Another GOP liar exposed

Original Link: http://forums.goupstate.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/8661098265/m/9841073348

Betsy McCaughey, a Republican former Lieutenant Governor of New York was all over tv issuing dire warnings about the changes that the stimulus package was going to wreak on health care.

How? McCaughey claimed that the plan contained health technology language that let the federal government "monitor" patient care in order to "guide your doctor's decisions." In short, a top-down bureaucracy that would enforce its own set of medical treatment protocols.

Naturally, that would be bad, and naturally, not a word of it was true.

CNN was among the first to dispute McCaughey's claims, deploying senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen to correct the record:

COHEN: Now, we asked Betsy McCaughey, because she's been through this bill page by page, "point us to the language that says that this bill will dictate what your doctor does," and she showed us language that didn't actually, specifically say that. It didn't say that the government will have the right to dictate what your doctor does. But she says it's vague enough that the government would be able to do that. And, of course, we ran this by the folks who wrote the bill. They said that any accusations that this bill will allow the government to dictate anything to your doctor, they say those accusations are "wildly inaccurate and preposterous."

In the Washington Monthly by Steve Benen:

"The claim, not surprisingly, isn't true. The National Coordinator for Health Information Technology isn't "new"; it was created by George W. Bush five years ago. More importantly, the measure is about medical records, not limiting physicians' treatments.

"In fact, the language in the House bill that McCaughey ... referenced does not establish authority to "monitor treatments" or restrict what "your doctor is doing" with regard to patient care, but rather addresses establishing an electronic records system such that doctors would have complete, accurate information about their patients "to help guide medical decisions at the time and place of care."

Facts? Facts? Why would the GOP want facts when they can just make it up?