The Making of a Conservative Lie
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5 CommentsSteve Benen over at The Washington Monthly points out how a conservative set of lies became “news” this week. It begins with this lie from Betsy McCaughey who works for a wingnut think tank, published in the opinion section of Bloomberg:
Specifically, McCaughey insisted that the policy would create a “new bureaucracy” called the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, which will “monitor treatments to make sure your doctor is doing what the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective.” McCaughey said the federal government would then “‘guide’ your doctor’s decisions,” adding, “Keeping doctors informed of the newest medical findings is important, but enforcing uniformity goes too far.”
You won’t be surprised to know that this National Coordinator infrastructure was created by BushCo (with no real achievements to its name, either), and that the text of the Final bill says nothing of the sort. (See pages 154 – 157; 442 – 450 of that pdf to see the entire provision and judge for yourself.) That didn’t stop the usual suspects — Limbaugh, Drudge and Fox Noise from running with it and trying to ramp up the usual fear and loathing, McCarthy-style.
Steve follows up his original post to talk about countering the wingnut echo chamber and the real limitations the left still has within the traditional media:
