Disinformation

There was a minor outburst of concern earlier this week about the Obama administration's use of flag@whitehouse.gov to report rumors about the health care bill. From the administration's web site:

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care. These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation. Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

Now, as stated, this is to be a means of debunking rumors. However, the White House keeping a list of disconcerting things sent about them--with many people presumably emailing in names as well, since they're not being told not to--got a lot of people to raise their eyebrows (if my friends can be taken as representative, across the political spectrum). For a full compendium of conservative concern, this post at Ace of Spades is really quite helpful. For example, Gabriel notes that the Obama Administration is required by law to keep the names sent to them--this doesn't mean anything will be done with them of course; it presumes something will be done with this list later once the information is kept. (And if that seems ridiculous, compare collecting phone records of tons of Americans--but probably not DOING anything with most of them.)

Now then--there are certainly tons of rumors floating around about the bill, to the point where the things I hear at town hall meetings sound more like objections to policies pursued in Gattaca than any concern I've ever raised. The White House has now created a "reality check" website (which is a tiny bit glib itself) but it doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of all the lies out there.

And I'm not just talking about random forwarded emails. Case in point:

My mother called me over to the TV room the other day regarding a claim she was fairly certain she had just heard for the second time on Glenn Beck's show: that people over the age of 59 would not be able to receive stents or bypasses under the Democrats' plan. I pulled up the bill (HR 3200) as it passed out of one of the house committees and neglected to find "stent OR stint", "bypass", or "fifty-nine OR 59" as an age. After doing a little online research, I've found this seems to be a critique of England's health care, yet one I could not substantiate. Then FactCheck swung in to my rescue:

This widely forwarded e-mail, targeted to senior citizens and claiming that health care legislation could constitute "senior death warrants," is riddled with false claims.

The anonymous e-mail claims that "[i]n England anyone over 59 cannot receive heart repairs or stents or bypass because it is not covered as being too expensive and not needed." That’s false.

We called the United Kingdom’s Department of Health and a spokesman told us: "It is not true that anyone aged over 59 years cannot receive heart repairs, stents or bypass surgery on the basis of their age."

He also said that medical procedures in the U.K. are not routinely denied for older people. The National Health Service, the U.K.’s public health care service, has a constitution which prohibits discrimination on the basis of age and other factors. "The NHS Constitution states that the NHS provides a ‘comprehensive service, available to all irrespective of gender, race, disability, age, sexual orientation, religion or belief,’ " the spokesman said.

I jokingly told Dom the other day that I bet we could send Glenn Beck a bunch of chain emails with not-quite-absurd rumors about the health care system and he'd probably report them on air. Now I'm not sure that's a joke.