Another Wingnut Conspiracy Smackdown

The usual repub blog suspects picked and ran with an item from The American Spectator which purported to have a bit of “news” about the HHS having information (in the form of a report from the Office of the Actuary for Medicare) in advance of the ACA bill vote that would indicate that medical costs would rise. The usual right-wing purveyors of wrong went to town with this, of course. (John Cole at Balloon Juice has the screenshot of Google showing how focused the spread of this kind of stuff is among the usual GOP suspects.)

And Guess What?

They were all wrong. Politico and NBC actually did some real reporting for a change and just called the Office of the Actuary to see what was going on. This is the deal:

1. The Office of the Actuary didn’t receive the language of the reconciliation bill until March 18 (when the legislation was posted), so the Spectator’s assertion that HHS had a copy of the Actuary’s score a week before congressional passage — on March 22 — doesn’t make sense.

2. Past scores from the Office of the Actuary came out AFTER passage of the legislation. For the House bill that passed on Nov. 7, 2009, the Actuary’s score came out on Nov. 13. And for the Senate bill that passed on Dec. 24, 2009, the Actuary’s score came out on Jan. 8, 2010. This most recent Actuary report is dated April 22.

3. Given points #1 and #2, it’s hard to see how the Actuary’s score was available before the CBO’s, which came out on March 18.

And the Actuary himself states pretty uncategorically that the American Spectator’s reporting was quite wrong. Steve Benen provides quick evidence that legislators did have this data and were debating it before the vote.

The American Spectator did come back and double down on their story — basically saying that their unnamed sources refused to change their story. But here is the thing — again. For all of the BS about getting beyond the talking points and the bromides and putting a more serious face back onto conservatism, you see right here their Achilles heel. An unbelievable reliance on news sources that are absolutely in the business of pushing the spin, the misinformation and the lies to be able to whip up the manufactured outrage. The reality based community exists and dealing with that, rather than the manufactured outrage fodder is going to be the first step in getting the serious face back. Because as long as even those with ambitions to not be part of the crazy keep pushing the clearly wrong, then they are still inmates in the asylum.