I don’t know how many of you know who Betsy McCaughey is, but she is very influential in Republican health care politics:
Back in the early 1990’s, Betsy McCaughey wrote “No Exit,” an article for The New Republic on the Clinton administration’s healthcare reform plan. The piece was filled with falsehoods — so many, in fact, that the magazine later disowned it. But by then, it was too late; McCaughey and her article had played an instrumental role in killing the Clinton proposal.
Now, she’s back, and is again the chief propagator of some of the most pernicious myths about the Obama administration’s plan. As I wrote in an earlier post about Ezekiel Emanuel, brother to White Housse Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and a lead advisor to President Obama on healthcare reform, an op-ed she wrote earlier this year for the New York Post was incredibly misleading on the subject of Ezekiel Emanuel and his ideas.
Emanuel is a leading bioethicist, an opponent of euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide, but McCaughey twisted his words, making him into someone who “says medical care should be reserved for the non-disabled,” someone who doesn’t want to “give much care to a grandmother with Parkinson’s or a child with cerebral palsy.” And that was only the beginning.
She’s basically the lead Republican health care reform liar. She did it in the 1990s and she’s doing it again. We’ve seen some our visiting trolls parrot her talking points, especially about Dr. Emmanuel. Jon Stewart interviewed her on his show last night and made mincemeat of her. Stewart is a really good interviewer when he wants to be – he does his homework and he knows how to spot a lie. Stewart seems to hold special contempt for political operatives and can take them apart, like he’s done with Bill Kristol and Bernard Goldberg. The interview was so long that it was edited and the whole thing is below.
h/t The Washington Monthly