiFact - By Angie Drobnic Holan - Sep. 22 (News Analysis) - The Bush tax cuts are set to expire during the next president's term, and each candidate has a different way of addressing that, along with other proposals.

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Palin's pipeline - less than meets the eye

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

PolitiFact - By Alexander Lane - Sep. 16 (News Analysis) - On the campaign trail, it's a central part of her campaign speech to demonstrate a get-it-done record of accomplishment. But the enormous pipeline Sarah Palin touts is nowhere near as far along as her rhetoric suggests.

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Only as a last resort

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 00:00:00 -0700

PolitiFact - Sep. 03 (News Analysis) - John McCain's campaign readily acknowledges Joe Biden's expertise in national security matters. But that isn't stopping McCain surrogates from questioning the Democratic vice presidential nominee's judgment, especially when it comes to Iraq policy.

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We should all be so poor

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

PolitiFact - Aug. 28 (News Analysis) - Wealth has taken a beating in this presidential campaign as John McCain tries to paint Barack Obama as an elitist and Obama fires back that McCain is so rich he can't keep track of how many houses he owns.

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Ghost of Abramoff haunts McCain

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 00:00:00 -0700

PolitiFact - By Alexander Lane - Aug. 16 (News Analysis) - McCain has championed his role in bringing lobbyist Jack Abramoff to justice. Now, allegations that McCain is raising money through an Abramoff associate hit hard.

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No relief at pump here and now

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

PolitiFact - By Rob Farley - Jun. 20 (News Analysis) - "McCain made many arguments when making his case for lifting offshore drilling bans - including enhanced national security. But he left little doubt that the fundamental impetus was to provide some relief to the high prices Americans are paying for gas "here and now." And that argument holds little weight. We rule it False."

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McCain's drilling won't dent gas prices

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 00:00:00 -0700

PolitiFact - By Robert Farley - Jun. 20 (News Analysis) - McCain uses today's high gas prices as the foundation for his pitch to lift the federal ban on offshore drilling. But while there may be many strong arguments for offshore drilling, oil experts and economists say relieving today's fuel prices isn't one of them.

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