Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
Betsy McCaughey, the director of Cantel Medical Corp., created the myth of the "death panel" during a radio interview on the Fred Thompson radio show on July 16. She followed up in Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal, submitting this guest opinion GovernmentCare's Assault on Seniors. – WSJ.com (July 23, 2009).
Since then the Mighty Wurlitzer right-wing noise machine has been repeating Ms. McCaughey's lie ad nauseam led by talk radio and FAUX News, despite the fact that the myth has been debunked numerous times as a lie, even by several conservatives. (Most recently Charles Krauthammer, a FAUX News contributor).
Karma may finally be catching up with this prolific liar. The Washington Independent reports ‘Death Panel’ Myth Creator Betsy McCaughey Resigns From Medical Board:
Betsy McCaughey — an outspoken proponent of the myth that Democrats’ health care reform proposals will lead to the creation of “death panels,” as well as a former lieutenant governor of New York and adjunct fellow at the Hudson Institute — has stepped down from her position as a director of Cantel Medical Corp., which bills itself as a “leading provider of infection prevention and control products in the healthcare market.”
From a press release:
CANTEL MEDICAL CORP. announced that on August 20, 2009 it received a letter of resignation from Ms. Elizabeth McCaughey as a director of the Company. Ms. McCaughey, who had served as a director since 2005, stated that she was resigning to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest during the national debate over healthcare reform.
McCaughey found herself the subject of widespread ridicule after an appearance on “The Daily Show” Thursday, during which host Jon Stewart aggressively challenged her positions on health care reform.
Here is the edited for television interview from The Daily Show:
Part 1
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Betsy McCaughey Pt. 1 | ||||
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Part 2:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Betsy McCaughey Pt. 2 | ||||
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Here is the uncensored extended interview from The Daily Show (viewer discretion: Language)
Extended Interview Part 1
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Exclusive – Betsy McCaughey Extended Interview Pt. 1 | ||||
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Extended Interview Part 2
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Exclusive – Betsy McCaughey Extended Interview Pt. 2 | ||||
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James Fallows of The Atlantic writes about Betsy McCaughey:
In the early 1990s McCaughey single-handedly did a phenomenal amount to distort discussion of health-care policy and derail the Clinton health bill. She did so through an entirely fictitious argument about what the bill would do. You can go back in the records here, here, and here, but the issue boils down to this: She claimed that the bill would make it illegal to go outside the government plan for coverage or pay doctors on your own. If a doctor took money for such outside-the-system services, she said, the doctor could go to jail. That was a flat-out lie. (One of the very first clauses of the legislation said, "Nothing in this Act shall be construed as prohibiting the following: (1) An individual from purchasing any health care services.") But her imaginary "no exit" claim was repeated so often by so many "respectable" media sources that it effectively became "true" and played a large part in stopping the bill. It would be as if the "birthers" had persuaded John Roberts to say, "Wait a minute, let's take another look at that birth certificate" and decline to swear in Obama on inauguration day.
McCaughey has been at it again this year — twice, in fact. First was with an early, equally false claim that to compile "comparative effectiveness" data about medical care — which drugs had which effects, which surgical procedures led to which results, the sort of data collected routinely about education, air safety, and everything else — would lead to a Big Brotherish intrusion on individual medical decisions. That one seemed to get knocked out of contention fairly early. Then she was back with the "death panels" argument.
[I] said that the "media ecosystem" was a lot different now from what it had been fifteen years ago. Back then, there was no blog world. The news cycle moved in days-long or weeks-long intervals, as newspapers came out each morning and newsmagazines each week. It was very hard to have instant feedback or correction in real time, so false stories could solidify before the truth squad had a chance. The early McCaughey was brilliantly matched to this system. Her unvarying pose is that of the objective researcher who has, selflessly, pored through the pages of a bill and emerged to warn us about what she has found. People took it at face value the first time.
[B]ut these days, I said, that wouldn't work as well. She personally now had a track record. (Republican politician with a turbulent history; proven distorter of the facts.) And thousands of other people could now look through a bill too and post their findings mere minutes or hours after her claim. Thanks to blogs, Wikis, and the rest, there was a more nimble check-and-balance built into the discussion of ideas these days. And indeed it seemed to work that way early this year, with her failed "comparative effectiveness" foray. She made a claim; "crowdsourcing" proved her wrong; she piped down.
* * *
But then came her claim about the "death panels." About the plain old facts here, there is as little room for rational dispute as with her previous phony contentions. The bill would not call people before panels to determine whether they had a right to live. Details from the conservative Republican Southerner who sponsored the plan, here.
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But the flow of argument makes it appear that "death panel" has won the battle of political ideas, as "no exit" did 15 years ago… For example, Charles Grassley seems to have bought it. I don't know which interpretation is more depressing: that Grassley actually believes in death panels (ie, he's irrational), or that he knows better but figures it's smart to say he believes (ie, he's craven). The political fundamentals, as I understand them, still favor the passage of some health-care bill. To that extent, Ms. McCaughey may indeed have been blunted. But I said two weeks ago that I thought today's communications systems had caught up with people who invented facts. I was wrong.
For more detailed information about the "death panel" myth, see Media Matters Media echo serial misinformer McCaughey's false end-of-life counseling claim
Betsy McCaughey is a prolific liar who gets paid to lie. She crys "wolf!" to mislead the public with her baseless lies. It is long past time that this charlatan is dismissed for the professional liar that she is, never to be heard from again.
Unfortunately, this is not how the Mighty Wurlitzer right-wing noise machine works. Such bad behavior is rewarded. McCaughey will probably have a new position waiting for her on Monday morning at Dick Armey's Freedom Works, and an interview on "FAUX and Friends" about how she was "forced" to resign because of the "lies of the left wing" media.
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Betsy McCaughey, “death panel” myth creator, resigns after Daily Show appearance … I find it interesting that the validity “we” attribute to her is largely artificially contrived “stage-presence.” She presents herself well, she is in the main non-confrontational, she comes to the table with reams of what appears to be official documents and she has a modicum of knowledge about the subject.
With these “props” she makes a presentation and “we” finding validity solely in these props gift her message as being truthful. What are eager to believe primarily because most of us are too damn lazy to read any “official” document and deduce for ourselves its relative truthfulness. Yes, its dry deliberately so, containing pages and pages of minutia interspersed with flicks of substantive and relevant data. And in our high speed, fast paced life style “we” can not make the time to educate ourselves, so “we” rely on TV and radio talking heads. Or it is because honestly … “Johnny can’t read” …
Betsy McCaughey is not evil or bad, she is, I believe a product of our mass communication for-profit corporate interest environment. She had performed a service, albeit, not one all of us find positive, but a service nonetheless. She does highlight how easy it is to mislead “us” all one needs is the proper “props” and “we” rather willingly grant sainthood to that individual.
Perhaps the underlying message to us … if we honestly want to become “aware” that is solely an individual responsibility.
Respectfully,
Sure McCaughey and those like her deserves are ire and derision. But let’s face it, the Democrats have been blowing issues left and right and this is just the most recent. And frankly, we need to put a lot of the blame on Obama for completely squandering his mandate.
Of course the insurance and pharma industries were going to come after this until they either killed it or reshaped it into something beneficial to them. Hell, the only reason we have Medicare and Medicaid is that this programs cover people who would never come close to affording health insurance, either because of age or income.
Instead of having a good solid plan, they turned this over to idiots like Kurt Conrad who are swimming in health industry money and developing the most contorted systems which provide plenty of ammunition for people who want to find that ‘Obamacare’ is going to force elderly to be eating alive by ants or whatever ridiculous thing they can come up with.
Obama could have come out with a plan and hammered home that it would save Medicare in the long run, guarantee coverage for everyone, lower health care costs thereby also increasing wages as companies would not need to put increasing amounts towards health coverage.
Instead we are looking to wind up with something that won’t guarantee everyone is covered, will mandate (force) people to buy insurance, will only ‘subsidize’ the cost for some which will increase at high rates each year, and do all this without doing anything about lowering costs meaning Medicare will continue to spiral out of control and the new plan will add more to the deficit while not even positively impacting a majority of people.
Some may say that healthcare is difficult as has been repeatedly demonstrated, but this is the same pattern we saw with the stimulus, which was too weak and he gave weak leadership on. They couldn’t even turn the large amount of tax cuts into a plus by mentioning this every chance they got, which many people seem ignorant of. He also has completely caved on financial industry reform and no real change to how things have been done for the past 40 years.
People say that we have two parties that represent corporate America in the US, with the Democrats basically playing second string to the GOP. It sure seems that way.