McCaughey Blows Her Nose With *A Tissue Of Lies

In case any of our readers were freaked out yesterday by a package of misinformation on the HealthInformationTechnology portion of the stimulus bill (contained in the bills currently in both houses of Congress) that was picked up by our constant friend Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, etc, and now spread through the MSM as a result, I'd like to soothe your troubled minds. The story first went out as a "report" on Bloomberg.com by one Betsy McCaughey, Ruin Your Health With the Obama Stimulus Plan, which my sister Katy forwarded to me early yesterday, and yes, it did freak me out, I gotta say. Scared the bejesus out of me, in fact. But, I searched around and read a little more on the Health IT plan, and was somewhat reassured. Then, this morning, the daily Progress Report, from The Center for American Progress, dropped into my mail box and entirely flushed my worries. Misinformation On Health Information Technology addresses McCaughey's commentary and calls her on her blatant misreading and misreporting of the facts of the IT portion of the recovery package.

I wasn't paying the sort of attention in 1994 to such issues as I am now, but apparently we have Betsy McCaughey to thank for the defeat of the Clinton health care plan at that time. The Progress Report quotes The New Republic's health care reporter, Johnathan Cohn on this: Elizabeth McCaughey is up to her old tricks again." "Not content to have poisoned one major health care debate, she seems determined to poison this one, too." Wouldn't it be wonderful if Rush Limbaugh, Matt Drudge, Fox News, etc, could be counted on to read and report the corrected information, and maybe, oh who knows, apologize for their manure spreading? Well no, don't be silly, Mari.

However, since part of Rush' push was to get his listeners to

"Read all of Betsy's article and then pass it on to everyone you know. Call your senators and representatives. Currently, phone calls to Capitol Hill are 100 to 1 against the bill. We need to do more. This is why Barack Obama is going all over the country scaring the American people into believing that our economy could collapse if the bill isn't passed. He wants this made into law before anyone knows that nationalized -- and rationed -- health care will be the result."

it's my hope that our reality-based community of readers and bloggers can as widely disseminate this factual reporting, sending it to your friends, your congresspeople in the same widespread fashion as the rightwing manure. That's my hope with this post anyway.

*I've asked a few friends if they were familiar with this expression, "a tissue of lies," and found that only my sisters and I seem to commonly use it - an inheritance from our mother, for whom it was a favorite expression. Here's a guess as to its origin.

Technorati Tags: Betsy McCaughey, Health IT plan, lies, misinformation, Limbaugh, Progress Report, stimulus package

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