Lie of the Year 2011: 'Republicans voted to end Medicare'

PolitiFact.com ^ | December 20th, 2011 | Bill Adair, Angie Drobnic Holan

[Qbert]

Republicans muscled a budget through the House of Representatives in April that they said would take an important step toward reducing the federal deficit. Introduced by U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the plan kept Medicare intact for people 55 or older, but dramatically changed the program for everyone else by privatizing it and providing government subsidies.

Democrats pounced. Just four days after the party-line vote, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee released a Web ad that said seniors will have to pay $12,500 more for health care "because Republicans voted to end Medicare."

Rep. Steve Israel of New York, head of the DCCC, appeared on cable news shows and declared that Republicans voted to "terminate Medicare." A Web video from the Agenda Project, a liberal group, said the plan would leave the country "without Medicare" and showed a Ryan look-alike pushing an old woman in a wheelchair off a cliff.

[Snip]

PolitiFact debunked the Medicare charge in nine separate fact-checks rated False or Pants on Fire, most often in attacks leveled against Republican House members.

Now, PolitiFact has chosen the Democrats’ claim as the 2011 Lie of the Year.

[Snip]

• They used harsh terms such as "end" and "kill" when the program would still exist, although in a privatized system.

[Snip]

Liberal bloggers and columnists contend it's accurate to say Republicans voted to end Medicare. Left-leaning websites such as Talking Points Memo, Daily Kos, and The New Republic said PolitiFact's analysis was wrong, as did New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.

[Snip]

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, an expert on campaign advertising who directs the Annenberg center at the University of Pennsylvania, says Democrats have been using falsehoods and exaggerations about Medicare and Social Security since at least 1952. She calls it the longest-running "Democratic deception."

[LottieDah]

I met a Black lady in front of a store a few months back who actually believed this lie. She said that Republicans just want to kill everybody.

[Notary Sojac]

Would that it were true!!

[grumpygresh]

These politicians are just whistling past the graveyard. Doctors will be the ones to end Medicare as they stop seeing patients, de-participating, or formally opting out. The regulatory environment is dangerous, reimnbursement is shaky, electronic records are costly and intrusive, and rationing makes treatment an exercise in futility.
Allowing all providers to engage in private contracting with Medicare patients for less expensive, routine care is something that would make things better.

[ROCKLOBSTER]

I met a Black lady in front of a store a few months back who actually believed this lie. She said that Republicans just want to kill everybody.

You should have told her Republicans freed the slaves from the filthy democRATs.

[massgopguy]

Saying that Medicare was killed by privatizing it is like saying there is no food because you have to go to the supermarket to get it.

[massgopguy]

Tell her to look up BlackGenocide.org to see who wants to kill who.

[asa asa]

Careful, this is some kind of convoluted Democrat trick to lull us into complacency.

[newzjunkey]

PolitiFact has chosen the Democrats’ claim as the 2011 Lie of the Year.

Amazing. Nice of them to notice. If the press generally were as honest as PolitiFact were on this ridiculous claim, the electorate might think differently.