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Research shows the employer mandate in the House health reform bill would "place millions 'at substantial risk of unemployment' — with minority workers losing their jobs at twice the rate of their white counterparts. A few months ago, a chain e-mail purporting to be a line-by-line analysis of the House health care reform bill reached in-boxes all over the country, warning people of the dire consequences of the Democratic plans for reform. Taking a page from the same playbook, the House Republican Conference has created a similar list for the new health care bill that will be coming to the House floor in the next few weeks. You can read our fact-check of the Republican analysis in its entirety. Here, we're looking only at the statement, "Page 313 - Section 512 imposes an 8 percent 'tax on jobs' for firms that cannot afford to purchase 'bureaucrat-approved' health coverage; according to an analysis by Harvard Professor Kate Baicker, such a tax would place millions 'at substantial risk of unemployment'—with minority workers losing their jobs at twice the rate of their white counterparts." This point refers to the House bill's employer mandate, which requires large employers to offer health insurance for their workers. (This is a major difference with the Senate bill, which is not expected to include an employer mandate.) So the House bill does tax employers that don't offer insurance. The Republicans say that Baicker's research shows that millions would be at risk for unemployment, and her research does show that. But the number of people who would actually lose their jobs, according to her projections, is much smaller. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 Baicker and co-author Helen Levy identified workers who lacked insurance and whose wages are so close to the minimum wage that employers will not be able to reduce their pay in order to pay for health insurance. That pool of uninsured, low-wage workers is 5.5 million. Of those, however, she concluded that a much smaller number — 224,284 — were "likely" to lose their jobs. And about 136,342 were likely to be racial and ethnic minorities, she concluded. Baicker and Levy also wrote that those numbers would be fewer if small employers were exempt from the mandate. And the House bill does just that: It exempts employers with a payroll of less than $500,000. We contacted Baicker, who also added the following note of clarification: "Our estimates were done years ago and were meant to model a stylized mandate policy, not any of the actual policies under consideration at the moment. The effect on employment will be driven by a lot of the details, such as which workers are included based on number of hours worked and which firms are included based on firm size." So the House Republican Conference takes a study that looked at a general policy, not the details of the current House bill. Additionally, the exemption for small employers would reduce the number of workers who would be at risk for losing their jobs. So we rate this statement Half True

"That 3.5 percent (increase in the third quarter GDP) came from two things — government spending on Cash for Clunkers — they just moved fourth-quarter auto sales into the third quarter — and the first-time home buyer thing. While many hailed the news that the gross domestic product had increased 3.5 percent in the third quarter as a sign that the recession has ended, political commentator Rush Limbaugh was not one of them. On the Fox News Sunday program on Nov. 1, Limbaugh scoffed at a question about whether President Barack Obama had saved the country from "a financial abyss," as witnessed by reports about the bump in the GDP. "There wasn't any growth in the private sector," Limbaugh said. "That 3.5 percent came from two things — government spending on Cash for Clunkers — they just moved fourth-quarter auto sales into the third quarter — and the first-time home buyer thing." Limbaugh is referring to the Cash for Clunkers program that provided up to $4,500 to consumers to trade in their old cars for new ones, as well as to a government incentive program that provides an $8,000 tax credit to first-time home buyers. There's little debate that the Cash for Clunkers program gave a serious jolt to the car industry in the third quarter and contributed significantly to the GDP bump. In a statement before the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, J. Steven Landefeld, director of the U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of Economic Analysis, said consumer spending on durable goods — which increased by 22.3 percent — was driven by motor vehicle purchases and that Cash for Clunkers "accounted for most of this increase." But not all of it. Landefeld noted that "real spending on other durable goods, nondurable goods and services also increased in the third quarter," he said. There's no way of untangling exactly how much Cash for Clunkers or home-buying incentives directly affected the GDP, said Eugene Seskin, an economist with the Bureau of Economic Analysis. But statistics on the categories those programs would affect provide strong clues. In a breakdown of the contributors to the 3.5 percent increase in GDP, the Bureau of Economic Analysis attributed 1 percentage point to consumer purchases of motor vehicles and parts. In a broader sense, motor vehicles — including commercial purchase of vehicles and parts (not eligible for Cash for Clunkers) as well as vehicle imports and exports — raised real GDP growth in the third quarter by 1.7 percentage points, Landefeld said. But, he added, "Excluding the effects of motor vehicles, real GDP increased 1.9 percent in the third quarter after decreasing 0.9 percent in the second quarter." In other words, there was a lot more to the bump than just cars. Okay, what about the effect of the government incentives to new home buyers? Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, residential construction rose by 23.4 percent in the third quarter, the first increase in 15 quarters. That translated to 0.53 percentage points of the increase in GDP. But economists say it would be wrong to assign credit for that entirely to government incentives through tax credits to first-time home buyers. First of all, most of the homes purchased through the program were existing homes, not new construction. The new homes figure also includes such things as brokers commissions on sales of homes. So the correlation between that increase and the tax-credit incentives to new home buyers is more tenuous. Still, it appeared to have had some benefit. But for argument's sake, let's say all of the consumer purchases of new cars and parts (1 percentage point) and all of the new home purchases (0.53 percentage points) in the third quarter were tied to the programs Limbaugh mentioned. That still only accounts for less than half of the bump. If Limbaugh's bigger point was that the bump was largely due to government intervention, he's on more solid ground. In fact, it's a talking point from the White House defending the effectiveness of the economic stimulus package championed by the president. The stimulus "contributed between 3 and 4 percentage points to real GDP growth in the third quarter," said Christina Romer, the chairwoman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. "This suggests that in the absence of the Recovery Act, real GDP would have risen little, if at all, this past quarter," said Romer. Josh Bivens, an economist with the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute, thinks Limbaugh missed the biggest drivers from government intervention: tax cuts, extended unemployment benefits and food stamps, and aid to states from the stimulus. By Bivens' back-of-the-envelope assessment, the stimulus accounted for about 2.5 percentage points of the increase. The truth in Limbaugh's statement, Bivens said, is that government intervention is driving the economy forward right now. In addition to the stimulus, the third quarter saw an increase in direct government spending, mostly on defense (adding 0.5 percentage points to the bump). "If not for the government intervention, the numbers would not be as strong right now," he said. "That's why we did it." Other economists say Limbaugh missed the mark when he began by saying the growth in the GDP was not in the private sector. While the government may have provided incentives with Cash for Clunkers, for example, consumers still bore the majority of the cost of new cars. So while the government may be acting as a catalyst, said Gary Burtless, an economist with the Brookings Institution, it's still private sector growth. Bottom line, Limbaugh dismissed the growth in the GDP as being simply from Cash for Clunkers and tax credits to first-time home buyers. Economists agree those programs, particularly Cash for Clunkers, contributed significantly to the bump. And it's certainly valid to caution that much, if not all, of the bump can be attributed to government intervention. But Limbaugh oversimplifies things when he dismisses the growth as tied solely to those two programs. By our math, even a generous reading of government data ties less than half of the growth in GDP to sectors of the economy those two programs may have influenced. And so we rate his statement Half Tru

Three presidents in the last century — Harding, Kennedy and Reagan — all cut taxes during recessions and produced "rapid and dramatic economic recoveries," while two, Herbert Hoover and Barack Obama, did "the opposite. President Barack Obama has been in office for just 10 months, but already he's being measured against his predecessors in the Oval Office. In a House floor speech on Oct. 27, 2009, Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Calif., said Obama and Herbert Hoover were ineffective at dealing with recessions. "Three presidents within the last 100 years have responded to recessions by reducing taxes and regulations," McClintock said. "Warren Harding, John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan all produced rapid and dramatic economic recoveries. We’ve had two presidents in those 100 years who reacted to recessions by doing the opposite — Herbert Hoover in the early 1930s, who radically increased taxes and spending and who imposed unprecedented burdens on trade, and the other is Barack Obama." We contacted a host of presidential historians and economists to see whether they agreed with McClintock. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 First, let's discuss where the experts generally agree that McClintock is right. Harding, Kennedy and Reagan each acted to lower taxes, and in fact each of them staked some political capital on it. (Technically, Kennedy's successor, Lyndon Johnson, brought the tax cut to fruition after Kennedy's assassination.) Each of these presidents either inherited a recession upon entering office or saw one emerge early in their first term. Meanwhile, Hoover did indeed hike taxes and spending during his tenure, and he signed the Smoot-Hawley Tarriff Act of 1930, which raised tarriffs on thousands of goods to record levels. Two of those we spoke to -- David Boaz of the Cato Institute and Kevin Hassett of the American Enterprise Institute -- were generally favorable toward McClintock's comments. But other scholars we spoke to saw a number of failings in McClintock's thesis. 1. McClintock's list of recessions is selective, in a way that favors Republicans . A look at the official list of recessions compiled by the National Bureau of Economic Research shows that McClintock ignores a number of downturns that occurred under Republican presidents — including Dwight Eisenhower (1953, 1957-58), Richard Nixon (1969-70, 1973-75), George H.W. Bush (1990-91) and George W. Bush (2001) — while ignoring recoveries under Democratic President Harry Truman (1945, 1949). 2. Recessions stem from a number of causes . Sometimes they are caused by factors internal to the economy (such a downturn in the business cycle) and sometimes they are prompted by an external development (such as oil shocks in the 1970s or the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks). Because these recessions have different origins, economists say, no single policy prescription works for all of them. This suggests that McClintock is oversimplifying matters. 3. McClintock distorts Hoover's tax record . Hoover is widely blamed for worsening the economy by signing the Smoot-Hawley law. But that was a tariff; Hoover's record on taxes is more complicated. He did sign the Revenue Act of 1932, which more than doubled the top income tax rate and probably worsened the nation's already dire economic situation. But that law came three years after the Depression began, so for the first three years of his tenure, the economic outlook worsened without any assistance from a tax hike. Indeed, the tax laws then in force were initiated by steep tax cuts urged by long-serving Republican Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon and enacted under Hoover's predecessors, Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge — not necessarily a winning argument in favor of low taxation. Finally, Hoover did in one instance reduce taxes rather than raise them: He signed a joint congressional resolution that cut taxes by 1 percentage point on Dec. 16, 1929, shortly after the stock market crash of 1929. 4. The Reagan recovery may have been dramatic, but it was anything but "rapid." The second dip of the "double-dip" recession of the early 1980s — which occurred entirely on Reagan's watch — lasted 16 months from peak to trough. That made it the longest recession between the Great Depression and today's "Great Recession." 5. Focusing on the presidential role in combating recessions ignores other important factors . Something McClintock's formulation ignores is the enormous role of the Federal Reserve in leveraging monetary policy to fight recessions. For instance, many give Fed Chairman Paul Volcker significant credit for the 1980s recovery, due to his leadership (supported by Reagan) in lowering double-digit inflation. Meanwhile, some argue that, before the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt, federal revenues and spending were so small as a percentage of the nation's economy that presidents had only weak levers to work with as they tried to fight economic downturns. Finally, actions of the 50 state governments can have major effects on the economy, yet cuts at the federal level often prompt spending increases at the state and local level, complicating the influence that government has on the economy. 6. The Obama record isn't settled yet . So far at least, Obama hasn't raised taxes; he's actually cut certain taxes, totaling $288 billion for individuals and companies, as part of his economic stimulus package. It's true that passage of health care reform would involve raising taxes, and passage of a "cap-and-trade" climate-change plan would represent an increase in regulation. But both initiatives are staunchly opposed by Republicans and there's no guarantee they'll be enacted, or, if they are, what their provisions will be. 7. Finally, correlation does not mean causation . Even if tax cuts happened to coincide with recoveries and tax hikes tended to coincide with recessions, it doesn't necessarily mean that one causes the other. For instance, tax cuts and deregulation likely aided the Reagan recovery (as did Volcker's inflation-fighting efforts) but historians say that higher defense spending, another Reagan priority, also helped bring the United States out of recession, as did historically lower oil prices. Meanwhile, Kennedy, in addition to cutting taxes, supported major increases in public works spending, not least the space program. The implementation of so many policies at the same time makes it hard to credit just one or two with launching a recovery. When we showed the criticisms we heard to McClintock's office, he responded with a detailed critique, which we encourage readers to visit here . He made a valid point about the recession and recovery under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, which this story now reflects. But overall, he did not persuade us that the 12-plus experts we consulted were wrong. We will readily acknowledge that it's impossible to encapsulate a century of American political and economic history into three sentences, so some oversimplification is inevitable. And McClintock did get several key facts in his statement correct. Still, most of the dozen-plus scholars we contacted agreed that the congressman greatly oversimplified matters, and we feel that describing history this way will leave an incorrect impression. So we rate McClintock's claim False

Sen. Joe Lieberman's "home state has a public option which covers about 10,000 of its citizens that was introduced by its Republican governor. Sen. Joe Lieberman, former Democrat and now independent from Connecticut, made headlines recently when he said he would join Republicans in a filibuster against a health care bill with a public option. Keith Olbermann brought it up on his Oct. 27, 2009, episode of Countdown . Olbermann said Lieberman was being hypocritical because, "he will side with the Republicans, denying Americans an up-or-down vote on any health care plan that includes the public option, even though his home state has a public option which covers about 10,000 of its citizens that was introduced by its Republican governor." Lieberman is crucial for the Democrats because he usually votes with them and in effect is the important 60th vote so they can overcome a Republican filibuster. Lieberman has said that he will side with the Democrats on a procedural motion to start debate on the health care bill (in theory, with Lieberman's support, Republicans could block bringing the bill to the Senate floor). But because he opposes the public option that's included in the bill, he has said he will side with Republicans on the ultimate vote to end the debate, which also requires 60 votes. And that means Senate consideration of the health care bill could stall. We contacted Olbermann's staff and found out that the Connecticut health plan he was referring to is the 1-year-old Charter Oak Health Plan, the state-run program that is designed to compete in the market for individual insurance policies. That means people who are buying individual health care plans — the unemployed, young college graduates, early retirees — can get coverage under Charter Oak. The state has contracted with three insurers to offer a variety of coverage options. Premiums and deductibles depend on household income. According to David Dearborn, a spokesman for Republican Gov. Jodi Rell, while the plan is "a state-sponsored, state-subsidized and state-administered health coverage program, we contract with private insurers ... as managed care organizations to coordinate the benefits, enroll and set rates with providers, and pay for the services." The insurance companies bear the risk for actual medical costs, not the state, Dearborn said. But the government is involved in the sense that people can get a government subsidy to help them buy private insurance. So is that a "public option" similar to the one offered in the Democrats' health care bills? We contacted Jacob Hacker, a health care expert at Yale University who is widely credited with coming up with the concept of a public option, for a definition. Generally speaking, a public option should look a lot like Medicare, Hacker said. It should be run by the government, and the government should bear the insurance risk. On the last point, Hacker said Connecticut's public option "falls into a gray area. It is not public in the same ways that the public health insurance option under consideration in Congress is. But it seems more public than, say, the Federal Employees Health Benefit Plan, which is often cited as a model for the so-called insurance exchanges." So it seems that the Connecticut plan is a hybrid of a public option and an insurance exchange. It allows consumers to choose from a limited number of health insurance options offered by private insurers, but it is sponsored, subsidized and administered by the state. Olbermann is correct on his second and third points. At the one-year anniversary of the program's existence, Rell, the Republican governor who introduced the program in 2007, estimated that about 10,000 had joined the plan. Rell's name and photograph have featured prominently on information about the program, and she's gone to bat to defend the plan several times since it was enacted in the summer of 2008. So, back to Olbermann's claim. The Charter Oak plan does not meet a strict definition of a public option. In fact, it bears some marks of a health insurance exchange, where private plans compete. But ultimately, it is sponsored and subsidized by the state of Connecticut and is open to the public, so Olbermann is mostly on the mark with his characterization of the program. On his other two points — that 10,000 people are enrolled and that it was introduced by a Republican governor — Olbermann is correct. All in all, we give him a Mostly True. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022

There is majority support for the Democrats' health care plans As Democratic health care reform bills move toward votes in the House and the Senate, supporters and opponents alike have tried to harness public opinion polls to bolster their own arguments. One recent example came during the Nov. 1, 2009, edition of ABC News' This Week with George Stephanopoulos , during a question-and-answer session with White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett. STEPHANOPOULOS: "Our latest polling shows that there is not majority support for the president's health care plans." JARRETT: "Well, we actually think that there is. And I suppose it depends upon what poll you're looking at." We decided to put Jarrett's claim to the test by looking at roughly the last six weeks of public opinion polls that asked questions related to general support for, or opposition to, health proposals put forward by the president or by Democrats generally. We chose the past six weeks to keep the data fresh in this fast-changing debate. Before looking at the data, we should explain which polls we have decided to include, and not include, in our study. Our main starting point for polling information was the Web site pollster.com , a nonpartisan site affiliated with National Journal magazine that maintains a constantly updated database of poll releases. We tried to stick to questions that focused on general support or opposition to the plan, rather than more specific details such as whether to offer a government-run "public option" for health insurance, because the number of possible poll questions would quickly get out of hand. In addition, we decided to include only independently sponsored telephone polls and exclude Internet-based polls. Making this distinction hurts the president's cause somewhat, because one Internet poll -- the Economist /YouGov poll -- has on several recent occasions shown a small majority of respondents in favor of the Democratic plan. But we have decided to exclude Internet polls to remain consistent with mainstream professional opinion, which does not yet consider Internet polling to be as trustworthy as telephone polling. We are, however, including telephone polls conducted by machines rather than live humans. Also, since Jarrett specifically referred to "majority support," we will not count in the White House's favor polls unless the support breaks the 50 percent barrier. Using the pollster.com database, we found three polls conducted in October -- all done by live telephone interviews -- that reported true majority support for the Democratic proposal, though hardly by supermajorities. They are: -- A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll taken between Oct. 16 and Oct. 18 asked, "What do you think would be better for the country -- if Congress passed a bill to change the country's health care system along the lines of what Barack Obama has proposed, or if the current system were left in place with no changes?" The survey found that 53 percent said it would be better to pass a bill, while 44 percent said to leave the current system intact. The poll had 1,038 adult respondents and a 3 percentage point margin of error. -- A Kaiser Family Foundation poll conducted between Oct. 8 and Oct. 15 asked, "Do you think the country as a whole would be better off or worse off if the president and Congress passed health care reform, or don't you think it would make much difference?" In this poll, 53 percent said the country would be better off, 28 percent said it would be worse off and 12 percent said it would not make much difference. The poll had 1,200 adult respondents and a 3 percentage point margin of error. -- A Gallup poll taken between Oct. 1 and Oct. 4 asked, "Would you advise your member of Congress to vote for or against a health care bill this year?" To this question, 51 percent said their lawmaker should vote for it and 41 percent said their lawmaker should vote against it. This poll interviewed 1,013 adults, with a 4 percentage point margin of error. (Technical note: The results for this question are a little more complicated than most. On the interviewer's first pass, 40 percent of respondents said they'd advise a vote in favor, 36 percent advised a vote against, and 25 percent said they had no opinion. Then, the interviewer asked the undecideds a second question to see how they were leaning; those answers were added to the initial totals to come up with 51 percent advising passage and 41 percent advising rejection.) Most of the time, though, similar questions have found opponents outnumbering supporters. Just to cite a few examples (there are too many to list them all): -- An NBC/ Wall Street Journal poll taken between Oct. 22 and Oct. 25 asked, "From what you have heard about Barack Obama's health care plan, do you think his plan is a good idea or a bad idea? If you do not have an opinion either way, please just say so." On this question, 38 percent said it was a good idea and 42 percent said it was a bad idea. In the five NBC/ Wall Street Journal polls going back to April 2009, the answer "good idea" never exceeded 39 percent. - - An ABC News/ Washington Post poll taken Oct. 15 to Oct. 18 asked, "Overall, given what you know about them, would you say you support or oppose the proposed changes to the health care system being developed by Congress and the Obama administration?" On this question, 45 percent said they support the changes while 48 percent said they oppose them. In two previous ABC/ Post surveys that asked the same question, opponents always outnumbered supporters, with supporters never breaking 46 percent. -- A Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll taken between Oct. 13 and Oct. 14 asked, "Based on what you know about the health care legislation being considered right now, do you favor or oppose the plan?" The pollsters found that 35 percent favored it and 54 percent opposed it. In four prior polls going back to July 2009, the survey never found supporters leading opponents, and supporters never exceeded 38 percent. -- Finally, a series of Rasmussen polls, which were conducted by machines rather than live interviewers, have consistently found strong opposition to the Democratic health care proposal. The most recent of these, taken between Oct. 30 and Oct. 31, asked, "Generally speaking, do you strongly favor, somewhat favor, somewhat oppose or strongly oppose the health care reform plan proposed by President Obama and the congressional Democrats?" It found that 42 percent favored the plan either strongly or somewhat, while 54 percent opposed it strongly or somewhat. Most polls have had "little change over the course of the year," said Karlyn Bowman, a polling analyst with the conservative American Enterprise Institute. "It is certainly fair to say that no poll shows solid majority support" for the Democratic plan. So why did three scattered polls buck the general trend? The most likely factors are two issues often raised in conjunction with polling methodology: the nature of the population sampled, and the way the questions are worded. On the sampling question, the Fox and Rasmussen surveys sampled registered voters and likely voters, respectively, rather than all adults, as the other polls did. Interviewing only registered voters and -- especially -- likely voters weeds out Americans who are relatively disengaged with the political scene. This can be helpful in measuring support for candidates during election season, but when applied to the issue of health care, it can skew the pool of respondents against the White House. "Polls that screen for registered or likely voters tend to get fewer of the younger and minority voters that have been Obama's strongest supporters," said Mark Blumenthal, who runs pollster.com. And not surprisingly, those polls showed the strongest opposition to the Democratic plan. As for wording, it appears that how a question is phrased -- always a key issue in producing the most accurate survey results -- is especially important when asking broad questions related to the current health care debate. For instance, "those that describe it as only an Obama plan seem to get more support than those that emphasize the 'Democrats in Congress,' " Blumenthal said. And when the CNN poll asked, "What do you think would be better for the country -- if Congress passed a bill to change the country's health care system along the lines of what Barack Obama has proposed, or if the current system were left in place with no changes," it framed the Democratic plan squarely in opposition to the current health care system, whose shortcomings are apparent even to the president's critics. That wording may help explain the relatively large support for the president in that question. Let's summarize. Recent polls that asked general health care reform questions have found consistent opposition to the Democratic plan. In polls of all adults, it has often been opposition by a modest margin, while polls of registered or likely voters have found more intense opposition. But independent pollsters have produced three surveys in the past six weeks that found supporters narrowly cracking the 50 percent barrier. So part of what Jarrett said -- "I suppose it depends upon what poll you're looking at" -- is undeniably true. On balance though, those poll-verified majorities are the exception rather than the rule. We rule her statement Barely True. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly Fals

You must list all your guns on your 2010 tax return It's a scary time to be a gun owner in the United States — at least if you believe some of the claims made by gun-rights groups and spread in chain e-mails. We recently investigated a claim made by Gun Owners of America that a version of a health care bill currently in Congress "could be used to ban guns in home self-defense," and rated it False. We gave the National Rifle Association a Pants on Fire for making a similar claim during the 2008 election. So we were skeptical when a reader forwarded us a chain e-mail that claims the following: "Now 'all Guns' must be listed on your next (2010) tax return! As if we didnt [sic] have enough to get upset about! If you have a gun, I hope it isn't registered! Senate Bill SB-2099 will require us to put on our 2009 1040 federal tax form all guns that you have or own. It will require fingerprints and a tax of $50 per gun." The e-mail continued: "This bill was introduced on Feb.. 24, 2009, by the Obama staff. BUT... this bill will only become public knowledge 30 days after the new law becomes effective! This is an amendment to the Internal Revenue Act of 1986. This means that the Finance Committee has passed this without the Senate voting on it at all. Trust Obama ? ...... you must be kidding!" The e-mail is wrong in so many ways that it's hard to know where to begin. But here we go: • The "Obama staff" can't introduce bills, only members of Congress can. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 • No such bill was introduced on Feb. 24 of this year. But there was such a bill introduced on Feb. 24, 2000, by Sen. Jack Reed, a Democrat from Rhode Island. • The bill didn't pass. Indeed, it died in committee, as most bills do. The e-mail wrongly says the law will take effect with your "next tax return." The bill would have required people to register handguns in the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record, the government would have shared that information with law enforcement agencies, and guns would have been taxed when they were manufactured or sold. But again, the bill did not pass. • The National Rifle Association wrote a blog post discrediting the e-mail, saying that it was "recycling an old alert that wasn’t even accurate when it was new," and noting that the bill in question "disappeared without any action by the Senate, back when Bill Clinton was still in the White House." The e-mail is also ridiculously false with its claim that "this bill will only become public knowledge 30 days after the new law becomes effective." Although Congress has its share of closed-door meetings, bills are made public on the Thomas Web site . Indeed, that's how we found this one. It's worth noting that variations of this chain e-mail have been circulating for many years. The Web site UrbanLegends.about.com wrote about this rumor back in September 2000. Only recently has a new version emerged. And like so many incorrect e-mails we've examined lately, it targets President Barack Obama. This e-mail makes so many ridiculously false claims that we have to set the meter ablaze — Pants on Fire

"One-third of the health care dollar goes to no such thing as health care; it goes to the insurance companies. Rep. Patrick Kennedy gave a strong defense of Democratic plans for health reform on the House floor, attacking Republican opponents as defenders of insurance companies. "The other side talks about the health care reform bill costing a lot of money," Kennedy said. "Right now, consumers in America are spending millions and millions of dollars paying that to the insurance companies. One-third of the health care dollar goes to no such thing as health care; it goes to the insurance companies. That's why the Democratic proposal restricts the amount of money that insurance companies can spend on bureaucracy." The idea that insurance companies get a third of all health spending in the country struck us as suspicious. And sure enough, our research showed that Kennedy was mixing up his statistics. To start with, every health insurance company is different, and there are different ways to count administrative expenses. Generally speaking, the most efficient insurers cover large groups of employees, while the least efficient sell policies to individuals. Nevertheless, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a federal agency, publishes national health expenditure data, which include a breakdown of "The Nation's Health Dollar." The most recent data for 2007 show that private insurers get a little less than 7 percent of the nation's health care spending. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 The 7 percent number also includes some of the administrative costs of government health insurance programs and charity programs, but the center said most of that is for private insurers. We reviewed another study done by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. It looked at administrative costs from a different angle, trying to focus on what percentage of health insurance premiums went to patient costs. Keep in mind, spending on private health insurance premiums is less than all national health care spending, which includes government spending for Medicare and Medicaid, and other expenditures. The CBO included a bunch of things under administrative costs: marketing; claims processing; managing contracts with doctors and hospitals; quality assurance; regulatory compliance; information technology expenses; general overhead; profits and taxes. It found that the percentage of premiums going to all these activities was 12 percent. We asked Kennedy's office about his statement, and staffers said Kennedy meant to say that he was talking about administrative expenses throughout the health care system. They sent us a study from the New England Journal of Medicine that examined administrative costs for doctors, hospitals, nursing homes, home care agencies and employers who provide insurance. The study found total administrative costs for all those groups accounted for 31 percent of health care expenditures in the United States. Still, that's not anywhere close to what Kennedy said. He said that "One-third of the health care dollar goes to no such thing as health care; it goes to the insurance companies." The actual number is about 7 percent. We rate Kennedy's statement False

When it comes to aid, "the United States is still about half as what European countries give as a percentage. With all due respect to the musical prowess of Bill Clinton and Mike Huckabee, we think this is the first time we've checked a bona fide rock icon with our Truth-O-Meter. But U2's Bono is no ordinary rock star. He's also a political activist, using his pop status to advocate for African aid and AIDS relief. Which is how Bono came to be asked by an Associated Press music writer what he thought about President Barack Obama with regard to funding the fight against AIDS in Africa. "The Obama administration is just getting going," Bono said. "(He) has promised to double aid over the next years, because even though (President George W.) Bush tripled it ... the United States is still about half as what European countries give as a percentage, and I think he knows that's not right." We decided to check whether Bono was right that "the United States is still about half as what European countries give as a percentage." This turned into a tricky fact-check because Bono appears to have interchanged two different funding issues in his comment: global HIV/AIDS relief and foreign aid. Bono says Obama has promised to "double aid over the next years." Obama has pledged to increase AIDS funding, but not double. He has, though, promised to double foreign aid by 2015. In the same sentence, though, Bono then says President Bush "tripled it." The "it" there is the U.S. commitment to global AIDS relief (not foreign aid). So when Bono said "the United States is still about half as what European countries give as a percentage," is he talking about AIDS relief or foreign aid in general? The folks at ONE (the organization co-founded by Bono to fight extreme poverty and preventable disease, particularly in Africa) said Bono was talking here about foreign aid in general — he has used this statistic in the past. And on that front, Bono is on pretty firm ground. The key qualifier there is "as a percentage." Because the U.S. government distributes more in foreign aid than any other country, by far. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, an international group of the world's 30 leading industrial countries, reports that in 2008, the United States distributed about $26 billion in net official development assistance. The next closest country was Germany, at nearly $14 billion, and the United Kingdom, with about $11.4 billion. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 But considered as a percentage of gross national income (which is essentially the more familiar gross domestic product plus or minus income from other countries), you'll have to go to the bottom of the list to find the United States. We note that none of the countries gives more than 1 percent of GNI. The U.S. gave 0.18 percent. By comparison, here's how some of the European biggies fared: United Kingdom, 0.43 percent; Germany, 0.38 percent; France, 0.39 percent; Spain, 0.43 percent. In other words, it's fair to say the United States is providing about half as much development assistance as European countries, as a percentage of GNI. There are a lot of other factors to consider when it comes to foreign assistance, though: debt reduction, trade, money from private foundations, to name a few. Suffice to say, you can look at this data in countless ways. And some groups that have attempted to quantify foreign aid on some of these various factors have found the United States to be on par with its European counterparts. But we think it's certainly fair for Bono to cite this statistic from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and had he been clear that he was talking about foreign aid, his statement would have been largely accurate. But that was not at all clear. In fact, based on the context of his comments, most people would probably conclude that Bono was talking about global AIDS relief , and that the United States only gives about half as much as Europeans "as a percentage." And that is not right. In fact, in 2008, the United States accounted for more than half (51.3 percent) of all the the global AIDs relief disbursed by governments around the world, according to an analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation and UNAIDS. Even when standardized to account for the size of the countries' relative economies, the United States ranked fourth highest, well higher than most European countries. The only ones higher were the Netherlands, United Kingdom and Bono's homeland, Ireland. Again, some make strong arguments against the use of such rankings because, for example, they don't take into account private donations from foundations. When it comes to AIDS relief from foundations, the United States far outpaces Europe. That's because the United States provides generous tax incentives for such largess. So some argue the U.S. government ought to get credit for at least some of that funding. By any measure, though, Europe is not spending twice as much, "as a percentage," on AIDS relief than the United States. The Bush administration deserves a great deal of credit for that. In 2003, Bush initiated a $15 billion plan to address global AIDS relief, mostly for countries in Africa where the AIDS epidemic is staggering. And then in 2008, Congress — Democrats and Republicans alike — more than tripled the HIV/AIDS relief budget to $48 billion over the next five years. Obama, meanwhile, pledged to provide at least $50 billion by 2013 for the global fight against HIV/AIDS. "The Bush administration showed real leadership on global HIV/AIDS," said Eric Lief, a senior associate with the Henry L. Stimson Center. "U.S. funding grew exponentially during the last eight years. Since 2001, the U.S. has funded a disproportionate share of global AIDS assistance. But global funding is still far short of anything close to global need. The Obama administration has committed to continuing the upward trend." As for foreign aid, the United States remains the world’s largest funder in terms of dollars spent, said Lief, who served on the State Department's policy planning staff under President Bill Clinton and was once a senior adviser with the U.N. Joint Program on HIV/AIDS in Geneva. "In other ways and by other measures, the U.S. falls short in terms of support for the developing world," he said. "Single-index 'rankings' of governments are overused politically. What we’re buying with foreign aid dollars is a much more important question than how much we’re spending, and the U.S. record is mixed." Now might be a good time to note that Bono appears to be doing wonderful work as a spokesman trying to draw attention to dire poverty and health issues in Africa. And one member of the PolitiFact team gives Bono's performance on the current U2 tour a big thumbs up. But our review of Bono's performance with this comment is more mixed. Again, if Bono had clearly switched gears and said he was talking about foreign aid when he said the United States only gives about half as much as Europe, as a percentage, he'd be right — at least according to one measure from the respected OECD. But in the context of the interview, Bono appeared to be talking about AIDS relief — in which case he'd be wrong. We checked with the AP reporter who did the interview, and it was her understanding that he was talking about global AIDS relief. At the least, by toggling back and forth between statistics on foreign aid and global HIV/AIDS relief, Bono left room for confusion. And so we rate him Half True.

The Democrats' health care bill "gives a new Health Choices Commissioner the right to look at an individual's tax return to determine what medical benefits or subsidies that person qualifies for. Concerned Women for America, a conservative group, says the Democrats' health care reform bill could allow the government to peek into your tax records. On its Web site, the group states, "Not only are your medical records at risk under Obamacare, but your financial records too. The proposed bill expressly gives a new Health Choices Commissioner the right to look at an individual's tax return to determine what medical benefits or subsidies that person qualifies for." The CWA statement seems to be referring to the health care bill (H.R. 3200) that was approved in the summer of 2009 by three House committees. That bill — which formed the basis for the version from the House Democratic leadership introduced on Oct. 29, 2009 — would create a health choices commissioner. This new post would wield broad authority over the federal program, including setting minimum standards for health care plans, operating a new health insurance exchange and, most importantly for the purposes of the CWA's claim, determining who will qualify for federal subsidies to buy health insurance. Under the bill, Congress would set income levels to establish who is eligible for "affordability credits," which are designed for people in the lower middle class who earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but who don't earn enough to buy their own insurance. The credits would allow them to get insurance on the health care exchange, a new virtual marketplace for people who are currently uninsured or buy coverage on the individual market. The commissioner is assigned to determine who qualifies. H.R. 3200 includes a passage that gives the commissioner authority to get tax records to determine how much people earn: "In carrying out this subtitle, the Commissioner shall request from the Secretary of the Treasury consistent with section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 such information as may be required to carry out this subtitle." In the new House bill introduced on Oct. 29, lawmakers included similar language. We looked up Section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code and found that it does indeed cover "Confidentiality and Disclosure of Returns and Return Information." So the passage in the bill does indicate that the CWA is right that the commissioner would have the ability to access information from tax returns in order to run the program that provides individual affordability credits. Meanwhile, the Senate Finance Committee bill — which would also provide health insurance subsidies for qualifying Americans — has language similar to that in the House bills, with the main difference being that it would rely on the Department of Health and Human Services rather than the newly created health choices commissioner. "The bill permits the IRS to substantiate the accuracy of income and family size information that has been provided to HHS for eligibility determination," the Senate bill states. So in this regard, the House and Senate are consistent, and CWA's claim is largely correct. Still, experts we spoke with offered a couple of caveats. • The notion that federal officials would look at tax information to determine "medical benefits" is a significant exaggeration. The bills allow the government to use tax information when determining if someone is eligible for subsidies. But it is incorrect to suggest, as CWA seems to do, that the commissioner might deny a specific treatment for a disease based on something on one's tax return. Our experts could think of only one scenario in which a federal official's use of personal tax information might influence benefits, and that would be indirectly. If someone applied for a subsidy to purchase a private plan, but officials found that their income was too low to be eligible for the subsidy, they would need to apply instead for Medicaid, the federal-state program that provides health care for the poor. Presumably, Medicaid and the private plan the person had been looking at would offer a different package of benefits. But even if that happened, there's reason to think that Medicaid would actually offer a better and cheaper package for the beneficiary than private coverage, especially if they have a disability, said Edwin Park, a senior fellow at the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. And in any case, there's nothing included in any of the health care bills that says that federal officials would be determining specific medical treatments based on information gleaned from a tax return. • The group was a bit overbroad in characterizing what private information federal officials could look at. While the CWA said that the commissioner would have "the right to look at an individual's tax return to determine what medical benefits or subsidies that person qualifies for," the commissioner would actually have the right to look at the pertinent information from that return — not the entire return. In this case, that would include such information as a taxpayer's filing status, number of dependents and modified adjusted gross income. • The commissioner would not be looking at everyone's tax information — only the information for people who apply for the affordability credits. (And even then, it's not clear whether the commissioner would request information for every applicant or simply spot-check for audit purposes.) • Finally, this authority to review tax information isn't new. Under existing law, tax returns, or information from returns, can be shared with federal, state or judicial officials for many reasons, including: — Social Security benefits, food stamps, unemployment benefits, and federal housing subsidies — Tracking down people who are behind in child support or are delinquent on their student loans — Various forms of Medicare benefits While we conclude that the CWA is partly right on this one, it has cranked up the hyperbole. Federal officials would be able to look at specific tax information, but they couldn't go through entire returns. And while officials would have the power to see private tax information, they would not be able to use it to decide what specific medical treatments someone would receive. So we find the group's claim Half True. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022

A president must "obtain Congress' consent before formally accepting the Nobel Prize. Three Republican members of Congress wrote President Barack Obama a letter telling him he needs to "obtain Congress' consent before formally accepting the Nobel Prize." The members — Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite and Rep. Cliff Stearns of Florida, and Rep. Ron Paul of Texas — point to Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution, which reads, in part: "No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States: And no Person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State." In their letter, they write, "As the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded by a committee appointed by the Parliament of Norway, the Storting, the prize is clearly subject to the requirements set forth in Article 1, Section 9, of the Constitution. Obtaining permission from Congress should be straightforward." They said the precedent was set when President Theodore Roosevelt created a committee to hold his prize money and then obtained the consent of Congress to send the money to various charities. Roosevelt received the prize in 1906 for mediating a peace agreement between Russia and Japan. We wanted to know if the representatives were correct that Obama has to obtain the permission of Congress before accepting the prize, which he was awarded for his diplomatic efforts on international cooperation and nuclear disarmament. We went down many avenues of research here. The Nobel Peace Prize includes a cash gift of about $1.4 million, so that seems to fit the definition of a "present." The Republican members are also correct that the members of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee are appointed by the Norwegian parliament, the Storting. But it's not clear that the Nobel Peace Prize could be considered as being given by "a foreign state." The committee's Web site says it "is formally independent even of the Storting, and since 1901 it has repeatedly emphasized its independence" and that it was "appointed by the Storting (the Norwegian Parliamant), but without the committee being formally responsible to the Storting." Over the years, the Storting has taken steps to distance itself from the committee to emphasize that the award is "not an act of Norwegian foreign policy." The Nobel prizes are administered by a foundation, the Nobel Foundation, and the only reason the Norwegian parliament is involved is because prize founder Alfred Nobel said in his will that he would like members of the Storting to pick the committee members for the peace prize. The other prizes have other selectors. Here's the quote from his will, dated Nov. 27, 1895: "The prizes for physics and chemistry shall be awarded by the Swedish Academy of Sciences; that for physiological or medical work by the Caroline Institute in Stockholm; that for literature by the Academy in Stockholm, and that for champions of peace by a committee of five persons to be elected by the Norwegian Storting." (By the way, the Nobel Foundation is based in Sweden, not Norway, which has also been a source of confusion and controversy over the years.) We asked White House officials for their thoughts on the matter, and they firmly said that the Nobel Prize is not awarded by a foreign government. Spokeswoman Kate Bedingfield gave us this statement: "The President is donating the money to charity. The statute cited does not apply because the gift is from the Nobel Foundation — a private foundation — not a foreign government. The President is free to do what he likes with the money, and he has chosen to donate it to charity." Even if the Nobel Prize would be considered as coming from a foreign government, there is compelling evidence that a president does not have to seek special permission from Congress, because Congress already allows it, via statute. Law professor David Kopel researched the issue and posted a detailed analysis on the respected legal blog The Volokh Conspiracy . Kopel located a statute, which we reviewed, that allows American officeholders and government employees to accept foreign prizes if the recipients meet a number of requirements. The statute specifically mentions that the president and the vice president are included. Kopel said the statute allows a president to accept the prize without any additional permission, as long as he turns the prize money over to his "employing agency," which would likely be an office of the White House. "Thus, it seems clear that the statute already supplies the constitutionally-required congressional consent for President Obama to accept the Nobel Peace Prize, and no further action by Congress is needed, provided that President Obama signs the check over (to) the government, as the statute requires," Kopel wrote. Kopel told us that the statute appears to have been written in 1966, with several revisions since then, so it wouldn't have applied to Roosevelt or Wilson. The problem Obama might run into, Kopel said, is if he wants to direct the money to a specific charity. For that, he would need permission from Congress, because the Constitution says "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law." That might be the more pertinent reason Roosevelt sought permission from Congress when it came to giving the money to charity. Roosevelt wanted to use his prize money for a new "Industrial Peace Committee" so Congress created a commission, according to news reports. The committee must have never gotten off the ground, because years later, Roosevelt asked Congress to direct the money toward war relief. We looked for formal Peace Prize authorizations from Congress for Roosevelt and President Woodrow Wilson, the two sitting presidents who have previously received the prize. (Wilson received the prize in 1920 for his work the previous year establishing the League of Nations, a forerunner of the United Nations.) We couldn't find any authorizations, and we double-checked with librarians who specialize in historical congressional research, and they couldn't find anything either. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 We were also unable to find out what Wilson did with his money; one biography said Wilson was worried about his finances and suggested that he simply kept the money. In his defense, he was in poor health when he left office, and presidents didn't get a pension back then. Finally, a more contemporary comparison to the flap over Obama's prize might be the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize. That year, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger won the prize along with Le Duc Tho of North Vietnam for their efforts to negotiate a peace agreement for the Vietnam War — though Le Duc Tho rejected the prize. We found op-eds from American liberals who thought Kissinger didn't deserve it, and many protests from university students and faculty. Members of the Norwegian parliament were also reportedly infuriated and said they planned to look into the committee's operations. But we didn't find that Kissinger received any special permission to accept the prize. Kissinger told the press he wanted the prize money to go to scholarships for the children of soldiers killed or missing in action. Kissinger donated the money — back then it was $50,000 — to Community Funds Inc., a companion organization of New York Community Trust, and it created a scholarship fund that was expected to last about 10 years, according to a 1974 news report. There was no mention in the news report of Congress authorizing this, and we couldn't find anything in the Congressional Record on the donation, either. This is a tricky one for us. This is a matter of legal interpretation that may ultimately be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. We understand the Republicans' point — although it's a tenuous one, in our view — that the Nobel committee might be considered a governmental panel. We believe much evidence points to the contrary — that the Storting's sole task is to appoint members, and then the government's connection to the prize ends. The Nobel Foundation is not part of the Norwegian government; it's a private Swedish foundation. And we haven't found any evidence to show that Roosevelt, Wilson or Kissinger sought permission from the government to accept the prize. But the tenuous link is enough to earn a Barely True. Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly False.

A new federal program provides subsidized "Obama phones" with 70 free minutes of cell phone service every month A reader recently sent us a chain e-mail about a cell phone deal. "Receive (1) a FREE new phone and (2) approx 70 minutes of FREE minutes every month," the e-mail said. The catch? They're only available to welfare recipients. "I had a former employee call me earlier today inquiring about a job, and at the end of the conversation he gave me his phone number," the e-mail said. "I asked the former employee if this was a new cell phone number and he told me yes this was his 'Obama phone'... TAX PAYER MONEY IS BEING REDISTRIBUTED TO WELFARE RECIPIENTS FOR FREE CELL PHONES." The chain e-mail — we've received copies from several readers — calls them "Obama phones," which suggests the program is new. It says the cell phone program threatens "the very foundations that this country was built on," and "the age old concepts of God, family, and hard work." A federal program offering 70 minutes a month sounded unusual to us, so we decided to look into it. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 The e-mail included a link to the TracPhone Web site, a prepaid cell phone company, and its SafeLink Wireless program to help low-income people get cellular coverage. Depending on where participants live, free phones and free minutes are available; participants in Washington, D.C., for example, can get 55 free minutes per month, while consumers in Florida can get 68 free minutes a month. AT&T and Verizon provide similar services. All those perks are the result of Federal Communications Commission programs to help low-income people get phone service. Specifically, Lifeline, which TracPhone participates in, provides discounts on basic monthly phone service, and Link-Up America helps those who qualify get telephone service by paying one-half of the startup fee, according to the FCC Web site. Eligible participants must have an income that is at or below 135 percent of the federal poverty level or use Medicaid, food stamps, federal public housing assistance, or supplemental security income, among other things. In some cases, states administer their own programs. We spoke with Rosemary Kimball, an FCC spokeswoman, to get more details. She said consumers can qualify for a cell phone plan if they don't have access to a land-line. Though the exact details of the benefit vary from state to state, cell phone providers typically provide low-income consumers with some form of a monthly discount, whether it be free minutes or a reduced rate, she said. And here's a key detail: The program is more than decade old. Kimball said it comes from the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which amended the Communications Act of 1934 to require low-income assistance. The law required the FCC to create the Universal Service Fund, a pool of money subsidized by small charges on our phone bills (we checked our bill and found we kicked in $2.80 last month) and redistributed to the low-income service programs as well as programs that bring telecommunications services to rural areas and schools. And the LifeLine program has been around even longer — since 1985. It's a matter of opinion whether this program threatens the very foundations this country was built on. But the e-mail is correct that tax dollars are being used to support the cell phone program. Still, it mischaracterizes the program by making it seem as if it was created by the Obama administration. In fact, Lifeline and Link-Up have been around for nearly 14 years. These are not "Obama phones." (Maybe we should call them "Clinton phones.") So we rate the claim Barely True. Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly Fals

When White House communications director Anita Dunn said that Mao Tse-tung was "one of her favorite philosophers, only Fox News picked that up. In a recent segment with conservative commentator Ann Coulter, Fox News Channel host Bill O'Reilly slammed other media outlets for failing to cover a story — unearthed by Fox — that a senior aide to Barack Obama had told high school students that one of her "favorite political philosophers" was Mao Tse-tung, the late Chinese communist leader who is blamed for the deaths of millions of people. The O'Reilly-Coulter exchange, aired on Oct. 23, 2009, came amid a war of words between the White House and Fox. Anita Dunn, the White House communications director and a longtime Democratic operative, emerged this month as one of the leading figures in a White House push to discredit Fox News, telling the New York Times ' Brian Stelter, "We're going to treat [Fox] the way we would treat an opponent. ... We don't need to pretend that this is the way that legitimate news organizations behave." Dunn's comments added heat to an already simmering feud, and it wasn't long before Glenn Beck — the conservative Fox host who frequently riles the White House and its allies — responded in kind. On the Oct. 15, 2009, episode of his Fox show, Beck aired a video of a speech Dunn made to high school students. In it, Dunn imparted a series of life lessons to the students, the third of which "actually comes from two of my favorite political philosophers: Mao Tse-tung and Mother Teresa, not often coupled together, but the two people that I turn to most to basically deliver a simple point, which is, you're going to make choices. You're going to challenge. You're going to say why not. You're going to figure out how to do things that have never been done before." Dunn then told an anecdote about how Mao triumphed as an underdog over his rival, nationalist leader Chiang Kai-Shek, during the Chinese civil war. Asked how he would win, Mao said, according to Dunn, "You know, you fight your war, and I'll fight mine." Dunn continued, "And think about that for a second. You don't have to accept the definition of how to do things, and you don't have to follow other people's choices and paths, okay? It is about your choices and your path. You fight your own war. You lay out your own path. You figure out what's right for you. You don't let external definitions define how good you are internally." Beck's discovery that a senior Obama White House official had said nice things about a Communist leader with a bloody place in history was catnip for Fox, and for a host of conservative bloggers. Let's explore whether O'Reilly is correct that "only Fox News picked that up. Nobody else picked that up." It's certainly true that Fox played the story to the hilt: In a 10-day span after the story broke, Fox shows mentioned the incident, either in depth or in passing, roughly two dozen times. As for other news organizations, we found they rarely treated it as a news story. But there was a fair amount of discussion about Dunn's remark, usually in commentaries or analyses of the Fox-White House feud: — In opinion columns . Two syndicated columnists based at the Washington Post wrote about Dunn's Mao comment. Kathleen Parker, a conservative with a maverick streak, wrote a pox-on-both-their-houses column, while Charles Krauthammer (a frequent panelist on Fox) penned one that was critical of Dunn and favorable to Fox. Both ran on the Post 's op-ed page and were reprinted in newspapers across the country. A handful of newspapers also wrote editorials that cited the episode. Meanwhile, Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Dick Polman published a column in the paper (and later an expanded version online) that took Fox and Beck to task. "How helpful is Beck, after all, when he morphs into Joe McCarthy on Fox News, and attempts to red-bait a top Obama aide by painting her as a communist sympathizer in thrall to Mao Tse-tung?" Polman asked. "Last week, Beck characterized Anita Dunn as a 'fan of a guy who killed millions of people.' He then aired a video clip that showed Dunn quoting Mao during a June speech. Shocking! What Beck naturally neglected to tell his credulous viewers is that politicians of all stripes have been quoting Mao for years. Such as: 'In the words of Chairman Mao, it’s always darkest before it’s totally black.' (That was John McCain). Such as: 'Mao said politics is war without bloodshed. Clearly there are some metaphors that sit nicely with politics.' (That was Christian conservative leader Ralph Reed.)" — As media criticism . The Washington Post' s media critic, Howard Kurtz, made brief references to the Mao controversy as he dissected the Fox-White House feud in two of his daily Media Notes blog posts. — In remarks by TV commentators . On the Oct. 18, 2009, edition of CNN's State of the Union with John King , commentators discussed the war between the White House and Fox. Bill Bennett, a conservative, brought up the Dunn-Mao connection. Saying it "isn't a small thing — it's a big thing," Bennett told the panel, "Now, look, I am not a right-wing nut, and when people go after Obama and say 'socialism and Marxism,' I say, take it easy, you know, calm down. But when she stands up, in a speech to high school kids, says she's deeply influenced by Mao Tse-tung, that — I mean, that is crazy." Meanwhile, Lou Dobbs, on his nightly news show on CNN, gave a brief hat tip to Beck's story (adding that Mao may have been responsible for "as many as 100 million" deaths) before proceeding into a plug for his syndicated radio show, where viewers could "hear more of my thoughts on all the president's czars and their fascination with Mao Tse-tung." On CNN (which has had its own war of words with Fox, its longtime cable news rival), the Situation Room put resident curmudgeon Jack Cafferty on the Mao story, asking viewers what they thought. "T.J." wrote to Cafferty, "Enough already. Stop reporting anything about Glenn Beck. He is an insane nut job. His opinion is of no value to anyone, except other nut jobs. Stop enabling this psychotic fraud by constantly reporting what he has to say about, well, anything." "J.R. in Idaho" wrote, "When you report on the stories you have created, you have become illegitimate. Fox is 'balloon boy.'" Others were critical of the White House for taking on a fight it was unlikely to win. — Only rarely as straight news . The day after Beck aired the video, CNN's Suzanne Malveaux and Ed Hornick posted a Web story in which Dunn said that the Mao quote "is one I picked up from the late Republican strategist Lee Atwater from something I read in the late 1980s, so I hope I don't get my progressive friends mad at me." She added that "the use of the phrase 'favorite political philosophers' was intended as irony, but clearly the effort fell flat — at least with a certain Fox commentator whose sense of irony may be missing." On Oct. 18, the Associated Press moved a story that recapped the controversy in a straightforward way. (It was written by the AP's television writer, David Bauder, not one of its national political writers.) A day later, the Los Angeles Times ' Top of the Ticket blog briefly mentioned the Mao-Dunn flap in an item about the larger Fox-White House conflict. And the New York Times ' Caucus blog took up the issue twice. The first time, on Oct. 16, 2009, Sheryl Gay Stolberg wrote a post explaining the Dunn-Mao controversy, saying that "the war of words between the White House and Fox News is intensifying — and getting personal." Two days later, the blog offered an update on the Fox-White House war, adding the following quote from Dunn: "Let it be noted that I also quoted Mother Teresa, but no one is accusing me of being a saint!" So let's recap. If O'Reilly's point is that few media outlets played the story as worthy of straight news coverage, he's probably right. With only a few exceptions, the media coverage we found consisted either of opinion columns (both pro and con), purposeful mentions of it by TV commentators or as a subject for laughs. However, if we stick to his precise wording, O'Reilly is certainly incorrect that "only Fox News" picked up the story. While Fox beat the drum more heavily than anyone — not surprising, since it was the network's story to begin with — CNN and the blogs of several major newspapers also mentioned it. In addition, syndicated versions of two Washington Post columns appeared in many newspapers around the country. We rate his statement False. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022

"For the last decade the climate has been cooling. Skeptics of climate change often say the world has been cooling in the past decade. Conservative pundit Mary Matalin made that claim on CNN's Situation Room on Oct. 22, 2009. Matalin warned that the Obama administration is pushing too many big legislative initiatives such as a cap-and-trade plan to slow global warming when the administration should be focusing on the deficit. "If they care about reducing the deficit, which should be their No. 1 priority ... they're not going to be able to do this — all this other nonsense, cap and trade and all the rest of it. Too much, too fast," Matalin said. "Climate change is a fake issue anyway. ... There is not consensus science on what is causing global climate change. There is climate change, but for the last decade the climate has been cooling. There is the science. There is the data on that. They want to do this because they like to have all these programs being controlled by the government." So, Matalin acknowledges that the Earth's temperature is changing, but she's not so sure that those changes are man-made. We'll save the debate over whether climate change is caused by human activity for another day. For now, we're going to check Matalin's claim that the Earth has been cooling in recent years. Last spring, we checked a similar claim made by the Cato Institute, a free-market think tank. The group claimed that there has been no net global warming for over a decade; we found that False because the climate scientists we spoke with said that, while temperatures have remained relatively static over the last decade, very little can be learned about climate change in a 10-year window. Matalin's office sent us a few articles pertaining to the issue, two about a new book by Christopher Booker, a British author and climate change skeptic, who wrote in the Oct. 25 issue of the British newspaper the Telegraph that, "as the world has already been through two of its coldest winters for decades, with all the signs that we may now be entering a third, the scientific case for (carbon dioxide) threatening the world with warming has been crumbling away on an astonishing scale." Another study , published by Bob Carter, a professor of geology at Australia's James Cook University, in the Jan. 20 issue of the Australian newspaper argued that "global atmospheric temperature reached a peak in 1998, has not warmed since 1995 and, has been cooling since 2002." Carter is correct that global temperatures hit a high point in 1998. Several entities — including NASA, the Climate Research Unit in the United Kingdom and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the United States — track temperature changes. Generally speaking, their records show that 1998, a year when a warming pattern called El Nino ruled the weather, is the hottest we've had since scientists started collecting temperature information in the mid 1800s. NASA, on the other hand, pins 2005 as the hottest year on record. But no matter how you slice the data, temperatures have indisputably fluctuated in the last decade, contrary to Matalin's suggestion that they have cooled. This graph from NASA shows that the temperature increased slightly between 2000 and 2001, dropped in 2002, and rose once again the following year. In this case, the annual mean temperature goes up and down, and the five-year mean is on a steady rise. This graph from NOAA shows a similar trend, with temperatures dipping slightly at the beginning of the decade and peaking once again in 2005. We asked Richard Heim, a meteorologist at the NOAA National Climatic Data Center Climate Monitoring Branch, what to make of all these ups and downs. At the most, it shows a plateau, he said. But certainly not a cooling trend. "With climate change, not every year is going to be warmer," Heim said. "It's two steps up, two steps down — that's not a indication we're on a massive cooling trend." NOAA climate monitoring chief Deke Arndt recently told the Associated Press the same thing: "The last 10 years are the warmest 10-year period of the modern record," he said. "Even if you analyze the trend during that 10 years, the trend is actually positive, which means warming." If 1998 is the starting point, a year many climate skeptics tend to cite, everything looks cooler in comparison, said Raymond Bradley, a climate scientist at the University of Massachusetts. He also pointed out that, when evaluating the impact of climate change on temperature, it's misleading to look at only the last 10 years. A decade is such a small period of time that "it's like saying, 'It was cold here last week. What happened to climate change?'" Bradley said. It's a point we heard repeatedly from the climate experts we interviewed. They all agreed that, while climate temperatures may dip from year to year, it's shortsighted to say changes within a decade mean that climate change is going away. "If you just take a one-year comparison — say that it's cooler in 2008 than it was in 2007 — that's an improper use of statistics" to make judgments about climate change, said John Reilly, a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "It still remains much warmer than it was in the 1960s. To the extent that there has been some slight cooling, we still remain half-a-degree above what it was then." Indeed, climate records show that temperatures have been on the rise since the middle of the century, and that fluctuations between recent years are relatively small compared to overall increase. NASA estimates that global temperatures have risen a total of 2.3 degrees since 1895, and that 13 of the warmest years since 1850 have occurred in the last 14 years. Jim Hurrell, a senior scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., says these natural temperature variations are expected. "In the same way that El Nino made 1998 warm, in 2007 and 2008, La Nina made global temperatures a bit cooler than they have been running, but still much warmer than the long-term average," Hurrell said referring to El Nino's cooler counterpart. Citing just the last 10 years "is a classic case of taking the data and letting it tell a very misleading story," he said. Matalin said, "for the last decade the climate has been cooling." That suggests there has been a distinct reversal of the steady warming that scientists have documented for many years. But a review of the data shows that's not the case. The numbers show that in the past 10 years, global temperatures have not continued their sharp increase. But they have not cooled either. In fact, some years in the last decade have been hotter than the previous years. At most, they could be described as hitting a plateau. But they haven't cooled as Matalin said. We find her claim False. Featured Fact-check Instagram posts stated on October 30, 2022 in a photo “There are no greenhouse gas emissions in this photo” of cows grazing. By Kristin Hugo • November 7, 2022

"President Bush never did one interview with the New York Times during his entire presidency. Calling the Fox News Channel "the communications arm of the Republican Party," White House aides have been complaining about slanted coverage from the cable network. Fox was pointedly excluded from a series of interviews President Barack Obama gave other networks on Sept. 20 about health care reform. Conservative critics and some independent pundits have said the president is guilty of freezing out a legitimate news network because he doesn't like its coverage. If that's the case, then President George W. Bush did it, too, said liberal talk show host Rachel Maddow of MSNBC. She said the Bush administration frequently excluded liberal columnists and talk show hosts from meetings Bush held with conservative media. "Would it surprise you to learn that President Bush never did one interview with the New York Times during his entire presidency? Not one in eight years?" she asked. That sounded suspicious to us, given that the New York Times is one of the largest newspapers in the country. Sure enough, we were able to find at least three interviews that Bush gave the New York Times . (We'll update this item if we find more.) • On June 5, 2001, New York Times reporter Frank Bruni had what he described as Bush's first "one-on-one interview" since Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont switched parties and threw control of the Senate to the Democrats. "We're looking at a different landscape, but still on the same continent," Bush said. "The same votes. The members haven't changed." • On Aug 26, 2004, Bush gave a half-hour interview to the New York Times as he campaigned through New Mexico. Bush told the newspaper that he did not believe Sen. John Kerry lied about his war record, as some groups alleged during the campaign. • On Jan. 27, 2005, a week after he started his second term, Bush spoke with New York Times reporters for 40 minutes, discussing troop levels in Iraq and domestic issues such as gay adoption, abortion and Social Security. We couldn't find any interviews after that date, though we did find comments complaining about a lack of access from New York Times reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg on the newspaper's Web site on Nov. 9, 2008. A reader asked Stolberg if the White House played favorites when it came to press access. Stolberg wrote that the New York Times had had a standing request to interview Bush, "since well before I came on this beat in May 2006. So far, no interview — and the reason why is hardly a secret. White House officials are quite open about the fact that we have not gotten an interview because they don't like our coverage. I get e-mails to that effect from them all the time. But the request still stands, and we are hoping for an interview before Mr. Bush leaves office." That might sound on first blush like the New York Times never got an interview ever , but the newspaper did have interviews prior to 2006. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 The Rachel Maddow Show told us they were going off a Los Angeles Times blog post that was based on Stolberg's comments. The blog post was incorrectly headlined, "Nine years later the N.Y. Times still awaits its Bush interview." The show did try to research the issue, "but obviously our fact-check fell short," Maddow said in a statement to PolitiFact. "We'll air a correction." To be clear, we're not checking Maddow's broader point that Bush played favorites with the press. Is there any president who hasn't? Rather, we're checking Maddow's statement that President Bush "never did one interview with the New York Times during his entire presidency." That's not the case, so we rate her statement Fals

A "fairly limited number of people, 25 million to 30 million," will be allowed to access a national health insurance exchange Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., appeared on This Week with George Stephanopoulos to discuss health care reform and the concerns of moderate Democrats that it not add to the deficit. McCaskill said she supported a public option for health insurance and believed that it would end up as part of the final plan. The public option would be one plan among many private plans available on a health insurance exchange, she said. "Keep in mind, not everybody can even go to this exchange and buy insurance with any kind of subsidy. This is going to be a fairly limited number of people — 25 million to 30 million are the estimates — that would even be on this insurance exchange. By and large, most of this country is going to continue to get their health insurance through their employer." We were interested in McCaskill's statement because we've been following the legislation to see who would be allowed onto the exchange. To go over a few health care reform basics: The Democratic plans would leave in place the current system of private insurance, which covers a majority of Americans. The plans would also increase regulation for insurance companies, require everyone to buy health insurance and provide more subsidies for low-income people. People who are uninsured or work for a small business would be able to buy coverage on the exchange, which would offer a variety of plans. One aspect still up in the air is the public option, a plan on the exchange that would be run by the government. People could choose whether to enroll in the public option. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 McCaskill said that only a limited number of people would be eligible to shop on the exchange, and that is the case with the proposal approved by the Senate Finance Committee. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office analyzed the committee bill and found that between 23 million and 27 million would buy insurance from the exchange by 2019. The CBO said that most of the people using the exchange would be people who buy insurance on their own in the individual market, and employees who work for small businesses. The CBO also looked at the House bill, a slightly different plan, and found that 30 million would use the exchange in 2019. (We should note that the Senate Finance Committee proposal did not include a public option, but it's expected that the full Senate will consider a public option of some type.) Not everybody likes the limitation on who can shop on the exchange. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., for example, has been promoting an amendment that would open the exchange to people who get insurance from a large employer. "Under the nation's current employer-based system, most people have little if any choice about where they get their insurance," Wyden wrote in an op-ed in the New York Times. "They just have to accept the plan that comes with their job. That insurance company, in turn, is provided a captive group of customers, so it has no incentive to earn their loyalty." We should also note that President Barack Obama was fond of saying on the campaign trail that people could buy insurance on a new exchange "if you don't have insurance, or don't like your insurance." He mentioned it as recently as June in remarks to the American Medical Association: "Now, if you don't like your health coverage or you don't have any insurance at all, you'll have a chance under what we've proposed to take part in what we're calling a health insurance exchange," Obama said to the AMA on June 15, 2009. But that wouldn't be the case under the terms of the Senate Finance proposal, which was unveiled in September. Keep in mind that health care legislation has yet to be finalized, so we'll be keeping an eye on this provision. Getting back to McCaskill's remark, she said that it would be "a fairly limited number of people — 25 million to 30 million are the estimates — that would even be on this insurance exchange. By and large, most of this country is going to continue to get their health insurance through their employer." The Congressional Budget Office analyzed the Senate bill and pegged it at 23 million to 27 million by 2019, slightly less than the 30 million the CBO estimated under the House bill. Roughly speaking, that's less than 10 percent of the U.S. population. McCaskill is off by just a little bit on the Senate version and on the money for the House bill. So we rate her statement Tru

"Here in Florida, I’ve slashed government by 10 percent. That's $7 billion. With conservative Marco Rubio nipping at his heels in the race for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist is trying to pump up his conservative credentials. In a new radio advertisement for his campaign, he says, "Here in Florida, I’ve slashed government by 10 percent. That’s $7 billion." It’s a statement Crist has also made on the campaign trail, and at a Hillsborough County Republican Party fundraiser earlier this month. It’s true that Florida’s budget has dropped by 10 percent, or about $7 billion, since Crist was elected governor in November 2006. The budget passed by the Legislature and approved by then-Gov. Jeb Bush in May 2006 came in at $73.9 billion. This year’s spending plan tops out at $66.5 billion. But can Crist, as his radio ad claims, really take credit for the cuts? In 2007, Crist did veto $459 million from the state budget, setting a state record with his veto pen. Featured Fact-check Rebekah Jones stated on October 26, 2022 in a post on Instagram Document shows Rebekah Jones “demonstrated” a violation of Florida’s Whistleblower Act. By Sara Swann • November 1, 2022 But the Florida Constitution requires that state lawmakers prepare a balanced budget, which is built around revenue generated by sales taxes, corporate taxes, other taxes and fees, and federal appropriations. And since 2007, that revenue has declined significantly as the nationwide recession has taken hold. State budget documents show that in the 2006-2007 fiscal year, $31.7 billion was available in the general revenue fund. This year, the fund had only $21.9 billion. (In fiscal year 2007, the fund had $28 billion, and in 2008, it had $24.3 billion.) With revenue down and a constitutional requirement for a balanced budget, Crist had to either cut spending or raise taxes. "This is not a concerted effort on the part of our governor and Legislature to cut the budget," said Dominic M. Calabro, president and CEO of Florida TaxWatch. "It is because of the worst economy Florida has had since the Great Depression." Crist has defended the budget-cut claim by saying that in other states, taxes were increased to cover shortfalls. While Crist didn’t push for tax increases to make up the entire shortfall, he did approve fee and tax increases this year — on everything from fishing licenses to initial vehicle registrations to cigarettes — that total $2.2 billion. So while it is true that state government has shrunk by 10 percent since Crist’s election, it had little to do with him, and a lot to do with the shrinking economy. For those reasons, we give Crist’s statement a Barely True. Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly Fals

A "massive" federal computer network will make your medical records available to "millions of people" with a "complete lack of privacy and confidentiality," while doctors and hospitals who don't take part face "stiff penalties. Could Big Brother — or garden-variety snoopers — soon get their hands on your medical data? The Senior Citizens League, a group that boasts 1.2 million members and is affiliated with the Retired Enlisted Association, recently sent out a mailing saying it was possible. According to a copy obtained by the Huffington Post, the group sent a four-page letter, along with a questionnaire and a cover letter signed by former Rep. David Funderburk, R-N.C., to seniors, expressing two related concerns about Democratic health care reform plans being debated on Capitol Hill. One is that they could lead to the rationing of care. The other is that the government is assembling a "national government computer network" that will contain Americans' medical files. We've already addressed the question of rationing , so we'll focus here on the plans for a computer network. Here's what the Senior Citizens League letter said: "The key to these changes is a massive national government computer network, which is now being created. When it is complete, your complete medical record will be available 24 hours a day to health care workers at computer terminals in pharmacies, doctors' offices and hospitals across the country and to government workers. ... To ensure that all doctors, hospitals and pharmacies participate and place their records in the new system, a portion of the economic stimulus legislation passed in February includes stiff penalties for doctors and hospitals which do not participate. The complete lack of privacy or confidentiality that comes when millions of people can see your records and the virtual certainty of computer errors has raised concern among many Medicare beneficiaries." First, a little background on health information technology, or HIT for short. Computerizing medical records has long been a goal of policymakers across the ideological spectrum. The idea is to shift from paper-based records to electronic ones, so that doctors can access information about their patients more quickly and easily and make better clinical decisions as a result. Supporters hope that HIT will reduce the frequency of medical errors, unnecessary diagnostic tests and inappropriate treatments. While the biggest impact would likely be felt within a patient's small circle of physicians, nurses and pharmacists, planners also envision scenarios in which an emergency room doctor treating a patient traveling far from home would be able to quickly receive medical records about that patient. Officials also hope that, in the longer term, streamlining record-keeping could bring down the rapidly escalating cost of health care. In 2004, President George W. Bush issued an executive order creating incentives for the use of health information technology, to be spearheaded by a new federal official, the national coordinator for Health Information Technology. President Barack Obama went further when Congress passed his economic stimulus package in February 2009. The stimulus included several items designed to promote HIT, including $19 billion over four years to fund electronic infrastructure improvements and the widespread adoption of electronic health records by providers. The goal under both presidents has been to create electronic health records for each person in the United States by 2014. The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology describes the Nationwide Health Information Network as a "network of networks." All the experts we spoke to, including the Department of Health and Human Services, emphasized that it is not a single database residing at, say, a federal agency. It's more accurately viewed as a network to link many separate databases where records already exist, such as regional databases or medical offices, along with efforts to establish common technical standards so that these far-flung repositories of data can exchange information as needed. "While providers will eventually be required to actively exchange patient information between electronic health records, there is no law or regulation calling for the development of a national patient information database," said Brian Wagner, the senior director of policy and public affairs with the eHealth Initiative, a group that represents companies and professional organizations with a stake in HIT. The Senior Citizens League excerpt raises two main questions about HIT. — Who would have access to the network? Could it be as many as "millions" of people? Our experts agreed that such loose access is certainly not the goal of the program, and they added that intensive efforts are being taken to prevent that from happening. On its Web site, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology says it understands that a lack of trust in the system would be a serious problem. "Coordinated attention at the federal and state levels is needed both to develop and implement appropriate privacy and security policies," the office says. Portions of the stimulus bill stiffened existing privacy protections from the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act, which governs how medical records can be used. The stimulus extended the list of mandatory protections and penalties to business associates of medical providers who were already covered by them. In the case of privacy breaches, patients now must be notified, and the penalties for violations were increased. Most important, providers and associates covered by HIPAA must limit disclosure of private health information to the minimum number of people necessary to accomplish a valid purpose. Those purposes generally involve treatment, payment or medical administration. "It's not going to be available at Kinko's for all the world to see," said Len Nichols, director of the health policy program at the centrist-to-liberal New America Foundation. Wagner said that the network won't be structured in a way that allows any medical professional to fish around for data on anyone they like. Users would still have to request specific information from another doctor, and provide a good reason why they need it. The main difference under a functioning system of HIT would be that that record would be sent electronically rather than faxed or mailed, potentially saving hours or days. One upside is that, unlike paper-based systems, electronic health records create audit trails every time they're accessed, meaning that HIT systems can actually afford greater privacy protections for patients. "The level of access to this information will also be limited based on each person’s role in the provision of care," said HHS spokeswoman Nancy Szemraj. "Depending upon the type of violation, fines can reach up to $1.5 million per privacy violation." The notion that there will be "unauthorized, limitless access to patient health information in an electronic health record is absolutely incorrect," she said. Still, everyone agrees that vigilance is needed. Deven McGraw, director of the health privacy project at the Center for Democracy & Technology, calls it "absolutely critical to have policies to say who can access information and for what purposes. Are they in place today? No. Are there active efforts going on today to change that? Absolutely." — How stiff are the penalties for noncompliance? They're not immediate, and providers will have many opportunities to benefit from carrots before they face any sticks. Between 2011 and 2014, the stimulus provides bonus payments to encourage health care providers to implement "meaningful" usage of HIT for Medicare and Medicaid. In 2015, the penalties begin. Providers who haven't instituted meaningful use of HIT would see their Medicare reimbursements (though not their Medicaid payments) reduced by 1 percent in 2015, 2 percent in 2016 and 3 percent in 2017. The secretary of Health and Human Services can increase these penalties by an additional point or two if implementation significantly lags. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 So let's summarize. The Senior Citizens League has a point that HIT presents unprecedented challenges in privacy and security, and that strategies to keep up with these threats continue to evolve. However, the group significantly overstates the degree to which HIT is intended to collect medical data in one place and the extent to which users will be able to poke around records that they don't have a legitimate need to access. It's inaccurate to say that there will be a "complete lack of privacy or confidentiality;" laws against unauthorized use are already in place, and federal officials have explicitly made privacy a high priority. Finally, the penalties against nonparticipation that the group cites begin in 2015 — after several years in which providers can receive financial bonuses for participating. On balance, we find the group's claims Barely True. Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly Fals

"Husbands rarely beat up their wives. Single women get beaten up more. On his Fox News show, commentator Sean Hannity defended Rush Limbaugh, who was dumped by business partners bidding to buy the St. Louis Rams due to controversy about racial comments Limbaugh has made. Hannity brought on conservative pundit Ann Coulter, who argued the NFL has long been "easily very spooked by crazy left-wing hoaxes." "You'll remember a few years ago the loopiest hoax of all, the claim that men beat up their wives more on Super Bowl Sunday," Coulter said. She noted that in 1993, the NFL ran a public service announcement about domestic violence before the Super Bowl after some women's groups claimed violence against women spiked on Super Bowl Sunday. "The NFL not only believed it, and it was completely a fraud and completely insane," Coulter said. "The safest people in the world ... are married women." "Husbands rarely beat up their wives," Coulter told Hannity. "Single women get beaten up more." The popular myth about increased domestic violence on Super Bowl Sundays turned out to be based on extremely thin, localized data and was largely, and famously, debunked in a Washington Post story, "Debunking the 'Day of Dread' for Women; Data Lacking for Claim of Domestic Violence Surge After Super Bowl," written by Ken Ringle and published on the day of that 1993 Super Bowl game. So Coulter was on firm ground there. But we were curious whether she was right about her claim that "husbands rarely beat up their wives. Single women get beaten up more." Coulter goes into this subject in a little more detail in her book, Guilty: Liberal 'Victims' and Their Assault on America. The gist of the narrative is that liberals have created all kinds of "victim" myths to advance their agenda. In the second chapter, "Victim of Crime? Thank a Single Mother," Coulter takes aim at a 1994 Time magazine article written by Barbara Ehrenreich. The article claims that, "for a woman, home is, statistically speaking, the most dangerous place to be," but Coulter calls that "crazy wrong." Featured Fact-check Instagram posts stated on October 15, 2022 in Instagram post Seattle authorities are investigating a string of serial killings. By Michael Majchrowicz • October 17, 2022 Coulter leaves off Ehrenreich's next sentence, "Her worst enemies and potential killers are not strangers but lovers, husbands and those who claimed to love her once." Remember that last line as we get to the statistics. But first, here's how Coulter lays out her case in her book: "According to the U.S. Department of Justice crime statistics, domestic abuse is virtually nonexistent for married women living with their husbands. From 1993 to 2005, the number of married women victimized by their husbands ranged from 0.9 to 3.2 per 1,000. Domestic violence was about 40 times more likely among divorced or separated women, ranging from 37.7 to 118.5 per 1,000. Even never-married women were more than twice as likely to be victims of domestic abuse as married women. Evidently, the safest place for a woman to be is at home with her husband." The numbers cited by Coulter come from the Department of Justice's Bureau of Statistics report, "Intimate Partner Violence in the United States." The survey found that "on average from 2001 to 2005, both females and males who were separated or divorced had the greatest risk of nonfatal intimate partner violence while persons who were married or widowed reported the lowest risk of violence." Between 2001 and 2005, 1.2 out of 1,000 married women reported physical abuse by an "intimate partner" (in this case, their husband), versus 5.5 out of 1,000 among women who never married. In short, Coulter cites the numbers accurately. But she left out some important qualifiers included in the survey's fine print. A page about the survey's methodology states: "Caution is warranted when interpreting intimate partner violence and marital status in the (survey) because marital status may be related to a respondent's willingness or ability to disclose violence by an intimate partner. For example, a married woman may not view, may not wish to view, or may be unable to report the behavior of her partner as violent or criminal. That same woman, if separated or divorced, may view or may be able to report the same behavior as violent." In other words, a woman who is still married to an abusive husband may be less likely to report the abuse than a woman who has since divorced or separated from their spouse. In addition, the survey notes, "Marital status is based on the respondent's situation at the time of the interview, not necessarily at the time of the victimization. The survey is not able to determine whether a victim's marital status changed between the victimization and the interview, not necessarily at the time of the victimization." It stands to reason that at least some married women who reported physical abuse by their husband might have later gotten divorced or separated. Coulter also leaves out the Department of Justice statistics on homicides committed by a person "intimate" with the victim. Historically, most "intimate" homicides involved spouses (though in recent years, the number of deaths by boyfriends and girlfriends was about the same). Coulter accurately cites figures from the Department of Justice study on violence against women, but she draws conclusions that the authors of the study specifically caution against. And that's because women may be a lot less likely to report violence by someone they are still married to, and living with. And so we rate Coulter's claim Half Tru

The proposed excise tax on "Cadillac" health plans will hit "those making less than $200,000" the hardest Sarah Palin likes communicating directly with her fans via Facebook, where she's posted several notes about health care reform. In her latest note, titled "Good Intentions Aren't Enough with Health Care Reform," Palin criticized a proposal from the Senate Finance Committee as misguided and too expensive. Her note includes several criticisms of the Democratic proposal. We wanted to look specifically at what she had to say about excise taxes on high-dollar health plans. "Supposedly the Senate Finance bill will be paid for by cutting Medicare by nearly half a trillion dollars and by taxing the so-called 'Cadillac' health care plans enjoyed by many union members," Palin wrote. Those taxes and others will ultimately be passed on to consumers, she said. "The Senate Finance bill is effectively a middle class tax increase, and as (economist Douglas) Holtz-Eakin points out, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation those making less than $200,000 will be hit hardest," she said. Palin was referring to an op-ed Holtz-Eakin wrote for the Wall Street Journal ; you may remember he was the chief economic adviser to John McCain during the presidential campaign. We wanted to know if she was right that the taxes on 'Cadillac' plans would hit people who make less than $200,000 the hardest. The excise tax works in a roundabout way. Under the Senate Finance proposal from Sen. Max Baucus, insurance companies would have to pay a 40 percent excise tax on health insurance policies that exceed $8,000 for individuals and $21,000 for families; they would pay taxes on the amount that exceeds those thresholds. We spoke with three economists on both the left and the right, and they all agreed that insurance companies will not simply absorb the new tax; they will pass it along in the form of even higher premiums. Employers will then try to avoid the new higher costs by buying cheaper health plans. Finally, the economists agreed that if employers have to scale back on health plans, they will eventually pay higher wages as they seek to retain workers. At this point, disgruntled workers may say "Yeah, right," but the economists were adamant that it is the case. There are data that we won't get into now that back up their point. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 Here's where the analysis that Palin mentioned by the Joint Committee, which is nonpartisan and advises Congress on tax policy, comes in: At the Senate's request, it tried to figure out the effect of the excise tax on federal taxes collected. Like the economists we talked to, the Joint Committee also believes that wages will rise if employers select lower-priced health insurance, and the government gets to tax those higher wages. So the Joint Committee created a series of tables projecting how much additional income tax would be collected over the next 10 years. By 2019, about 87 percent of those people paying higher taxes would make less than $200,000, according to an analysis of the preliminary Senate Finance proposal. So here's what that means: If workers end up getting paid more, they'll also be taxed more. We have to point out that this analysis counts tax filers who would see any tax increase due to the excise tax proposal, and it doesn't give details on how much they would pay on average. And the excise tax only has the effect of increasing taxes for those who have high-dollar plans, roughly 25 percent or less of all tax filers in 2019. These are plans that generally have very low co-pays and lots of extras. A Boston Globe report described one plan as offering free surgery, free rehab for alcoholism, and reimbursements for yoga classes. CEOs have these types of plans, but so do some unionized workers. One of the economists we spoke with said they are usually offered by state and local governments and universities, the types of jobs known for great benefits. The plan the Boston Globe described was for state workers in New Hampshire. Still, the economists we talked to agreed that the excise tax would affect many people who make less than $200,000. And other parts of the bill wouldn't offset that. • "You would expect that over time the number of people who are exposed to this would grow," said Stephen Zuckerman, a health economist at the left-leaning Urban Institute. He still thinks it's a good idea. "If you really want to do health care reform, and expand Medicaid and provide subsidies for low-income people, you have to provide some way to pay for it. Putting a limit on the amount of insurance that can be tax-free is not unreasonable." • "The tax is not simply going to affect millionaires, it's going to affect some people who are middle income," said Paul Van de Water of the left-leaning Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. Van de Water has nevertheless written a lengthy defense of the excise tax . • "Clearly a number of these provisions, this one included, will increase taxes on people below the $200,000 income level," said Ed Haislmaier, a senior research fellow with the conservative Heritage Foundation. "The idea that this is just for senior managers is actually quite wrong." Back to Palin: She said that according to the Joint Committee's report "those making less than $200,000 will be hit hardest" by the excise tax. We want to emphasize that the tax will affect only a minority of taxpayers. But Palin is right that of the taxpayers it does affect, a majority make less than $200,000, according to the Joint Committee analysis. It turns out a lot of regular Joes and Janes have those 'Cadillac' plans. We rate her statement Mostly True

Health proposal would create a "40% tax on health care benefits of middle-class workers. Unions are usually supporters of the Democratic plans for health reform, but there's one thing they don't like: an excise tax on high-dollar health care plans, popularly known as "Cadillac" plans. Health Care for America Now, a coalition that includes unions, has launched an ad attacking the excise tax, which was included in a version of health reform authored by Sen. Max Baucus and approved by the Senate Finance Committee on Oct. 13. Here's what the ad says: "We all know America needs real health care reform, but there's a right way and a wrong way to pay for it. Some senators say they want to tax so-called 'Cadillac' health care plans, but those proposals will also tax the benefits of millions of middle-class workers. There's a better way. Let's ask individuals making more than $250,000 to pay their fair share." We're checking the facts behind the text that flashes on the screen during the ad: "40% tax on health care benefits of middle-class workers." The excise tax works in a roundabout way. Under the Senate Finance proposal, insurance companies would have to pay a 40 percent excise tax on health insurance policies that exceed $8,000 for individuals and $21,000 for families. We spoke with three economists on both the left and the right, and they all agreed that insurance companies will not simply absorb the new tax; they will pass it along in the form of higher premiums. Employers will then try to avoid the new higher costs by buying cheaper health plans. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 Finally, the economists agreed that if employers have to scale back on health plans, they will eventually pay higher wages as they seek to retain workers. At this point, disgruntled workers may say "Yeah, right," but the economists were adamant that it is the case. Those higher wages are taxable, and that's how it becomes a tax increase for workers. An analysis from the Joint Committee on Taxation, which is nonpartisan and advises Congress on tax policy, confirmed this point. The Joint Committee found that many people affected by this make less than $200,000. (For more details on this Joint Committee analysis, see our report on someone else who doesn't like the excise tax: Sarah Palin .) So here's what that means: If workers end up getting paid more, they'll also be taxed more. Another point worth emphasizing is that the 40 percent tax is on the portion of the health plan that exceeds $8,000 for individuals and $21,000 for families. It's not on the whole plan. We should point out here that many workers have no idea what their health plans cost. How do you know if you have a "Cadillac" plan? If you're sick of paying more and more out of pocket for health care, you probably don't have a Cadillac plan. On the other hand, if you feel like your health plan is quite generous, you might. These are plans that generally have very low co-pays and lots of extras. A Boston Globe report described one plan for state employees in New Hampshire as offering free surgery, low-cost prescriptions, free rehab for alcoholism, a stipend for gym memberships and reimbursements for yoga classes. CEOs have these types of plans, but so do some unionized workers. An economist we spoke with said they are commonly offered by state and local governments and universities, the types of jobs that are said to have "great benefits." Estimates we've looked at suggest that, by 2019, the excise tax would affect as many as 25 percent and as few as 17 percent of all tax filers. The ad says the proposal is a "40% tax on health care benefits of middle-class workers." But that's an overstatement that fails to mention it's an excise tax that would only affect workers with health care benefits above a certain level. Most middle-class workers won't be affected at all. We rate the statement Barely True. Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly Fals

If President Obama signs the Copenhagen climate change treaty, he "will sign your freedom, your democracy, and your prosperity away forever — and neither you nor any subsequent government you may elect would have any power whatsoever to take it back again. Christopher Monckton — a British hereditary peer and high-profile skeptic of both global warming and international agreements — caused a stir on Oct. 14, 2009, with a forceful denunciation of the upcoming international talks on climate change in Copenhagen, Denmark, scheduled for Dec. 7-18, 2009. In a speech in St. Paul, Minn., Monckton called the pending agreement a "dreadful treaty" and said, among other things, that the parties "are about to impose a communist world government on the world. You have a president who has very strong sympathies with that point of view. He's going to sign. He'll sign anything." Monckton continued, "So, thank you, America. You were the beacon of freedom to the world. It is a privilege merely to stand on this soil of freedom while it is still free. But in the next few weeks, unless you stop it, your president will sign your freedom, your democracy, and your prosperity away forever — and neither you nor any subsequent government you may elect would have any power whatsoever to take it back again. That is how serious it is." For this item, we'll put aside the debate on whether it is wise to institute policies, such as emissions cuts, to curb climate change — the "prosperity" portion of Monckton's comment. Instead, we'll stick to analyzing Monckton's claim that an agreement coming out of the Copenhagen talks would, one, sign away American sovereignty and, two, be irreversible. Let's start with some background. The Copenhagen meeting, which President Barack Obama is expected to attend, is part of an ongoing process sponsored by a United Nations body called the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. Its goal is to secure international cooperation to curb the emission of gases that scientists blame for raising global temperatures, a development that could harm the environment. The first — and crucially important — point to make is that there is no "treaty" yet. The most recent iteration is a 180-page document, posted publicly in September, called the "reordering and consolidation of text in the revised negotiating text." If you think that title sounds clunky, just check out the document itself: Rendered in impenetrable diplo-speak, the document offers an almost stream-of-consciousness array of alternate options, blanks to be filled in and bracketed phrases. Supporters and critics alike agree that the final text, if one emerges, will be radically shorter and clearer. In other words, it's impossible to draw conclusions about what international leaders will be asked to sign based on the current draft. A second point worth noting is that, due to wide differences of opinion among the 192 participating nations, the Copenhagen conference looks increasingly unlikely to produce anything ready to sign. “There isn’t sufficient time to get the whole thing done,” Yvo De Boer, the Dutch diplomat who oversees the negotiations, said in mid October, according to the New York Times . “But I hope it will go well beyond simply a declaration of principles. The form I would like it to take is the groundwork for a ratifiable agreement next year.” What we learn from these two points is that the substance of the agreement remains distinctly up in the air, and that Obama is unlikely to be asked to sign anything at the conference beyond a nonbinding statement of interim steps or a promise to meet again — if that. Now we'll look at Monckton's argument that the Copenhagen talks could eventually produce something that eats away at American sovereignty. Experts in international law acknowledge that, with the final draft unresolved, anything is possible. But they added that numerous safeguards would help prevent U.S. sovereignty from being yielded. — Signing a treaty doesn't mean that its provisions become binding . Instead, it simply means that you intend to become a party to the treaty by seeking domestic approval, using whatever procedures are in effect in your country. In the United States, that means taking the treaty to the Senate for its advice and consent on ratification. For instance, the United States signed the Kyoto Protocol on climate change — the predecessor to the agreement being negotiated in Copenhagen — but never ratified it due to opposition in the Senate. As a result, the United States was never subject to any of the protocol's rules. — The Senate would have to approve any binding agreement with a 67-vote supermajority . This means that a treaty only becomes binding after a supermajority of democratically elected senators, plus the president, consent. So if the United States decides to give up some of its sovereignty in the matter of carbon emissions, it will only do so after a significant amount of political consent is given. As a practical matter, the high Senate threshold for ratifying a treaty, set by the Constitution, effectively requires broad support from lawmakers in both parties, something the Kyoto Protocol did not have. (Even after ratification, the treaty may not become binding until a certain number of nations have ratified it, depending how the treaty language is written; this could further delay or even derail the process.) — The Obama administration has publicly pledged that it will not sign an agreement unacceptable to Congress . According to the New York Times , the chief American climate negotiator, Todd Stern, and his deputy, Jonathan Pershing, have both affirmed this position. “We are not going to be part of an agreement we cannot meet,” Pershing said at a recent negotiators’ meeting in Bangkok. — The negotiators are aware of sovereignty concerns and are weighing options that would limit intrusiveness . Nigel Purvis, a former State Department negotiator under Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, said that the Copenhagen negotiations "are premised on the idea that each nation would create its own low- carbon economic growth strategy," adding that the degree of international enforcement is very much in play. Most experts, he said, "agree that punitive noncompliance measures are highly unlikely. Thus, the approach is really quite decentralized and respectful of national sovereignty — the opposite of being subject to a command-and-control U.N. agency." — Even if the United States does eventually cede some sovereignty on climate change, "freedom" and "democracy" are not at stake . John H. Knox, a law professor at Wake Forest University, calls Monckton's notion "silly." "Any treaty limits the freedom of the parties, of course, just as any contract limits the freedom of its parties," Knox said. "But none of the proposals on the table, and none that could conceivably be suggested, would deny the United States freedom to keep a democratic system of government, and no such agreement could imaginably be signed or ratified by the United States. And no treaty can override the provisions of the U.S. Constitution in any event." Now, for Monckton's second claim, that "neither you nor any subsequent government you may elect would have any power whatsoever to take it back again." Our experts say it's nonsense. Either a country can exit a treaty using a procedure described in the treaty itself — usually involving formal notice, a delay and the forefeit of rights to have a further say in implementing or shaping the treaty in question — or it can simply walk away. Doing either would likely entail consequences for the departing country, but they would most likely be "soft" penalties such as loss of international esteem. "There's nothing in any of the documents for Copenhagen that talk about any greater penalties than those," said Jake Schmidt, the international climate policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group. Of course, other countries could react to a withdrawal by pursuing bilateral or multilateral action, such as a trade embargo or a cutoff of diplomatic contacts. But they could take such actions today, even without a climate change agreement. "Even if a new climate treaty were ratified and the United States thus became a party to it, the United States could later choose to withdraw from it," Knox said. "Withdrawing from a treaty is perfectly acceptable under international law unless the treaty itself precludes it. Even in that case, the United States could always choose not to comply with the treaty, just as a person can choose to violate a domestic law, with the important difference that the international community does not have a police force standing by to arrest wrongdoing nations. The United States would not suddenly lose its discretion to decide whether to comply with the treaty, in other words." Steven Groves, a fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation, acknowledges that Monckton's claims are "perhaps overstated a bit." But he argues that being vigilant on the sovereignty consequences of a Copenhagen agreement is still important. Groves suggests that it's possible to devise an agreement that protects national sovereignty, perhaps by eliminating an international enforcement mechanism and relying instead on self-regulation by member countries. But doing so would mean instituting an agreement without much teeth, because it would require trusting countries with little transparency and a lot of self-interest to evade the rules. On the other hand, implementing a more forceful international oversight regime would likely run into more problems on the sovereignty front. "For a treaty to be effective in ratcheting down emissions, you would need some sort of enforcement mechanism with real teeth, and that raises legitimate sovereignty concerns," said Ben Lieberman, another Heritage fellow. Even so, we find Monckton's claims to not only be unsupported but preposterous. First, it's impossible to know what agreement will come out of Copenhagen, and when. Second, the U.S. procedure for ratifying treaties requires consent by a supermajority of the Senate — a steep hurdle. Third, it's hard to envision anything coming out of Copenhagen that would change the United States' bedrock principles of freedom and democracy. And fourth, contrary to what Monckton says, the United States can leave an international agreement. So while it pays to be vigilant about threats to U.S. sovereignty, this one is not the threat that Monckton's rhetoric suggests. So Lord Monckton earns a special ruling — Britches on Fire! Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022

"The first installment of health care reform ... will raise the deficit by $250 billion. If you heard Sen. John Cornyn's comments on CBS's Face the Nation on Oct. 18, 2009, you may have thought the Democrats' big health care reform plan was coming to the Senate floor this week and that it would explode the federal deficit. "In fact, this week, Majority Leader Harry Reid has scheduled to vote on the first installment of health care reform, which will violate the president’s promise not to raise the deficit by one dime," Cornyn said. "In fact, it will raise the deficit by $250 billion." The very same day, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel said on CNN's State of the Union that the president's health care plan is "more than deficit neutral." So what gives? Emanuel is correct that the Congressional Budget Office looked at the version of the health care bill authored by Sen. Max Baucus, the Montana Democrat who chairs the Finance Committee, and concluded that the bill would cost $829 billion over 10 years, but that offsetting funding for it would actually reduce the federal deficit by $81 billion. But Cornyn's not talking about that plan. He's talking about an issue that has been largely absent from the health care debate: a proposal to fundamentally change the way doctors are paid by Medicare. Here's the backstory. For more than a decade, Medicare payments to physicians have been limited by a cost-containment formula called the Sustainable Growth Rate, which is tied to the growth rate of the economy (but not to health care costs, which have been growing faster). The problem is, it would require such deep cuts to doctors' pay that Congress has stepped in to make temporary fixes. Baucus' health plan proposes another Band-Aid through 2010, but a more permanent solution is now being discussed. This week, the Senate may vote on a plan to permanently fix the payment formula. Democrats and Republicans alike are in agreement that the current formula is unrealistic. The Democrats have proposed a fix that comes with a 10-year, $245 billion price tag. Democrats so far haven't proposed any way to pay for that, hence Cornyn's comment that it would add $250 billion to the federal deficit. And to the extent that paying Medicare doctors ought to be a part of any overall health care plan, he argues, this is the "first installment" of the Democrats' health care reform. Featured Fact-check Rick Scott stated on October 30, 2022 in an interview on CNN's "State of the Union" “All Democrats in the Senate and House voted to cut $280 billion out of Medicare just two months ago.” By Louis Jacobson • October 31, 2022 Democrats, meanwhile, argue this is a separate issue from the current health care debate. They argue this was a broken formula that needed to be fixed no matter whether they tackled health care reform or not. So they made it a separate bill. Gail Wilensky, who ran the Medicare program under President George H.W. Bush in the early 1990s, has mixed feelings about handling the physician pay issue separately from the health care reform bill. To leave the $245 billion physician pay issue "lurking around the corner is to ignore the facts," said Wilensky, now an economist and senior fellow with Project Hope, a health care advocacy group. Congress has been patching the issue for years, digging the problem in deeper and deeper. It might be disingenuous for the Republicans to cite it as proof that the Democrats' health care plan would explode the deficit, Wilensky said. But it's also disingenuous for President Barack Obama and other Democrats to claim a deficit-neutral health care plan without mentioning this huge expense coming around the corner. To a large extent, she said, the health care debate has "morphed into health insurance reform." That's important, but just one of several major health care issues, such as the way the government pays doctors for Medicare. "There's no question there is a significant budget issue," Wilensky said. "They have been patching since 2002. What they need is a fundamental redo of how we pay physicians." Paul Van de Water, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank, said Democrats are at least stepping up to address a long-standing problem, one that has been pushed along by Republicans and Democrats alike. Since both sides agree the funding formula should be changed, he said, "Separating it is a reasonable way to do it." Cornyn is right that the Medicare plan would cost nearly $250 billion and that it would add to the deficit because Democrats have not found money to offset it. And we believe he has the license for a little hyperbole that allows him to characterize it as "the first installment" of health care reform. However, it's not the health care reform package that has been under such heated discussion for the past few months and he misleads people by suggesting that it is — and that the reform package would add $250 billion to the deficit. So we find his claim Half True

U.S. taxpayers paid $71,500 per job created by the stimulus bill The Obama administration recently announced its latest tally for jobs created by the economic stimulus bill, which caught the attention television host Lou Dobbs. "The White House today unveiled the first hard data on how many jobs the stimulus package has actually created," Dobbs reported on his CNN show Oct. 15, 2009. "The number according to the government -- you may want to write this down -- 30,383. That is the total number of jobs created by companies that received just over $2 billion in stimulus money. That works out to a cost of $71,500 of taxpayer money for each job apparently created." Dobbs' estimate sounded high to us, so we decided to look into the claim. But before we do that, a little stimulus 101. Shortly after he was sworn into Office, Congress passed a $787 billion bill meant to boost the economy, and President Barack Obama signed it into law. The package included about $499 billion for new road projects, school construction and alternative energy projects, among other things -- all programs meant to create jobs. The remaining $288 goes to tax relief. On Oct. 15, the White House released the latest information on how that money is being spent. Dobbs is right that the administration estimates about 30,383 jobs have been created so far, and he's also right that about $2.172 billion of the total $499 in recovery dollars has been paid out for projects such as road construction. (All told, about $16 billion has been awarded, but not spent, on federal contracts so far.) We talked to Kevin Burke, senior producer for Lou Dobbs Tonight, about the math. Turns out Dobbs simply divided the amount paid -- about $2.2 billion -- by 30,383 jobs. That comes out to be approximately $71,500. (Burke explained that they did not use the $16 billion committed to projects because they only wanted to account for money that had actually been spent. Dividing $16 billion by 30,383 actually produces a much higher number - $526,610 to be exact). There is a caveat, however, which means that Dobbs's estimate may not show the entire picture. The job numbers reported by the administration are for positions created directly through federal contracts and do not account the broader impact as the money ripples through the economy. For example, the report reflects the number of workers hired to do a road construction project, but it does not take into account the workers hired or retained by an asphalt company supplying materials for the project. Those auxiliary effects of the stimulus are harder to quantify, said Jim Horney, director of federal fiscal policy the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal economic think tank, but they have an impact because each extra dollar helps the economy. "People say, 'Paying people who are unemployed [in the stimulus bill] - how does that create jobs?'" he said. "It does, because without that money they might otherwise cut back on what they are consuming. That money does support the local grocery story, the mechanic, clothing stores." In economist-speak, the ripple effect Horney is talking about is officially known as the multiplier effect. It's a hallmark of Keynesian economics, which supports a government intervention in the market, and is an ongoing source of debate within the profession, said Donald Marron, president of Marron Economics and a visiting professor at Georgetown University. If you believe more jobs are created through the multiplier effect, than presumably Dobbs's cost per job estimate would be lower, he explained. If you're like Brian Riedl, a budget analyst at the Heritage Foundation, who thinks the multiplier effect is an "economic fallacy" because any jobs created require the government to borrow money out of the economy in the first place, Dobbs's estimate may be closer to the mark. Nevertheless, the economists we spoke with said his estimate likely left out some important details. For example, some of the money is presumably being used to produce more goods and services, not just jobs, said Harry Holzer, an economist with the Urban Institute and Georgetown University. "I think it's misleading because it ignores the indirect effects on the economy, it ignores the value of goods produced," Holzer said. So Dobbs is relying on the administration's estimate and he accurately reports the numbers. But his number is fuzzy for two reasons. First, the number of jobs created or saved by the stimulus may be higher than just the 30,383 created directly by the stimulus package because of the multiplier effect (although we recognize that economists disagree about that principle). But secondly, the math may be overly simple. Just because the government has handed out $2.2 billion in stimulus funding doesn't mean every penny has been used to create jobs. It could be used to purchase materials such as asphalt and concrete. So, while he's in the ballpark, it's a somewhat incomplete picture. We rate his claim Half True. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022

"Only 20 percent of Americans admit to being Republicans anymore. 0

Seniors with coverage under Medicare Advantage will give up "more than their share" because of health care refor One of the Republicans' favorite arguments against the Democratic health care reform proposals is that seniors could be hurt by cuts to Medicare. America's Health Insurance Plans, the trade group for the health insurance industry, began running television advertisements on this point in mid October. One ad, aimed at residents of Missouri, posed the following question: "Is it right to ask 10 million seniors on Medicare Advantage for more than their share? Congress is proposing over $100 billion in cuts to Medicare Advantage. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says many seniors will see cuts in benefits." Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 For this item, we're examining whether people in Medicare Advantage would give up "more than their share" because of health care reform. First, some background about Medicare Advantage. There are two basic ways most people get Medicare coverage. They can enroll in traditional Medicare and a prescription drug plan through the government and maybe buy a supplemental policy to cover many of their out-of-pocket costs. Or they can enroll in Medicare Advantage programs (including a drug plan) that are run by private insurers. About 23 percent of people covered by Medicare are Medicare Advantage beneficiaries. They often receive more generous benefits, such as dental and vision coverage, or gym memberships. Some plans pay the patient’s monthly Medicare premium, which can amount to about $100. The reason Medicare Advantage plans are more generous is that they usually receive higher reimbursement rates from the federal government. Ironically, Medicare Advantage was initially conceived as a way of lowering Medicare costs through competition. But in the complicated way the program is structured, things have turned out differently. Today, Medicare Advantage costs taxpayers about 14 percent more per capita than traditional Medicare — a financial burden borne both by traditional Medicare beneficiaries (through their Medicare premiums, which are deducted from their Social Security checks) and by taxpayers generally (through payroll deductions earmarked for Medicare). Currently, everyone in Medicare — both traditional and Medicare Advantage — pays an extra $3 per month to cover the higher costs of Medicare Advantage. The bills working their way through Congress would change this system, equalizing what the government pays for Medicare and Medicare Advantage. That's where the savings referenced in the AHIP ad come in. The second and third sentences of the ad — about funding cuts to Medicare Advantage and the CBO saying that many seniors will see fewer benefits — appear to be correct. CBO has estimated that under the Senate Finance Committee's original bill the cuts to Medicare Advantage would total $117 billion between 2010 and 2019. And CBO estimated that the original House bill would cut the program by $156 billion over the same period. That's clearly "over $100 billion" in cuts. Meanwhile, the ad is correct that CBO — or, more precisely, CBO's director, Douglas Elmendorf — said that these funding cuts would result in benefit cuts to seniors. "They would not receive as much additional benefits [as they do] in the current Medicare Advantage system," Elmendorf testified before the Senate Finance Committee on Sept. 22, 2009. Most experts we contacted agreed with Elmendorf that some benefits for Medicare Advantage participants would likely be cut if the new funding rules are enacted. It should be noted, however, that these cuts would not reduce the basic package of Medicare benefits that Medicare Advantage providers must offer. Rather, the cuts will come from the extra benefits that Medicare Advantage providers typically offer their patients, using the extra government money they get. The specific mix of cuts would be determined by the insurer, not by the bill. In fact, the existence of Medicare Advantage's extra layer of benefits complicates the task of determining whether the first sentence of AHIP's ad — "Is it right to ask 10 million seniors on Medicare Advantage for more than their share?" — frames the issue accurately. The implication that Medicare Advantage beneficiaries are losing more than their share "is not accurate," said Stuart Guterman, a Medicare expert at the Commonwealth Fund, which studies health care policy. "I think there's no doubt there will be cuts in benefits for Medicare Advantage beneficiaries. But they've been getting more than their share up to now." "We think it is misleading," agreed Marc Steinberg, deputy director of health policy for Families USA, a group that supports health care reform. "There's no mention of the 30 million-plus seniors who don't benefit from Medicare Advantage, but whose premiums are higher in order to subsidize the program, or the taxpayers who subsidize it." Robert Moffit, who directs the Center for Health Policy Studies at the conservative Heritage Foundation, is generally positive about Medicare Advantage, writing in a recent paper, "Medicare Advantage provides seniors with choice, variety, and value." But even he has problems with the way AHIP worded the first sentence of the ad. "I don't know what the question means," he told PolitiFact. "I frankly think it's a vague sentence." Ultimately, AHIP's ad correctly communicates the facts about the size of the proposed Medicare Advantage cuts and their effect on beneficiaries. But the trade group spins these facts to their advantage and leaves out important context. The ad does not specify that cuts to Medicare Advantage would be made to extra benefits provided by insurers under Medicare Advantage, not to core benefits, which will remain untouched. In addition, it says that Medicare Advantage beneficiaries are taking a hit that's "more than their share" — an assertion that glosses over the fact that the government is currently paying 14 percent more for their coverage than it does for beneficiaries of traditional Medicare. We rate the statement Half True

The Baucus health care bill "would drastically restrict the use of flexible spending accounts (FSAs) in order to help pay for health care reform. As Congress considers a sweeping health care reform bill, groups are springing up that represent obscure aspects of the current system. The latest group raising concerns represents companies that provide flexible spending accounts. The group, known as Save Flexible Spending Plans, sent us a press release with the dire warning that a proposal approved by the Senate Finance Committee "would drastically restrict the use of flexible spending accounts (FSAs) in order to help pay for health care reform." "FSAs are a lifeline for working Americans, often making the difference between staying afloat and going into debt over health care needs, and sometimes between getting necessary treatment and avoiding it altogether because of the cost," said Joe Jackson, the organization's chairman and CEO of the benefits company WageWorks. To be clear, the group represents companies that would lose out if FSAs went away. We're examining the group's claim about the impact of the health care bill authored by Sen. Max Baucus, the Montana Democrat who chairs the Finance Committee. For the uninitiated, flexible spending accounts are benefits that some employers offer. Here's how they work: You agree to send a portion of your paycheck to a flexible spending account that can be used for health care costs. You get those dollars tax-free, so you save money by avoiding Uncle Sam's taxes. The accounts have several restrictions. Employers can limit how much money you can save; typical limits are anywhere from $2,000 to $5,000 (though some employers set no limit). You have to save all your receipts and submit them to an administrator in most cases. And if you have any money in the account at the end of the year, your employer gets to keep it. Because of the use-it-or-lose-it provision, people tend to use these accounts for predictable health expenses, not emergencies. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 People who have the plans find them a good way to pay for co-pays, dental care, or special procedures that can be scheduled to match their contributions. People with more serious illnesses who have predictable costs also benefit significantly. Policymakers tend to dislike flexible spending accounts. According to this view, they unnecessarily complicate the tax code, and the use-it-or-lose-it provision encourages people to spend money on health care they don't really need. Because income taxes are progressive, the benefits of saving in an FSA go to higher earners and are negligible for people with low income. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, a left-leaning public-policy think tank, published a paper in June saying that health care reform should curtail flexible spending accounts . That would increase tax revenues to the federal government, which could be used to pay for subsidies for the uninsured. "The average FSA benefit is a few hundred bucks," said Chuck Marr, the center's director of federal tax policy. He said that's small potatoes and that Congress should focus more a sweeping reform bill. "In a world where resources are limited, this bill is trying to give coverage to people who don't have any." We checked Baucus' bill, which passed the committee on Tuesday. It does limit flexible spending accounts to $2,500 a year. It does not index them for inflation, which means that $2,500 will have less buying power as the years go by. Getting back to our statement, the organization Save Flexible Spending Plans said the Senate Finance Committee "would drastically restrict the use of flexible spending accounts (FSAs) in order to help pay for health care reform." Yes, it would restrict them, but even Save Flexible Spending Plans says the new restriction would affect only "one in five" beneficiaries. So this means by the group's own accounting that 80 percent of the people with FSAs would not be affected. That hardly seems drastic. We rate the group's statement Half True

Forty-five percent of doctors "say they'll quit" if health care reform passes Physicians are important players in the health care debate. They've been courted by both supporters and opponents of the Democratic reform plan. President Barack Obama held a Rose Garden ceremony with some of them recently. And now opponents of the Democratic health care plan are citing poll results that supposedly show that lots of doctors would be so unhappy with the reforms that they'd quit their jobs. Fox News Channel political commentator Glenn Beck mentioned this on his Oct. 12, 2009, show during a wide-ranging critique of the Democratic plan. He said that the plan could harm doctors financially and make medical students have doubts about pursuing the profession. "Do you really think that you're going to see an increase in medical students? I don't think so," Beck said. "Especially consider that the percentage of doctors who say they'll quit if this is passed is only 45 percent. No worries. Ha! You'll be able to find a good doctor. Really, you will." If true, the sudden departure of 45 percent of the nation's doctors would indeed constitute a stinging rejection of the Democratic effort by an influential health care constituency. But that number sounded high to us, so we decided to look into the statistic's origins. It came from a survey of "practicing physicians" published in mid September. The survey was sponsored by the newspaper Investor's Business Daily and was done by the firm TechnoMetrica Institute of Policy and Politics, or TIPP. The survey was conducted between Aug. 28, 2009, and Sept. 15, 2009. It was mailed to 25,600 physicians nationwide at addresses purchased from a list broker. We found several problems with the poll and the way Beck described its results: • Beck misstated what the poll asked . Beck said that 45 percent of doctors will quit. But in fact, the poll found that 45 percent of doctors said they will consider quitting. Considering quitting isn't the same thing as quitting, which makes Beck's statement a significant exaggeration. In addition, the specific question asked of respondents was, "If Congress passes their health care plan, will you ... continue your practice, [or] consider leaving your practice or taking an early retirement?" This wording leaves open the possibility that respondents are saying they might simply leave their current practice to join another practice, rather than quit. • The poll had a low response rate . According to the statistics published in IBD , 1,376 practicing physicians responded to the poll, out of the 25,600 solicited nationally. That's a 5.4 percent response rate. In one of its articles about the poll, IBD bills this as "a high rate of return, considering how difficult doctors are to get hold of." But another survey of doctors released around the same time managed to do better — much better. That other survey was conducted by Salomeh Keyhani and Alex Federman, internists and researchers at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City, who published the results in the New England Journal of Medicine . They mailed 5,157 questionnaires and got a response rate that exceeded 43 percent — nearly eight times the IBD survey's rate. In fact, Keyhani and Federman reached almost 50 percent more doctors despite sending out only one-fifth the number of inquiries. (They did not ask doctors if they would consider quitting as the other poll did.) Does a higher response rate matter? In this case, it's hard to know for sure, said Karlyn Bowman, a polling analyst with the conservative American Enterprise Institute. However, she added, "higher response rates give me more confidence in results," a point echoed by other experts we interviewed. • The sponsor was listed prominently on the survey, possibly influencing who responded . The survey was sent out on Investor’s Business Daily letterhead, and the introduction said in part, "The results of this survey will be on Investor’s Business Daily’s front page and investors.com. A press release will also be prepared. This will give doctors a voice in this key issue." This type of framing matters because IBD 's editorial page is known for its conservative stance, including opposition to the Democratic health care effort. While it’s safe to assume that not everyone who received the survey knew about IBD 's political leanings, some respondents presumably did — and among those who did, such knowledge could have made a difference in determining who responded. Liberals might have been less likely to respond, while conservatives in tune with the IBD editorials would have been more enthusiastic about responding. In such a small sample, even a modest bias of that sort could skew the results. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 • The wording of questions may have influenced who responded . In an interview, Mark Blumenthal, who blogs at pollster.com and has written critically of the IBD poll, said the wording of the questions could have skewed the results. He noted that, unlike telephone polls, mail polls enable the recipient to skim the entire list of questions before deciding to answer any of them. With the IBD poll, respondents might have thought some of the questions had a subtext that was critical of the Democratic proposal. One was, "Do you believe the government can cover 47 million more people and it will cost less money and the quality of care will be better?" Another was, "If Congress passes their plan, do you expect fewer students to apply to med schools in the future [or] more students to apply to med schools in the future?" A third was, "Under a government plan, do you think drug companies will have incentives to continue developing as many life saving new drugs?" (Grammatical errors in original; full survey text available here.) "Collectively, these questions imply that health care reform will mean very bad things for medicine," Blumenthal said. "I'm guessing that a proreform doctor would be inclined to ignore, and not return, a survey if the questions seem leading or biased." Could the prominence of the IBD name and the question wording have made a difference? The evidence suggests that may be true. In the IBD poll, 65 percent of the doctors who responded said they opposed "government's proposed health care plan" while just 33 percent supported it. By contrast, the Keyhani-Federman poll found that 63 percent of doctors surveyed favored giving patients a choice between public and private insurance, as congressional Democrats and President Barack Obama have advocated. Another 10 percent said they favored a single-payer health care system — a solution that is actually to the left of the president. In other words, the results of the two polls are so far apart that they are essentially opposites. The truth may actually lie somewhere in between the two surveys. It's worth noting that the Keyhani-Federman poll received financial support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which favors health care reform. Also, National Public Radio has said that "Keyhani and Federman belong to ... the National Physicians Alliance. It supports a public option, and Keyhani has spoken publicly about her own support for a public option." A campaign finance database search found that both researchers donated to the Obama campaign in 2008 — $500 from Keyhani and $300 from Federman. In addition, the initial postcard Keyhani and Federman sent to doctors included the subheading, "Congress wants to hear from doctors on health care reform" — advocacy-style language similar to what the IBD poll said. This may have produced some ideological bias in the opposite direction from IBD 's poll. (In an interview, Federman said the reason for choosing the words they did stemmed from "what the literature shows about what works to get docs to respond to surveys.") Finally, Don Dillman, an expert in mail-based polls and a professor at Washington State University, suggests another factor that could make the IBD poll results on doctors quitting vastly overstated: People don't usually make decisions about changing careers lightly. "If one is trained to be a physician, then are you going to take on another occupation?" he asks. This concern is especially relevant for younger physicians, who would likely find few new careers that would earn them enough income to pay off their debts from attending medical school. So, back to Beck's statement. First, he misstated the results of the poll. The survey didn't say 45 percent would quit; it said they would consider quitting, which is considerably different. Moreover, polling experts have raised significant questions about the poll's methodology. Of special concern are the combination of the heavy mention of IBD 's name and questions that experts said appeared to be seeking answers critical of health reform. We'd like to see an independent poll assessing doctors' views of health care reform, but neither the findings from the IBD survey nor those from the Keyhani-Federman study are fully persuasive to us. We rate Beck's statement Fals

An Iowa policy "provides for a state round up of Iowa citizens who might be exposed to the swine flu virus. Patty Quinlisk, medical director of the Iowa Department of Public Health, has been amazed by the amount of misinformation and blatant lies swirling around about the H1N1 virus and the federal plans to distribute a vaccine. But even she was a bit thrown when a man called last month and asked her whether Iowa was creating concentration camps for people with H1N1. Seriously. "We don't have concentration camps here in Iowa," she said. And then she sighed. "Those are words I never thought I'd have to say." The rumor spread wide enough that the Iowa Department of Public Health felt the need to isssue a press release on Aug. 31 to knock it down. We're not sure what version of the chain e-mail the department got, but here at PolitiFact, a reader sent us one that claimed, "The state of Iowa has an internal document that was recently leaked on the Internet that ... provides for a state round up of Iowa citizens who might be exposed to the swine flu virus." The e-mail links to a "Facility Quarantine Order." It's a legitimate document, a template to be used in the event that Iowa ever did decide to quarantine people. It reads, in part: "The Iowa Department of Public Health (Department) has determined that you have had contact with a person with Novel Influenza A H1N1. Novel Influenza A H1N1 is a disease which is spread from person to person and is associated with fever (greater than 100.0 F), cough, sore throat, rhinorrhea (runny nose), nasal congestion, body aches, headache, chills and fatigue. Novel Influenza A H1N1 presents a risk of serious harm to public health and if it spreads in the community severe public health consequences may result. "The Department has determined that it is necessary to quarantine your movement to a specific facility to prevent further spread of this disease. The Department has determined that quarantine in your home and other less restrictive alternatives are not acceptable because — insert the reason home quarantine is not acceptable, the person violated a previously issued home quarantine order, the person does not have an appropriate home setting conducive to home quarantine, etc. The Department is therefore ordering you to comply with the following provisions during the entire period of quarantine." Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 You set that to ominous music under a title calling them "concentration camps," as some have done in YouTube videos, and it comes off as pretty scary. Here's the response from Iowa officials: "To ensure there is no confusion on this issue, Iowa Department of Public Health wants to make it clear that Iowa has not issued any isolation and quarantine orders for novel influenza A (H1N1), and has no plans to issue any this fall. "In preparation for public health emergencies, these types of templates are often prepared in case they are needed, but isolation and quarantine orders are only very rarely used in very specific situations." The templates were prepared when H1N1 first reared up in Mexico, when it was feared to be much more deadly than it turned out to be, Quinlisk said. "As soon as we realized it wasn't that bad, or at least that it was similar to the seasonal flu, that was the end of that," she said. There are a couple of other claims in the e-mail we received. One is that Massachusetts state officials are "in the process of passing a law that will mandate vaccines for the swine flu." According to the chain e-mail, the bill would allow " 'authorities' to impose vaccinations. If you refuse, they can haul you away into quarantine. If you refuse that, you'll be fined up to $1,000 per day, and possibly be incarcerated in prison for 30 days." On Oct. 8, the Massachusetts legislature did sign off on a bill to tighten the powers of public health officials to isolate or quarantine people to contain the outbreak of serious contagious diseases. But that doesn't translate to "a law that will mandate vaccines for the swine flu." In fact, said Jennifer Manley, a spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Department of Health, "There will absolutely, positively not be any mandatory vaccines for the H1N1 virus in Massachusetts." Most states have laws more than 100 years old that allow people who pose a public health danger to be isolated or quarantined, Quinlisk said. After the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, many states looked into updating those laws to ensure, among other things, that people's civil rights are not violated. Some have clearly misinterpreted those efforts and assigned them insidious intent, she said. No states are considering quarantining people with H1N1. "Quarantine is a public health tool that is primarily used to keep well people who have been potentially exposed to a serious illness away from others who may be susceptible," said Christine Pearson with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "It's particularly effective when a new disease has not yet been introduced into our country. Given that the virus is already widespread in the United States and worldwide and is presenting the same sort of disease we see with regular seasonal flu, CDC does not intend to issue quarantine or isolation orders for 2009 H1N1 flu at this time." The chain e-mail claims that the Iowa policy "provides for a state round up of Iowa citizens who might be exposed to the swine flu virus." The fact is that there is no mandatory order that all Iowa residents be vaccinated against H1N1, let alone a policy seeking to round up and detain people those refuse. We rule this claim False

The Obama White House is renaming Christmas trees "holiday trees. On the Internet, the "war against Christmas" wages on — or at least that's what the e-mails claim. A chain e-mail says that the Obama White House is renaming Christmas trees "holiday trees." "We have a friend at church who is a very talented artist. For several years she, among many others, has painted ornaments to be hung on the various White House Christmas trees," the e-mail begins. "She got her letter from the WH recently. It said that they would not be called Christmas trees this year. They will be called Holiday trees. And, to please not send any ornaments painted with a religious theme... Just thought you should know what the new residents in the WH plan for the future of America." "This isn't a rumor; this is a fact," the e-mail says. We always get suspicious when we hear statements like that. It is true that the White House has long commissioned tree ornaments. In 1969, first lady Pat Nixon asked disabled workers in Florida to make velvet and satin balls featuring each state's flower, according to the White House Historical Association. And in 1974, first lady Betty Ford commissioned Appalachian women and senior citizen groups to craft ornaments that emphasized thrift and recycling. And for her first year in the White House, first lady Laura Bush asked artists from all 50 states and the District of Columbia to design replicas of historic homes and houses of worship to hang on the tree. Nevertheless, the Bush administration came under scrutiny for its own politically correct holiday traditions. In 2005, then-press secretary Scott McClellan was asked why the media Christmas party had been changed to the media "holiday" party. Here's what he had to say: McClellan: "I don't know that that's accurate, that the Bush White House eliminated ..." Reporter: "It is. Yes, it's no longer Christmas. It says, 'holiday.' " McClellan: "This is a time to welcome people of all faiths, and all those who are celebrating the holiday season. The president just yesterday dedicated the National Christmas Tree to our men and women in uniform." In the same year, Laura Bush was asked whether she had any misgivings about calling the White House Christmas tree a Christmas tree. "Well, no, not really," she said. "At this season we know that Americans celebrate the season in a lot of different ways. We'll have a Hanukkah party, Hanukkah reception here at the White House later during the month. But I think we've always called this the White House Christmas tree." The Bush White House also recognized Kwanzaa, a holiday traditionally celebrated in African-American communities, and held an annual children's "holiday" party. For the current administration's part, White House spokeswoman Kate Bedingfield says the tree tradition isn't changing. "There is no truth to this, and the letter referenced in the e-mail does not exist," she said. "No letter has gone out yet from the White House pertaining to Christmas tree ornaments." She added, "The trees in the White House will be called Christmas trees, and the tree on the Ellipse will be called the National Christmas Tree. There will be no name changes." So all this chain e-mail deserves is a lump of coal and a Pants on Fire! Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022

"You don't know if this (the H1N1 vaccine) is gonna cause neurological damage like it did in the 1970s. Radio and talk show host Glenn Beck has said he doesn't want to share his personal take on whether he will immunize his family with the H1N1 vaccine — the stakes are too high either way to give a personal opinion, he says — but he and some of his guests have repeatedly raised concerns about the safety of the vaccine. On his radio show on Oct. 8, Beck said, "You don't know if this (the H1N1 vaccine) is gonna cause neurological damage like it did in the 1970s." Beck refers here to a concern often raised by vaccine opponents, so we decided to give the claim some scrutiny. It is rooted in a 1976 swine flu outbreak at Fort Dix in New Jersey, which resulted in the death of a U.S. soldier. President Gerald Ford initiated a massive immunization effort that resulted in some 45 million Americans getting a swine flu vaccine. The flu never went beyond Fort Dix, and the immunization program was halted, but among those who got the vaccine, more than 500 people got a rare neurological illness called Guillain-Barre Syndrome, an auto-immune disease that affects the nervous system and can cause paralysis. Two dozen people died from it. Understandably, many Americans grew wary of flu vaccines, particularly since the swine flu never materialized outside Fort Dix. But was the flu vaccine really responsible for all those people developing Guillain-Barre? In 2003, the Institute for Medicine commissioned a medical panel, called the Immunization Safety Review Committee, to look into it. The issue is complicated by the fact that Guillain-Barre can be triggered by all kinds of influenza. So how much was the vaccine to blame? The panel concluded that "the evidence favored acceptance of a causal relationship" between the 1976 swine flu vaccine and Guillain-Barre in adults. However, the panel concluded that in the nearly 30 years of administering the seasonal flu vaccine since then, there was no proof that the vaccines had caused any more cases of Guillain-Barre, or any other neurological diseases, for that matter. "The evidence was at most weak that the vaccine could act in humans in ways that could lead to these neurological problems," the panel concluded. So what about the risk of the H1N1 vaccine now? Doctors say the track record of seasonal flu vaccines shows the new one is safe. "The vaccine was made essentially the same way vaccines have been made for the last 30 years," said Dr. Marie C. McCormick, a Harvard University professor who chaired that 2003 committee. Concerns about neurological issues with the H1N1 vaccine "are not based on the evidence we have at hand today," McCormick said. In addition to studies conducted by the five pharmaceutical companies that manufacture the H1N1 vaccine, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has conducted clinical trials on more than 4,000 people, and the only side effects recorded so far amount to little more than sore arms and stuffed-up noses. Still, that's a relatively small sample, too small to ferret out any possible connection to Guillain-Barre, which in 1976 was recorded in just 1 in every 100,000 people who got the vaccine. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 There's no denying that the swine flu vaccine in 1976 appeared to contribute to an outbreak of Guillain-Barre, said Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. But to raise that specter without talking about the ensuing 30 years needlessly stokes fears, he said. Since that 1976 experience, Osterholm said, the seasonal flu vaccine has been administered to 100 million to 250 million people a year worldwide, and there's been no evidence it caused anyone to get Guillain-Barre or any other neurological disorder. "At this point, we have no reason to believe it will," Osterholm said. "This vaccine was made essentially the same way we made the seasonal flu vaccines for more than 20 years. You have to put it into context." Put it this way, he said: His 31-year-old daughter is 6 months pregnant and works with children, and he is eager for her to get the vaccine. "That's about as objective as I can get," he said. Patricia Quinlisk, medical director of the Iowa Department of Public Health, said the only difference between the H1N1 vaccine and the regular seasonal flu shot is that it targets a different viral strain. In fact, had H1N1 showed up earlier, she said, it would have been included in the seasonal flu vaccine package. But by the time it appeared in May, the seasonal flu vaccine was already being made. Quinlisk also cautioned not to put much stock in the fact that the 1976 vaccine targeted swine flu, and the H1N1 has often been called the swine flu. The H1N1 is actually combination virus, mixing the typical swine flu with avian flu and typical human influenza. Can scientists give a 100 percent guarantee that no one getting the H1N1 vaccine will develop neurological problems? No, she said. There haven't been enough trials to definitively rule that out. "But do I think it's safer to get the vaccine than to risk getting the flu? Yes," she said. "If the H1N1 vaccine becomes available to me, I'm going to take it." That risk-reward ratio is markedly different than in 1976, she said. Then, the flu never spread beyond Fort Dix. "The H1N1 is here," she said. "It's a pandemic." We should also note that taking the H1N1 vaccine is being encouraged by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization, both of which say the track record of seasonal flu vaccines over more than two decades suggest the H1N1 vaccine will be safe and effective. Beck is correct in that scientists say that in 1976, the swine flu vaccine likely caused Guillain-Barre in a very small number of adults. But Beck's statement lacks important context. The 30-year track record of seasonal flu vaccines strongly suggests the new H1N1 vaccine won't cause neurological damage. Without noting that the H1N1 vaccine has been manufactured in essentially the same way as the seasonal flu shot that has been used by hundreds of millions of people — without any established link to neurological problems — ends up misleading by omission. And so we rule Beck's statement Barely True. Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly False.

"Baseball and insurance are the only industries exempt from antitrust laws. Supporters of the Democratic health care plan have invoked baseball in their latest television ad that tries to demonize the health insurance industry. In the 30-second ad, the liberal group Americans United for Change asks, "How are professional baseball and insurance companies alike? Baseball and insurance are the only industries exempt from antitrust laws. How are they different? Insurance industry executives are scared of competition. Baseball players aren't. When baseball players fix the games, they get in trouble. When health insurance executives fix the games, they get rich. Time for competition when it comes to health insurance. We need the choice of a public health insurance plan." In this item, we'll focus on their opening claim, that "baseball and insurance are the only industries exempt from antitrust laws." Let's first explain what "antitrust" means. Antitrust laws protect against anticompetitive conduct by cartels and monopolies. Federal antitrust laws target price-fixing, predatory pricing and mergers that reduce competition. Courts have consistently ruled that the federal government has the authority to pass laws that police competition in "interstate commerce" — that is, business activity that crosses borders and ripples through the national economy. While federal antitrust laws do cover most industries, some are exempted, thanks either to the courts or Congress. The Americans United for Change ad cites what is probably the best-known exemption: baseball. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 Baseball's sweeping exemption stems from a 1922 U.S. Supreme Court decision. The justices, presented with an upstart league's lawsuit against the well-established National League, ruled that teams' travel across state lines was not "essential" to the business. As a result, the justices ruled, the federal government had no antitrust power over baseball, since games were essentially events held in one state. Most notably, the exemption allows Major League Baseball to prevent teams from moving without the league's consent. In more recent challenges, the high court declined to overturn baseball's exemption, saying it was up to Congress to rescind it. Despite numerous bills, lawmakers have so far declined to do so. So, the ad is correct that baseball has an antitrust exemption. Does insurance have one too? It does. Insurance — in fact, all kinds of insurance, not just health coverage — is exempt from federal antitrust laws, though these protections are more limited than they are for baseball teams. A 1945 law exempts from federal antitrust law the "business of insurance" as long as it is "regulated by state law." However, in some contexts — such as if the conduct involves an agreement to "boycott, coerce or intimidate" — federal antitrust law does apply. This is hardly an arcane issue. As Congress struggles with health care reform legislation, some lawmakers are seeking to lift health insurers' antitrust exemption. Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., has introduced the Health Insurance Industry Antitrust Enforcement Act, which would, among other things, "repeal the federal antitrust exemption for health insurance and medical malpractice insurance companies for flagrant antitrust violations, including price-fixing, bid rigging, and market allocations." Reps. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., and John Conyers, D-Mich., have introduced an equivalent measure in the House. Both measures are pending. Even though baseball and insurance have somewhat different types of antitrust exemptions, we find they are similar enough to justify the ad's pairing of the two. But when the ad says that baseball and insurance are "the only industries exempt from antitrust laws," it's wrong. For starters, three additional industries — agricultural cooperatives, fishing cooperatives and maritime shipping — have, like baseball and insurance, what the American Bar Association calls "general" antitrust exemptions. Each of these exemptions stem from a law passed by Congress. For example, they permit co-ops, from milk producers to cranberry growers, to jointly market their products, including setting prices and output. (Congress has also exempted labor unions from antitrust law, but unions aren't an "industry," so we won't include them in our calculations.) Also, other industries benefit from more limited forms of antitrust exemptions, usually laws that protect specific practices rather than invoking a blanket exemption for business activity. Studies by the ABA and a federal commission counted almost two dozen such partial exemptions. These govern a wide range of activities, including the actions by broadcasters to curb violence in television shows, efforts by airlines to ease airport congestion, attempts by financially troubled newspapers to merge some functions with competitors, and activities by soft drink producers to draw up exclusive sales territories. The Americans United for Change ad is generally correct to equate the antitrust exemptions of baseball and health insurance, but the one for health insurance is more limited. And the ad is incorrect to say that these are the "only industries exempt from antitrust laws." Agricultural and fishing co-ops and maritime shippers have similar exemptions. And a host of other sectors, notably freight rail, have some pretty significant antitrust protections as well. We rate the ad's claim Fals

Under the Hate Crimes bill, "any pastor, preacher, priest, rabbi or imam who gives a sermon out of their moral traditions about sexual practices could be found guilty of a federal crime. A number of Republican congressmen cried foul this week when Democrats attached a controversial hate crime bill to a must-pass $680 billion national defense policy bill. The House passed the defense bill 281-146, with most of the opposition votes coming from Republicans. They said they objected to inclusion of a hate crime provision that they say will put federal prosecutors in the "thought crime" business. The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act would prohibit "violent acts motivated by actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability of a victim." Already, some 45 states have hate crime statutes, so in practice the federal law would mostly serve to provide technical and financial support to local law enforcers so they can more aggressively prosecute violent hate crimes; but it also would allow federal prosecutors to pursue violent hate crime cases that state or local officials are unable or unwilling to prosecute. U.S. Rep. John Kline, a former Marine whose son serves in the military, voted for the defense bill in June before it included the expanded hate crimes provision. But in voting against the bill this week, Kline echoed a concern voiced by several Republican leaders that the hate crime bill could lead to prosecution of religious leaders preaching their morality about sexual preference from the pulpit. "I disdain racism, sexism, and bigotry, but under this legislation, any pastor, preacher, priest, rabbi or imam who gives a sermon out of their moral traditions about sexual practices could be found guilty of a federal crime," the Minnesota Republican stated in an Oct. 8, 2009, press release. This isn't a new charge about the hate crimes bill. During the presidential campaign, Barack Obama was criticized for his support of the hate crimes legislation by an evangelical group that claimed the bill would "put churches at risk if they preach the truth about homosexuality." We rated that claim False . Proponents of the hate crimes law argue that such a hypothetical is absurd, that the law clearly targets violent acts, and that religious leaders are still protected by First Amendment free speech laws. But just to be extra clear, Democrats on a conference committee recently added specific protections against just the kinds of concerns raised by Kline. Featured Fact-check Instagram posts stated on October 15, 2022 in Instagram post Seattle authorities are investigating a string of serial killings. By Michael Majchrowicz • October 17, 2022 Here's how the bill reads now: "Nothing in this division ... shall be construed or applied in a manner that infringes any rights under the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Nor shall anything in this division ... be construed or applied in a manner that substantially burdens a person’s exercise of religion (regardless of whether compelled by, or central to, a system of religious belief), speech, expression, or association" unless prosecutors can demonstrate that the speech was intended to "plan or prepare for an act of physical violence" or "incite an imminent act of physical violence against another." It's that last part that concerns some Republican leaders like Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana. "As has been previously stated by Judge Carter of Texas, under Section 2 of Title 18 of the U.S. Code today, an individual may be held criminally liable who 'aids, abets, counsels, commands, induces or procures' in the commission of a federal crime," Pence said from the House floor on Oct. 8. "Therefore, to put a fine point on it, any pastor, preacher, priest, rabbi, or imam, who may give a sermon out of their moral traditions about sexual practices, could presumably under this legislation be found to have aided, abetted or induced in the commission of a federal crime. This will have a chilling effect on religious expression, from the pulpits, in our temples, in our mosques and in our churches. And it must be undone." But we quote more from the bill: "Nothing in this division shall be construed to prohibit any constitutionally protected speech, expressive conduct or activities (regardless of whether compelled by, central to, a system of religious belief), including the exercise of religion protected by the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States and peaceful picketing or demonstration." Again, the bill notes, "The Constitution of the United States does not protect speech, conduct or activities consisting of planning for, conspiring to commit, or committing an act of violence." In other words, you can preach that the Bible says homosexuality is wrong, but you can't encourage violence against gay people. Brian Moulton, chief legislative counsel for the Human Rights Coalition, said this language makes "exceedingly clear" that the kind of thing talked about by Kline, Pence and others is "just not possible under this legislation." "I don't see how anyone who has read the language of the legislation could come to that conclusion," Moulton said. We certainly think it's fair for Republicans to criticize the decision to add this controversial hate crime provision to a bill that funds the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But we also think it's wrong for opponents of the bill to again raise the scare tactic that it might lead to the prosecution of preachers who condemn homosexuality from the pulpit. The language of the bill makes abundantly clear that it would not. And we rule Kline's statement False

The Baucus health care bill would require taxes on medical devices such as X-ray machines, female condoms, HIV tests and surgical needles Republicans often complain that the Democratic health care bills would impose a heavy tax burden on Americans. So when the Senate Finance Committee began considering a tax on medical devices — including some modest devices such as enema kits and breast pumps — it was no surprise that conservatives would use the tax to rally opposition. Initially, the Finance panel was planning to subject all medical devices to the tax. (Technically this would be a tax on companies that make devices, based on their market share, rather than an excise tax on individual units.) But an outcry that it would lead to "tampon taxes" and "Q-tip taxes" led the committee's chairman, Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., to shift course. He decided to apply the tax rules based on the three medical device categories determined by the Food and Drug Administration. These categories align roughly with how complex and risky the devices are. When the bill was unveiled on Sept. 16, 2009, Baucus said it would exempt items labeled Class I by the FDA, things such as enema kits and elastic bandages. Those items, which account for 47 percent of all devices, are often inexpensive and are defined as "present(ing) minimal potential for harm to the user" by the FDA. But critics continued to argue that including all Class II devices — which rank between Class I and III in complexity and risk — would still mean imposing a tax on a host of inexpensive items that could ultimately be passed on to consumers. So Sept. 22, 2009, Baucus exempted from the tax all Class II items costing less than $100. (Class III items — the 10 percent that "sustain or support life, are implanted, or present potential unreasonable risk of illness or injury" — have always been subject to Baucus' proposed tax.) This eased the attacks somewhat, but not entirely. Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., offered an amendment to eliminate the tax altogether, but on Oct. 1, 2009, it failed by a 10-13 vote. Then, on Oct. 7, 2009, blogger Meredith Jessup on the conservative Web site TownHall.com cited work by a Washington Times columnist to show a wide range of items that she said would still be taxed despite Baucus' revision. " Washington Times columnist Amanda Carpenter has looked into the matter and found that new moms who want to use a powered breast pump to bottle milk for their babies will have to pay this excise tax," Jessup wrote. "These pumping devices, Carpenter points out, typically retail for more than $100. In addition, other items used by both men and women — including 'pacemakers, ventilators, X-ray machines, powered wheelchairs and surgical needles — will be taxed too.' ... So what else is on this list of items to be taxed? Lots of things, including dentures, fetal cell-screening kits, female condoms (I'm surprised there aren't angry 'feminists' taking to the streets over this one), tests for syphilis and HIV, hip, knee, ankle and breast prosthetics, dialysis catheters, mammograms and sickle-cell anemia tests." We found many other conservative bloggers have made similar claims. We turned to the FDA's Web site to determine which items would be subject to the tax. We found that the following items would still be subject to the current version of the proposed tax, either because they're rated Class III or because they're considered Class II and cost more than $100: powered breast pumps; tests for HIV; pacemakers; ventilators; X-ray machines; powered wheelchairs; hip, knee, ankle and breast prosthetics; and dentures. Many dialysis catheters are rated Class III, and the female condom is Class III. (Male condoms are Class II — go figure.) Assuming Jessup meant "mammography machines" rather than "mammograms," then you can add that to the list as well. It's a bit more complicated to determine the taxability of the remaining four that Jessup mentioned. Tests for sickle-cell anemia and syphilis are both categorized as Class II, and a Web search turned up prices well below $100 per test, suggesting that both would be exempt. Meanwhile, most surgical needles are rated Class I or Class II, and the one fetal-cell screening kit rated by the FDA is considered Class II; for both the needles and the fetal-cell kit, we were unable to find price quotes on the Internet. Based on this information alone, these products would seem likely to avoid the tax. However, congressional aides said that the final details about what's covered and not covered remain to be written. One possibility is that all Class II items that are generally sold directly to hospitals or doctors' offices, rather than to consumers directly, could be subject to the tax, even if they cost less than $100. Most likely, the Treasury Department would be responsible for providing final guidance — perhaps even a list of specific items — on which items fall into which category. So it's possible the four items above could eventually be hit by the tax. So Jessup is correct about most of the items she cites: They would be subject to the tax. A few others she cites would not fall under the committee's latest definition for the tax, but the practical details of the bill right now are not yet settled, so it's possible that they will be taxed eventually. We should also add that the tax may not necessarily be included in the final health care bill that will be crafted from the various versions in different committees. But for now, the provision remains part of the Senate Finance bill. On balance, we rate Jessup's assertion Mostly True. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022

About 750,000 people die in China each year from auto emissions House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has long considered herself a human rights activist and an environmental advocate. So during a recent trip to China, Pelosi discussed how the issues overlap during a meeting with the country's president, Hu Jintao. She recounted the meeting for television host Charlie Rose on the Oct. 5, 2009, edition of his show. "I took a little bit of a different approach this time in terms of talking about environmental justice because . . . 750,000 people, approximately, die in China each year from auto emissions. The Gobi Desert is encroaching on the rest of China. There are sandstorms in Beijing. They know that . . . there's something that has to be done about climate change and environmental protection and that — and so my pitch to them is there has to be environmental justice. As you develop and as you compete, you can't leave people behind." We wondered if the death toll from auto emissions could possibly be as high as Pelosi claims. But first, some background. Most scientists believe that increased concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, such as nitrous oxide, are due in part to the number of cars on the road that do not burn fuel efficiently. Our cars release greenhouse gases that trap heat from the sun and have caused the Earth to warm. There's also evidence that the heat-trapping qualities of greenhouse gases lead to an increase of particulate matter and carcinogens in the atmosphere — bad news for those with asthma and other respiratory illnesses. We called Pelosi's office and they pointed us to 2007 news reports about a World Bank analysis that focused on the cost of pollution in China. According to the Financial Times, the Chinese government asked the World Bank to exclude information about how many people die each year as the result of air and water pollution. (For its part, the World Bank says the numbers were left out due to "some uncertainties about calculation methods and its application.") "Missing from this report are the research project’s findings that high air-pollution levels in Chinese cities (are) leading to the premature deaths of 350,000-400,000 people each year," the July 2, 2007, Financial Times story said. "A further 300,000 people die prematurely each year from exposure to poor air indoors, according to advisers, but little discussion of this issue survived in the report because it was outside the ambit of the Chinese ministries which sponsored the research." On top of that, 60,000 premature deaths were related to poor-quality water that resulted in diarrhea, and stomach, liver and bladder cancers, according to the story. So, Pelosi is relying on a news story's summary of World Bank data that was not officially published but that was obtained by the Financial Times. According to the news story, on the high end, there are 760,000 deaths annually from water and air pollution, not just auto emissions, as Pelosi said on the Charlie Rose Show. We took a look at the report, and found that it provided a lot of compelling evidence that Chinese citizens suffer a great deal from air and water pollution and that smog and dirty water in that country lead to many premature deaths. But it offered no overall numbers, nor did it focus specifically on auto emissions. "Energy consumption, especially coal consumption, is the main source of air pollutants," the report said, noting that medical evidence suggests "outdoor air pollution is a contributing cause of morbidity and mortality." To get another perspective, we called Mark Jacobson, a civil and environmental engineering professor at Stanford University, who has studied death rates due to carbon dioxide pollution. In 2008, he found that for each increase of 1 degree Celsius caused by carbon dioxide, the resulting air pollution would lead annually to about 1,000 additional deaths in the United States, and 20,000 worldwide. That's on top of the approximately 2 million air pollution-related deaths worldwide, he explained, citing numbers from the World Health Organization. "Home heating and cooking are really the biggest source of deaths," Jacobson said, explaining that, particularly in China, India and other developing countries, cooking is often done with animal dung, wood or coal. "There's a lot of smoke, no ventilation." Indeed, most pollution-related deaths — about 1.6 million of the 2 million overall, according to the WHO — are the result of poor indoor air quality. According to WHO's numbers, that leaves only about 400,000 deaths annually that stem from outdoor pollution — worldwide. Furthermore, outdoor air pollution isn't limited to auto emissions. Much of it comes from agricultural operations, electricity generation and industries that rely heavily on fossil fuels, Jacobson said. So to summarize: Pelosi said that about 750,000 people in China die annually from auto emissions. But she was basing her claim on news reports that relied on data that was never actually published. (When we inquired, the World Bank declined to directly address the statistics.) So even if the World Bank data is correct, Pelosi misinterpreted it by saying that all those deaths are related to auto emissions. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 On top of that, the World Health Organization estimates that most pollution-related deaths are the result of indoor pollutants (those coal and wood fires we mentioned above), not outdoor ones. So while Pelosi is correct that air pollution is harmful and may be responsible for many deaths in China, she's wrong to say that auto emissions are specifically responsible for 750,000 of them annually. We rate her claim Barely True. Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly Fals

During the Reagan era, while productivity increased, "wages for working people remained frozen." In his new film, Capitalism: A Love Story , Michael Moore contends the economic policies of President Ronald Reagan were the turning point toward widening the gap between the rich and everyone else. Once Reagan was elected, Moore said, the government was run like a business, and the president's tough stance on unions and his theory of "trickle-down" economics ended up hurting working Americans. In this item, we will look at Moore's claim in the movie that as productivity rose during the Reagan years, "wages for working people remained frozen." We'll get right to the numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. People generally look at "output per hour" for workers in the nonfarm business sector to track these kinds of trends. Essentially, it's the amount of value of product produced per hour of work by an employee. Generally, productivity has steadily increased for as long as those kind of statistics have been kept as people and businesses learn to work more efficiently. But by the late 1970s, productivity had begun to slow. During Reagan's time in office (1981 to 1989), however, the numbers grew from 81.7 to 92.8. So it's certainly fair to say productivity increased during the Reagan administration. Now on to wages. There are several ways to look at this. First is the hourly wages paid in current dollars (what workers were actually paid). By that count, average hourly wages increased from $7.44 to $9.80. But these were high inflation years, and so when you look at the hourly wages adjusted for inflation ("real hourly compensation"), wages remained fairly flat. In fact, based on 1982 dollars, real wages dipped slightly from $7.89 in 1981 to $7.75 in 1989. End of story? Not quite. We think a few qualifiers are in order. For one, wages aren't the only way workers are compensated. There's also health benefits and other compensation. When you look at the "real compensation per hour" paid by companies to nonsupervisory employees, the cost went from 90.2 in 1981 to 95.1 in 1989. So compensation to employees, even when adjusted for inflation, grew during the Reagan era. We also think it's worth noting that stagnation of average hourly earnings, adjusted for inflation, predated Reagan. Historical tables show that hourly wages climbed steadily through the 1960s and into 1970s, and then peaked in 1973. From that point on, "real" hourly wages declined for a few years and then pretty much froze until the late 1990s. But it wasn't until Reagan's presidency that productivity began to quickly outpace wages. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 Why? Economists have a host of theories. For one, new technology certainly allowed workers to build widgets much better and faster, said Chris Edwards, director of tax policy studies at the Cato Institute. But the reasons for the widening gap between productivity and wages are more complex and varied. Globalization of the economy, eroding of unions, regressive taxes, the declining value of minimum wage, a rise in the number of immigrants and deregulation of industry all contributed, said Heidi Shierholz of the Economic Policy Institute. Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research believes the weakening of unions played a huge role. "I think the bargaining power of workers took a big hit during the Reagan years," Baker said. The most notable example was when the Reagan administration broke the air traffic controllers union. "That changed labor-management relations," Baker said. Moore cited an article by Baker called "The Productivity to Paycheck Gap: What the Data Show" on a part of his film Web site that provides backup for a number of claims in the film. And Baker said a fact-checker employed by Moore called him before the release of the movie to make sure he got it right. "I think his (Moore's) comment was pretty much on the mark," Baker said. One other caveat to Moore's comment. He's talking here about wages for nonsupervisory production workers, which comprise about 80 percent of the work force. But not all. And that's why it's also true, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, that the mean average of real income rose by 15.2 percent from 1980 to 1989, from $33,409 to $38,493, in 1990 dollars. So it all depends on how you define "working people." Still, adjusted for inflation, and when looking at nonsupervisory production workers, it's true that during the Reagan years, productivity rose while wages remained frozen (or even dipped slightly). We dock Moore some points, though, because the decline/stagnation of wages pre- and postdated the Reagan era; and total compensation (including payments for benefits) rose. Moore left out some important qualifiers. Still, while you may not agree with Moore's conclusions, he can back up his claim with legitimate numbers. And so we rate it Mostly True

Health care premiums for consumers have doubled since 2001 Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., recently wrote an opinion piece for the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call in which he said, "Insurance companies have seen their profits soar by more than 400 percent since 2001, while premiums for consumers have doubled." We address the first part of this statement in another item ; we'll take up the second half here. The 2009 Employer Health Benefits Survey, published by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research and Educational Trust, is considered the definitive source for health benefits cost information, and its data stretch from 1999 to 2009. (Even though Rockefeller didn't explicitly say it, we'll assume he was talking about the period since 2001 when he made this assertion.) In 2001, average annual premiums for single people were $2,689, a number that rose to $4,824 by 2008 — a 79 percent increase. The amounts for family coverage rose over the same period from $7,061 to $13,375 — an 89 percent increase. So, in neither case did the cost of benefits actually double, although they are in the ballpark. However, if you read Rockefeller's language closely, he did say, "premiums for consumers have doubled" — and if you use the data for the employee-paid portion of health benefits by itself, he's right. For individuals, the employee cost rose from $355 to $779 and for families it rose from $1,787 to $3,515. The former jump is easily double, while the latter is just shy of double. Using this calculation, Rockefeller is right. We rate his assertion True. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022

Insurance companies have seen their profits soar by more than 400 percent since 2001 Those who advocate for health care reform have tried to rally the public by portraying insurers as greedy. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va. — a member of the Senate Finance Committee, a key player in the health policy debate — is no exception. Rockefeller recently wrote an opinion piece for the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call in which he said, "Insurance companies have seen their profits soar by more than 400 percent since 2001, while premiums for consumers have doubled." We'll address the first part of this statement in this item; we'll take up the second half in a separate item . On the first part — health insurer profits — Rockefeller took his numbers from a study sponsored by Health Care for America Now, a liberal group that supports Democratic health care reform efforts. Researchers for HCAN looked at financial data submitted by 10 large, publicly held health insurers to the Securities and Exchange Commission covering the years between 2000 and 2008. The 10 companies are Aetna, Amerigroup, Centene, CIGNA, Coventry, Health Net, Humana, UnitedHealth Group, Universal American Group and WellPoint. In the past, we have had problems with the data HCAN has used — we rated one claim on health insurance denials False and another on insurance company CEO compensation Barely True — but their data on health insurer profits look sound. We checked a few of HCAN's numbers by looking at some of the original disclosure forms on the SEC Web site and found no notable discrepancies. Rockefeller's use of the numbers, however, is a different matter. Whether the increase amounts to at least 400 percent depends on which years you choose. The researchers found that the collective profits of these 10 companies rose from $2.41 billion in 2001 to $12.87 billion in 2007 — a 466 percent increase, meaning that, over that period of time, Rockefeller would be right. But using the years 2001 through 2008 instead, the data show that profits rose from $2.41 billion to $8.40 billion — a 249 percent increase. That's still a whopping jump, but it's not as high as Rockefeller indicated. The general dropoff in the economy had a lot to do with the lower profits in 2008, said Alex Lawson, a health care researcher for Campaign for America's Future, a liberal group, who co-authored the HCAN study. Meanwhile, there's another caveat for HCAN's study. The group didn't adjust the profit statistics for corporate takeovers. When big companies absorb smaller ones, the net effect may be to enlarge the profits of the biggest companies (including many of the 10 giants in HCAN's study) even as the total size of the health insurance industry — the broader entity that Rockefeller seemed to be referring to — stays roughly the same. While doing such adjustments would have been logistically difficult, and maybe even impossible, the fact that they weren't done puts limits on how this data can be interpreted. A health industry analyst, Steve Shubitz of Edward Jones, agreed that consolidation is "a very large part of this overall increase" rather than simply higher profits by the remaining 10 companies. "Of course, these companies have increased profits, too, outside of acquisitions, but nowhere near to the extent that's implied by those stats," Shubitz said. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 Lawson acknowledged that the HCAN chart on profits does not address how much of an impact consolidation has made on profits. But he added that the table actually comes from a study that specifically addressed the harm to competition caused by consolidation, so the group hardly ignored that issue. In addition, he defended the decision to use numbers unadjusted for consolidation. "That's what the market reacts to, and that's what they put in their annual report," Lawson said. The insurance industry, for its part, argues that total health plan profits are less than one penny of the total national health expenditure dollar. "The data is clear that profits are not what is driving rising health care costs," said Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for America's Health Insurance Plans, the leading health insurance trade group. Let's recap. If you carry the data forward to 2008 — an admittedly somewhat atypical year — the increase falls short of Rockefeller's stated 400 percent. Also, the numbers Rockefeller used reflect 10 of the biggest companies as opposed to "insurance companies" in general. On the other hand, the increase exceeded 400 percent for the period 2001 to 2007, and however you slice the numbers, the rise in insurer profits is large indeed. On balance, we rate Rockefeller's statement Half True

"Not only is there no scientific evidence that CO2 is a pollutant, higher CO2 concentrations actually help ecosystems support more plant and animal life. With Congress deep in a debate over legislation to slow climate change, the Washington Post has become a popular place for climate change claims, including this one from an organization called PlantsNeedCO2.org: "Not only is there no scientific evidence that CO 2 is a pollutant, higher CO 2 concentrations actually help ecosystems support more plant and animal life," according to an ad the group published Oct. 5, 2009, in the Post . To check this claim, we'll first need to travel back in time to high school biology, when we learned about a little life-sustaining process called photosynthesis. Plants pull carbon dioxide through tiny openings in their leaves where it combines with water and sunlight to create sugar and oxygen. Aside from maintaining normal oxygen levels in the atmosphere, life depends on photosynthesis as a source of energy. Carbon dioxide also plays an important role in climate change. This is naturally occuring — we release it into the atmosphere every time we exhale — but is also emitted when we burn fossil fuels. Along with other greenhouse gases, such as methane and sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide traps energy from the sun in the atmosphere, which causes the Earth's surface temperatures to rise. Most scientists agree that greenhouse gases are primarily responsible for climate change. PlantsNeedCO2.org is skeptical. The organization, which is still awaiting its nonprofit status, is the brainchild of Leighton Steward, a self-described geologist, environmentalist, author and retired energy industry executive. He authored a diet book called Sugar Busters! and is the chairman of the board of the Institute for the Study of Earth and Man at Southern Methodist University. We sent an e-mail to the organization but our inquiry was not returned. PlantsNeedCO2.org has one mission: "to educate the public on the positive effects of additional atmospheric CO 2 and help prevent the inadvertent negative impact to human, plant and animal life if we reduce CO 2 ." The Web site is chock-full of links to papers, videos and other evidence that more carbon dioxide is actually good for the environment. "Far from being a pollutant, rising atmospheric CO 2 concentrations will never directly harm human health, but will indirectly benefit humans in a number of ways," according to the site. "In addition to increasing the quantity of food available for human consumption, the rising atmospheric CO 2 concentration is also increasing the quality of the foods we eat." We're going to take the group's claims — that there is no scientific evidence that CO 2 is a pollutant and that higher CO 2 concentrations actually help ecosystems support more plant and animal life — one at a time. First, PlantsNeedCO2.org claims that there is no scientific evidence that carbon dioxide is a pollutant. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency disagrees. On April 17, 2009, the agency said that thorough scientific review proved that carbon dioxide, along with several other greenhouse gases, are pollutants that threaten human health; it is taking steps to regulate the gases under the Clean Air Act, a law typically reserved for monitoring traditional pollutants including ozone and sulfur dioxide. "This finding confirms that greenhouse gas pollution is a serious problem now and for future generations," said EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson in a press release. "In both magnitude and probability, climate change is an enormous problem. The greenhouse gases that are responsible for it endanger public health and welfare within the meaning of the Clean Air Act.'" The EPA's findings were "based on rigorous, peer-reviewed scientific analysis of six gases — carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride — that have been the subject of intensive analysis by scientists around the world. The science clearly shows that concentrations of these gases are at unprecedented levels as a result of human emissions, and these high levels are very likely the cause of the increase in average temperatures and other changes in our climate," according to the press release. PlantsNeedCO2.org's second claim — that higher carbon dioxide concentrations boost plant and animal life — is not so clear-cut. To be sure, carbon dioxide is essential to life as we know it, and climate change skeptics have used the argument to reject efforts to reduce greenhouse gases. "Plant physiologists have known for a long time that most vegetation loves more carbon dioxide," wrote Roy Spencer, a scientist at the University of Alabama at Huntsville in a 2008 National Review article. "It grows faster, is more drought-tolerant, and is more efficient in its water use. While the pre-industrial CO 2 concentration of the atmosphere was only about 280 parts per million (ppm) by volume, and now it is around 380 ppm, some greenhouses pump it all the way up to around 1,000 ppm. How can environmentalists claim that helping vegetation to grow is a bad thing?" So, there's an argument to be made that carbon dioxide concentrations increase plant growth and abundance. But the claim leaves out some important facts, said Rob Jackson, a professor of global environmental change and biology at Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment. "Is carbon dioxide good for plants? The narrow answer is yes," said Jackson. "But I think it's misleading to say that, if CO 2 is good for plants, it's good for the environment. ... It's kind of like saying that steroids are good for people — they build bone and muscle — but they also have other effects." For example, Jackson's research shows that with higher carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere we would see more wood growth, but that there may also be more pests due to higher temperatures, and longer droughts due to more evaporation. Beyond the reams of scientific research to demonstrate how dramatically the Earth could change with increased carbon dioxide levels, some studies indicate that more is not necessarily better for plants. For instance, a two-decade study of the Panama and Malaysia rainforests demonstrated that temperature increases of more than 1 degree could lead to 50 percent reduction in tree growth. A study launched in 1997 in California studied the effects of climate change on grasslands. Scientists doubled atmospheric carbon dioxide levels, raised the temperature by 2 degrees, increased precipitation by 50 percent, and raised levels of nitrogen, which is also a product of fossil fuel consumption, to simulate how the Earth might look decades from now. When carbon dioxide levels alone were raised, plants grew quite a bit. "But when we factored in realistic treatments — warming, changes in nitrogen deposition, changes in precipitation — growth was actually suppressed," Christopher B. Field, a professor at Stanford, told ScienceDaily in 2002. But back to PlantsNeedCO2.org's claim. They are wrong that carbon dioxide is not considered a pollutant. According to the EPA, it is. And the claim that "higher CO 2 concentrations actually help ecosystems support more plant and animal life" leaves out some important details. While carbon dioxide is good for plants, increased amounts of it in our atmosphere will have auxiliary effects that are decidedly bad for ecosystems. For PlantsNeedCO2.org, it's False. Featured Fact-check Instagram posts stated on October 30, 2022 in a photo “There are no greenhouse gas emissions in this photo” of cows grazing. By Kristin Hugo • November 7, 2022

Forty percent of gross domestic product "is state, local, or federal money. Part of the frustration voiced by critics of President Barack Obama stems from the notion that the government has simply grown too big. But just how big is the government? ABC News commentator Cokie Roberts offered one estimate: Government spending accounts for 40 percent of gross domestic product. Here's what Roberts said on the Oct. 4, 2009, edition of This Week With George Stephanopoulos : "You know, right now, 40 percent, 40 percent of GDP is state, local, or federal money. I mean, that's an incredible number. So that, you know, adding more [government spending] to that, I think, is going to ... distort things even more. And the public is so concerned about it." Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 Could such a large number possibly be right? We contacted economists familiar with this topic to give us an idea of what goes into these numbers. And wading through the data is messy indeed. Marc Goldwein, an economist with the New America Foundation, framed the conundrum in this mind-bending fashion: "What percent of GDP is made up of government spending is a different question from what government spending equals as a percent of GDP." That's because when a government "transfers" money — such as through Social Security — it is shifting money around rather than spending it directly. "This can have real and large effects on GDP, but it does not directly impact GDP, since tax and transfer policies simply take money that one person could be using for consumption or investment and give it to another person to use for consumption or investment," he said. The decision to exclude transfers underlies one set of federal economic statistics — the so-called National Income and Product Account data collected by the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis. Using these figures, direct government consumption and investment amounted to just under 20 percent of GDP in 2007, the most recent year available. That's only about half of what Roberts said it was. But there's also a second way of thinking about this question — and using this method brings the percentage closer to what Roberts cited. Adding all federal spending, including transfers, for 2008 ($2.98 trillion) to state and local government spending (estimated to be between $1.72 trillion and $2.2 trillion) gets government spending to between 33 percent and 35 percent of GDP. This, too, is short of Roberts' 40 percent -- but there's an important caveat. This year, the recession has driven federal spending higher (think of the stimulus package) and sent GDP lower (due to slumping economic activity). These twin developments could spike government's percentage of GDP for 2009, quite possibly above 40 percent, although this rise could be offset somewhat by lower state and local spending, since many states are constitutionally bound to balance their budgets and must cut back as tax revenues decline. Obviously, this sort of calculation is tricky on a number of levels. Most importantly, the nation is in the midst of a recession and engaging in deficit spending to get out of it — yet the data that are available have not caught up to the new reality. So, while the government's percentage of GDP for 2009 and beyond is likely to rise, saying so requires the use of preliminary estimates and educated guesses rather than hard data. Still, we spoke to several liberal and conservative economists, none of whom objected to including transfers in the data, and all of them said they expected the 2009 figure to be either 40 percent or close to it. Still, using the latest data, Roberts is off by 5 percentage points. So we find her claim Mostly Tru

"There's no evidence anywhere that offshore drilling has hurt tourism in any area where it has been allowed. A leading advocate for oil drilling off the west coast of Florida is making his case by saying drilling has never been bad for tourism. Ever. "There's no evidence anywhere that offshore drilling has hurt tourism in any area where it has been allowed," said Barney Bishop, president of Associated Industries of Florida, a statewide business lobbying group. "High energy costs and high unemployment kill tourism more than anything. Without affordable gas, we can't get tourists to Florida." Can oil and tourism mix? Bishop's statement is focused on offshore drilling and not spills in general. It's an important distinction. Large-scale oil spills are more likely to be caused by tanker and barge crashes, not offshore drilling, according to the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences. So while Florida beaches and tourism were affected by a three-barge collision that sent 330,000 gallons of oil and jet fuel into Tampa Bay area waters in 1993, it wasn't as a direct result of offshore drilling. To get to the root of Bishop's claim, then, offshore oil drilling itself has to be the culprit. The record there is thin, but not bare. An oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico 600 miles south of the Texas coastline malfunctioned in June 1979, sending oil pouring into gulf waters. According to estimates, the well, called Ixtoc 1, spewed 3.3 million barrels of oil before being capped in March 1980. The oil traveled north to soil 200 miles of Texas beach. Did that spill, one of the worst in history, hurt Texas tourism? Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 "Sure it did," said Tony Amos, a research associate at the University of Texas at Austin Marine Science Institute. "Because vast amounts of tar came up on our beaches." Private groups and people connected with the tourist trade filed more than $300 million in lawsuits after the Ixtoc spill, saying the damage cost them that much in business, according to a 1980 Associated Press article. On South Padre Island, the mayor at the time, Glenn McGehee, said the spill cost his area $15 million. After the spill was cleaned up, the island's tourism bureau spent $200,000 on a new ad campaign: "Come on down, the coast is clear." Tourism in other parts of south Texas was reported down anywhere from 30 to 60 percent, according to newspaper accounts, and several communities said they lost millions of dollars as a result from the spill. And a 1982 study conducted for the U.S. Interior Department found that Texas beaches in the South Padre Island area lost tourism revenues between $3.98 million and $4.44 million. "The Ixtoc well spill pretty much shut down tourism," said F. Charles Lamphear, a retired University of Nebraska at Lincoln professor who co-authored the 1982 study. Lamphear did point out that some of the losses were offset by cleanup-related funding. Another oft-discussed incident, a 1969 oil drilling accident off the coast of Santa Barbara, Calif., also affected tourism in that community, according to Santa Barbara County officials. The U.S. Coast Guard estimated that 100,000 barrels of crude oil spilled during the accident. "The tourist industry suffered in 1969; however, tourism recovered in subsequent years," county officials in Santa Barbara write on their government Web site. "A class-action lawsuit awarded nearly $6.5 million to owners of beachfront homes, apartments, hotels and motels." A public relations firm representing Bishop provided a six-page brief to PolitiFact to support his comments. The brief acknowledges direct impacts on tourism, but calls them somewhat rare and short-lived. One synopsis of a study of the Santa Barbara spill notes that the region lost "only" $3.15 million in recreational activity dollars. In 2008 dollars, that translates to almost $18.5 million. Another study said that while losses by beachfront businesses in Santa Barbara may have suffered, other businesses farther inland benefited. Using superlatives and absolutes might make for the best sound bite, but it also makes it more difficult to be right. Bishop said, "There's no evidence anywhere that offshore drilling has hurt tourism in any area where it has been allowed,” and the record shows otherwise. Though infrequent, incidents of offshore drilling directly and adversely affecting an area's tourist economy do exist. For that, we rate Bishop's statement False

"The truth is any oil that would be drilled could be sent to any other country in the world, reducing our use of foreign oil not by one single drop. The whole fervor behind "Drill, baby drill!" was to reduce America’s dependence on foreign oil, right? We thought so, too. So listen to this: U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, the Florida Democrat opposing drilling closer to Florida's shoreline, says increased drilling in the Gulf of Mexico might not help America at all. "Supporters of opening up the eastern gulf say that we need to do it to help get America off foreign oil," Nelson said on the Senate floor in June. "Tell me then why isn't there a clause in the drilling amendment that was passed specifying that all oil and natural gas that would be produced in the eastern gulf … stay in the United States for domestic consumption? "But no, that's not there. Because the truth is any oil that would be drilled could be sent to any other country in the world, reducing our use of foreign oil not by one single drop." Naturally, we wondered if Nelson's claim about oil drilling in the gulf is true. His comments refer to the massive energy bill sitting in the U.S. Senate. The bill, officially called the American Clean Energy Leadership Act of 2009, would allow oil drilling within 45 miles of the Florida coastline and closer in areas near the Panhandle. We examined the 532-page bill to see what would become of that newfound oil and found no restrictions on where it ends up. We confirmed that with David Marks, press assistant at the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. "There are no restrictions in the bill," he said. While the bill contains no limits on where the oil can flow, there have been limits placed on American oil previously. During the 1973 Arab oil embargo, Congress authorized the construction of a Trans-Alaska Pipeline System to funnel oil from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez, Alaska. But the approval came with a restriction: Alaska oil could not be exported. Featured Fact-check Rebekah Jones stated on October 26, 2022 in a post on Instagram Document shows Rebekah Jones “demonstrated” a violation of Florida’s Whistleblower Act. By Sara Swann • November 1, 2022 The ban remained in place until 1996, according to the Energy Information Administration, an arm of the U.S. Department of Energy. So without a ban, the crude oil collected in the eastern Gulf of Mexico could indeed be shipped anywhere. Would it though? The answer is most likely not. Currently, almost all of the crude oil pumped in the western Gulf of Mexico is transported via a 10,000-mile pipeline network to U.S. shores. That crude oil is then mixed with imported crude oil and refined at onshore facilities into gasoline, jet fuel and kerosene. Some of the oil even becomes asphalt. Paul Hess, an analyst at the Energy Information Administration, said "very little" gulf crude oil is exported, if any. "It's a very small amount," Hess said. "We don't track that level of detail." Offshore oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico produced about 1.17 million barrels of crude oil a day in 2008. In 2006, for instance, the EIA recorded crude oil exports in its gulf coast region — which is made up of more than just the Gulf of Mexico — at 1,000 barrels of crude oil a day. In 2008, there were no recorded exports. Mickey Driver, a spokesman with Chevron, said that all of his company's 200,000 barrels a day of gulf oil is shipped via pipeline to the United States, where it is consumed. "It would make no economic sense and it would absolutely make no process sense to do anything else," Driver said. In other words, why pay to ship gulf crude around the world when an oil-hungry U.S. market is right there waiting to pay for it? The United States already has to import about two-thirds of the crude oil it uses. It should be noted that a Brazilian company, Petrobras, is in the process of building a type of offshore refinery that would process crude oil offshore rather than build a pipeline to the Louisiana coast. That refined oil then would be moved by tanker ship. Petrobras America spokesman Ciro Ribeiro said the offshore processing facility will be up and running in 2010. "The destination should be the domestic market," Ribeiro said. "Any port in the Gulf of Mexico." Nelson is right when he says that "oil that would be drilled could be sent to any other country in the world," because the federal legislation doesn’t now include any limits. But he doesn't offer the broader context. History shows that most domestic crude oil is used domestically. On the whole, we rate Nelson's claim Half Tru

All the talk about socialism during the campaign made young people more interested in it by Election Day Responding to conservative critics of President Barack Obama who say the president is leading the United States toward socialism, filmmaker Michael Moore says that wouldn't necessarily be out of step with public opinion. In his just-released documentary, Capitalism: A Love Story , Moore recites an episode from the 2008 campaign that prompted critics to say Obama was a socialist. But Moore then cites poll statistics to show that socialism is surprisingly popular with American young people. "By Election Day, the Rasmussen poll reported that only 37 percent of young adults now favor capitalism over socialism," Moore says in the film. He added in footnotes to the movie on MichaelMoore.com that "despite fear-mongering about the word, particularly around the time of the 2008 presidential election, young people are increasingly interested in socialism." The footnotes say the Rasmussen Reports poll found that "adults under 30 are essentially evenly divided: 37 percent prefer capitalism, 33 percent socialism, and 30 percent are undecided." We located the poll in question. It was taken in April 2009 using automated telephone calls. It had 1,000 adult respondents and a sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. But the Rasmussen poll was taken five months after the election. So in the movie, Moore incorrectly describes the timing. At the point the poll was taken, Obama had been in office for nearly three months and the nation was in the depths of a recession. We should point out that over the years, critics have faulted Rasmussen for using machines rather than human interviewers, although it and other "robo-call" pollsters have won some acceptance. But more importantly, Rasmussen made no effort to make sure the people taking part in the survey understood the difference between capitalism and socialism. Rasmussen asked, "Which is a better system, capitalism or socialism?" The survey did not define either term. Among survey participants of all ages, 53 percent preferred capitalism, 20 percent preferred socialism and 27 percent said they were unsure. But for adults under 30, the group Moore was talking about, the results broke down as 37 percent for capitalism, 33 percent for socialism and 30 percent undecided. So Moore reported those results accurately. Let's look closely, though, at how Moore phrased his assertion. He said on his Web site that young people "are increasingly interested in socialism." That means their attitudes had to have changed to some degree over time. And we can't find evidence of that. And in the movie, he incorrectly pegged it to the November 2008 election. The polling firm's president, Scott Rasmussen, told PolitiFact that he has only asked that question once. So there's no way to compare his April poll question against other Rasmussen questions taken at different times. As for data by other pollsters, we contacted Karlyn Bowman, a veteran polling analyst at the American Enterprise Institute. She said that as soon as the Rasmussen question about socialism came out in April and began attracting media attention, she asked an intern to trawl through her polling databases to locate similar questions over the years. The intern found about a dozen items that addressed the question of socialism or free markets, but most of them aren't especially comparable to Rasmussen's question. For starters, the questions' wording is all over the map — a problem because pollsters warn that questions asked with different wordings can elicit different answers. One asked whether respondents agreed with the statement, "The United States would be better off if it moved toward socialism," while another asked whether they agreed with the statement, "Most people are better off in a free market economy, even though some people are rich and some are poor." More importantly, though, Bowman could find only a few polls for which the response data was broken down by age. She said that age breakdowns are not typically included in the public versions of polls. Still, we'll report the two other polls with age breakdowns that we or Bowman were able to locate. One was a January 2009 Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll. It asked, "Do you think it would be a good thing or a bad thing for the United States to move away from capitalism and more toward socialism?" Among respondents of all ages, 23 percent said it was a good thing, 65 percent said it was a bad thing and 12 percent didn't know. But among the under-30 crowd, 31 percent said it was a good thing, 54 percent said it was a bad thing and 15 percent didn't know. That's more favorable to socialism than the all-age sample as a whole, but the poll doesn't exactly show that under-30s are "evenly divided," as they were in the Rasmussen poll. So this result undercuts Moore's claim that socialism is running strong among America's young people. Not convinced by a poll sponsored by Fox News, which liberals accuse of having a conservative bias? Then try one from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, which has a reputation for being nonideological. The Pew center took a poll in March 2009 that asked, "Generally, do you think people are better off in a free-market economy, even though there may be severe ups and downs from time to time, or don't you think so?" Among all respondents, 70 percent agreed that people were better off in a free-market economy, while 20 percent disagreed and 10 percent said they didn't know. Among respondents under 30, the numbers weren't much different: 69 percent agreed that people were better off in a free-market economy and 26 percent disagreed, with 6 percent saying they didn't know. So, these responses also undercut Moore's notion that younger Americans are looking fondly at socialism. Scott Rasmussen has a theory. He suggested that support for capitalism as it is currently practiced is weakening, even as support for the theory of free markets remains strong. He cites an April Rasmussen survey that asked whether respondents favored a free-market economy or a government-managed economy. Overall, 77 percent of respondents favored a free-market economy, while just 11 percent favored a government-managed economy. For those under 30, free markets led, 79 percent to 8 percent. These results simultaneously bolster and undercut the claim in Capitalism: A Love Story . On the plus side for Moore, Rasmussen suggested in an interview that "the word 'capitalism' had taken on a lot of baggage partly because it was seen through the lens of taxpayer bailouts" and other scandals and collapses on Wall Street. These developments are a primary target of Moore's movie. “It’s hard for people to embrace a system that lets big business keep profits in good times and then asks for taxpayer bailouts when times are tough," Rasmussen wrote in a news release announcing the poll results. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 On the other hand, the fact that Rasmussen found Americans under 30 supporting a free-market economy over a government-managed economy by nearly 10-to-1 undermines Moore's notion that young people are warm to socialism. After we inquired about it, Moore's camp acknowledged to PolitiFact that the "increasingly" reference on the Web site was wrong. "It looks like the problem here is with the fact-check section of the our Web site," said Jonathan Schwarz, a spokesman for Moore. "Now, I’m completely sure that the attitudes of young adults toward economic matters ARE different than those of young adults during (say) the Reagan administration or the late '90s, but the movie doesn’t make that specific claim." He said that the Web reference will be changed. But while that item may be corrected on the Web site, the statement in the movie still says that "by Election Day," socialism was more popular with young people than it used to be. There does not appear to be much, if any, poll data to support that. So Moore has not convincingly shown that young people are reacting to the U.S. economic system by moving toward socialism. We rate Moore's statement False

In the 1950s,  "A lot of people got rich — and they had to pay a top tax rate of 90 percent. In his new film, Capitalism: A Love Story , Michael Moore makes a case that the richest Americans used to shoulder a much bigger portion of the tax burden back in the years of his childhood. In the 1950s, "A lot of people got rich — and they had to pay a top tax rate of 90 percent," Moore says in the film. Considering that the top marginal tax rate for the wealthiest Americans today is 35 percent, that figure seems astounding. But it's true that in the 1950s, the top marginal tax rates were over 90 percent. So does that mean that someone in 1955 making a half million dollars had to fork over $450,000 of it to Uncle Sam? No. We are talking here about "marginal" tax rates. Moore doesn't go out of his way to explain this, so we will. The marginal tax rate is the top rate of income tax charged to individuals on their last dollar of earnings. So in 1955, for example, when the top marginal tax rate was 91 percent, that was the tax rate owed on a person's income over $300,000. That person would, however, pay 20 percent on the first $2,000 of income; 21 percent on the next $2,000 in income; 24 percent on the next $2,000 and graduated on up to the highest rate. On average, a person making, say, $500,000 would pay substantially less than 90 percent of their income in federal taxes. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 The top marginal tax rates peaked in 1952 and 1953 at 92 percent for income over $300,000. Bob Williams of the Tax Policy Center did some math for us to give this some perspective. In 1952 and 1953, Williams said, when the top income tax rate was 92 percent for income over $300,000, a person would have to make waaaay more than $300,000 to actually end up paying an average of 90 percent of their income. According to Williams, someone would have to make $2,328,400, and therefore pay $2,095,560, to get to that 90 percent threshold. But people with income of less than $2.3 million — remember we're talking about 1952 and 1953 — would have paid, on average, something less than 90 percent, and perhaps much less. Still, Moore's point is valid. The top marginal tax rates paid by the richest Americans were far higher in the 1950s than they are now. In 2009, the top marginal rate was 35 percent on income above $372,958. And although Moore didn't use the term "marginal tax rate," he did say "top tax rate." People without CPAs might mistake that for a person's average tax rate (it's not), but it's valid wording. And so we rule this one Mostly True

"The majority actually want single-payer health care. On CNN's Larry King Live on Sept. 26, 2009, documentary filmmaker Michael Moore was asked if he thought President Barack Obama would get his health care plan through Congress. "Well, I certainly hope so," said Moore, whose 2007 film Sicko focused on health care. "Seventy-five percent of the American people are expecting it. That's what the polls show. The majority of this country voted for him in large part because they want universal health care. The majority actually want single-payer health care." Moore repeated the claim about support for a single-payer plan, with a couple of qualifiers, in a Sept. 29 news conference that coincided with the release of his new film, Capitalism: A Love Story . "Not only do three-quarters of the American people want universal health care and support the public option, a majority, depending on which poll you look at, either a simple majority or a plurality of Americans support single-payer, support health care for all. "You don't have to go out on a limb," Moore said, referring to politicians. "You don't have to take a risk. You've already got the people with you." First, let's explain some of the terms we're talking about here. The Democratic health care plan in the House calls for most people to keep the private insurance they have through their employer. But for people on their own, the government would create a national health care exchange, a kind of one-stop shop for people to compare plans from various insurance companies. Within that exchange, the House plan calls for a government-run plan that provides basic coverage at a price likely to be lower than private insurers. That's the so-called "public option." A single-payer health care system is one in which the government pays all health care bills. With the controversial public option floundering in Congress, is it possible a majority of Americans actually support a single-payer system with way more government involvement? Asked to back up his claim, Moore's people directed us first to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll in July 2009. The nonpartisan Kaiser is considered by many to be the gold standard of health care polling. In that July poll, people were asked about different ways to increase the number of Americans covered by health insurance, and whether or not they favored (strongly or somewhat) or opposed (strongly or somewhat) those options. One of the options posed was: "Having a national health plan — or single-payer plan — in which all Americans would get their insurance from a single government plan." In all, 50 percent said they favored it; 44 percent said they opposed it. So that's what the poll found in July. But Kaiser has posed this very question in six polls dating back to December 2008. The July poll is the only one that shows a majority of people saying they "favored" a single-payer system. In fact, more recent polls seem to suggest the public is getting less enamored of single-payer health care. In August, the same Kaiser poll showed a slightly higher percentage opposed single payer (49 percent) than favored it (48 percent) — still within the margin of error. And the September poll showed 40 percent favor it, while 56 percent oppose it. We'll cut Moore some slack regarding the September poll. It wasn't publicly released until Sept. 29, a couple of days after Moore first made the comment. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 But we'd like to note something else about the Kaiser poll. Among the eight options posed to increase the number of Americans covered by health insurance, the single-payer option fared the worst. For example, 68 percent in the September poll said they favored a plan to require all Americans to have health insurance, either from their employer or from another source, with financial help for those who can’t afford it. And 67 percent said they favored offering tax credits to help people buy private health insurance. The same percentage said they favored a plan to require employers to offer health insurance to their workers or pay money into a government fund that will pay to cover those without insurance. In other words, people weren't asked directly to pick the one option they favored the most . But in an October 2008 Kaiser poll, they were asked just that. There, the public is all over the map. Fifteen percent said they most prefer that "all Americans get their insurance from a single government plan." A similar percentage said they prefer "requiring employers to either offer health insurance or pay money into a government pool." And 14 percent each said their top choice was "offering tax breaks to businesses that do offer health insurance" or "requiring all Americans to have health insurance, with tax credits or other aid to help those who can’t afford it." That's hardly a consensus for single-payer. We also came across a recent Rasmussen telephone poll in early August that contradicts Moore's claim. In the Rasmussen poll, people were asked, "Do you favor or oppose a single-payer health care system where the federal government provides coverage for everyone?" The results: 32 percent said they favored it; 57 percent oppose. Support generally fell along party lines, with 62 percent of Democrats in favor; and 87 percent of Republicans opposed. Moore's people cited two other polls to back up his statement. The first was a December 2007 poll commissioned by AP that asked: "Do you consider yourself a supporter of a single-payer health care system, that is a national health plan financed by taxpayers in which all Americans would get their insurance from a single government plan, or not?" The result: 54 percent said yes; 44 percent said no. And a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll in October 2007 found that 53 percent agreed with creating a "government-run, government-financed health insurance program that would cover all Americans. This program would be administered like the current Medicare for citizens 65 and over." Both those polls are nearly two years old, though, and we think it's safe to say Americans are far more tuned in to the health care question now than they were then. We also note that the Bloomberg poll doesn't use the word "single-payer" (even though it amounts to the same thing). "Single-payer is not a concept that people are very familiar with," said Karlyn Bowman, polling analyst with the American Enterprise Institute. Which brings us to this point: Words matter. Drop in the words "like Medicare" and some polls have found the public responds better. People generally like Medicare. Call it universal health care run by the government, and you often do better than calling it "single-payer." And if you call it a "socialized" system, well, you can guess the results. A fair reading of recent polls just doesn't support Moore's claim, Bowman said. "He's wrong." We have a few problems with Moore's claim. First, he cherry-picked the results from a July Kaiser poll. There have been five other Kaiser polls since last December, including two since July, that asked that exact same question, and only the July results showed a majority, slightly over 50 percent. But our bigger problem is that in the same Kaiser poll, people were much more supportive of plans that largely kept intact the private insurance model. Polls have consistently shown that a majority of Americans want some form of universal health care coverage — they want uninsured people to have insurance. But there's wide disagreement about the means to achieve that. Some think we ought to keep the system as is, but offer tax credits so that uninsured people can afford to buy private insurance. Some think companies ought to be required to provide insurance to employees, or else pay into a government fund that will pay to cover those without insurance. In the poll that Moore's people cited to back up his claim, the single-payer plan has consistently polled the worst among seven other posed options. We think it's misleading, at best, for Moore to cite that July study to back up his claim that a majority support a single-payer plan. In fact, one could make a strong argument that those very polls suggest there is more support for private insurance options than for a single-payer system. And so we find Moore's statement False

After Fahrenheit 9/11 came out, "Bush's approval rating never was better, it only got worse. Michael Moore talked about his new movie, Capitalism: A Love Story , at a Washington news conference a few days before the movie's nationwide release. A reporter asked him why his movies didn't have more of an impact, citing Roger and Me as not doing much to change the auto industry and Sicko as not changing public opinion about health care. Moore disputed the premise of the question, saying Roger and Me postponed layoffs in his hometown of Flint, Mich., and that Sicko spurred advocacy for health care reform. He then said that his film Fahrenheit 9/11 kicked off criticism of President George W. Bush during his second term. "It's funny how that movie gets judged as, 'Well, Bush got re-elected.' That movie comes out four or five months before the election, and somehow a movie was going to change the election. I'll tell you what it did do. "At that point, people were afraid to speak out about the war, and about Bush. He had a high approval rating. Someone had to fire the first salvo. And that's what I did, and I took a lot of abuse for it." Moore said that many liberals had supported the Iraq war and were afraid to criticize it, but that changed after his movie came out. Featured Fact-check Instagram posts stated on October 25, 2022 in an Instagram post The documentary “2,000 Mules proves” Democrats “cheated on the 2020 elections.” By Jon Greenberg • October 28, 2022 "From Fahrenheit on, Bush's approval rating never was better, it only got worse," Moore said. "Within a couple of years, after more and more millions of Americans saw the truth in that film, he could never recover." We wanted to check Moore's statement about Bush poll numbers to see if they declined like Moore said they did. To do this, we turned to the Gallup Poll, which has tracked presidential approval ratings since 1940s. Fahrenheit 9/11 came out at the end of June 2004, when Bush's approval rating was at 48 percent. But his approval rating climbed through the rest of the summer and hit 53 percent around Election Day in early November. After the election, Bush's approval peaked at 57 percent during the first week of February 2005. A year after Fahrenheit , Bush's approval rating was about the same as when the movie came out, hovering around 47 percent. Bush's approval ratings started to noticeably decline about a year after his election, sliding into the low 40s and high 30s in the fall of 2005 and staying in that range for most of 2006 and 2007. Bush's ratings hit their all-time low in October 2008, during the financial crisis, when he had an approval rating of 25 percent. So Moore was incorrect when he said that "Bush's approval rating never was better, it only got worse" after the movie came out. The ratings actually increased and were pretty much the same a year after Fahrenheit . On the other hand, Moore qualifies his statement by suggesting that it took years for the film to have an impact, and indeed, Bush's ratings did decline overall for much of his second term. So we rate Moore's statement Barely True. Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly Fals

"The richest 1 percent have more financial wealth than the bottom 95 percent combined. In his new movie Capitalism: A Love Story , liberal provocateur Michael Moore tries to build a case that the rich keep getting richer while everyone else is left behind. One statistic he cites in the film, which he repeated at a Sept. 29, 2009, news conference in Washington, is that "the richest 1 percent have more financial wealth than the bottom 95 percent combined." On his Web site, Moore provides a list of sources to back up his claims. For this one, the filmmaker cites a memo written by Citigroup's research staff — a memo that plays a key role in the film as a symbol of Wall Street excess. The Citigroup document, which was provided to PolitiFact by Moore's staff, cites a table using statistics assembled by New York University and Bard College economist Edward N. Wolff. Wolff uses Federal Reserve Board findings on family wealth drawn from the Survey of Consumer Finances, a once-every-three-years study. The Citigroup document uses numbers from the 2001 survey. But before we look at the data, let's parse Moore's words closely. He didn't say the top 1 percent have "more wealth" than the bottom 95 percent. Nor did he say that they have more income than the bottom 95 percent. Rather, he specifically said they have more "financial wealth." So what is financial wealth? That's subject to debate. Wolff uses two key measurements of wealth. One is net worth, which means someone's total assets minus total liabilities. Net worth includes cash holdings, financial assets like stocks and bonds, real estate, the value of life insurance policies and retirement plans, equity from unincorporated businesses, and the value of trust funds. The amount owed from mortgages and consumer debt are subtracted from this amount, while household appliances and the future value of Social Security benefits and private pension plans are kept out of the calculations, because they cannot be easily converted into cash. Wolff's second measurement is called either "financial wealth" (as Citigroup's memo labeled it) or "non-home wealth" (as Wolff himself called it in a 2007 paper analyzing the Fed survey data). Put simply, it's net worth minus the net equity of one's home. Wolff justifies separating out house equity for two reasons. One is that it is not easy to convert a home to cash on short notice. The other is that primary homes serve a dual purpose — they provide shelter as well as storing wealth. In the news conference, Moore correctly reported what the Citigroup memo said about the second category, financial wealth. According to the document, which uses numbers from the 2001 Fed survey, the top 1 percent owned 39.7 percent of the financial wealth, while the bottom 95 percent owned 32.5 percent. Because the Fed has released two surveys since its 2001 study, we wanted to see whether the same pattern has held. In his 2007 paper, Wolff used 2004 survey data, which found that the top 1 percent owned 42.2 percent of the non-home wealth, compared to 31 percent for the bottom 95 percent. Once again, Moore's right. We crunched the raw numbers using the 2007 survey data, which had been published in early 2009. Moore is right again: the top 1 percent held 48.4 percent of non-home wealth, compared to 20 percent for the bottom 95 percent. For the second straight survey, in fact, the concentration of wealth increased. So Moore's right? Not so fast. Arthur B. Kennickell, a Fed economist, periodically publishes papers analyzing the survey statistics in great detail. In his most recent paper, published on Jan. 7, 2009, Kennickell provides a breakdown of dozens of key statistics based on income level. Deep inside his data-laden paper is a statistic called "financial wealth." That shares a name with the measurement Wolff used (and which was later cited by Citigroup and Moore) but Kennickell calculates it differently. "Financial wealth," as defined in Kennickell's paper, starts with Wolff's measurement but then subtracts several other categories, including vehicles (not just cars but also boats, airplanes and helicopters); other real estate held (including equity in second homes); the equity from closely held businesses; and the value of antiques, artwork and similar items. These mathematical differences are enough to switch Moore's assertion from correct to incorrect. By Kennickell's measurement of "financial wealth," the top 1 percent own 31.5 percent of the financial wealth — less than the 40.2 percent for the bottom 95 percent. That indicates a large chunk of the wealth for the top 1 percent comes from vehicles, second homes, businesses and hobbies. (We presume it's the top 1 percent that owns the Ferraris and summer homes in the Hamptons.) Moore deserves credit for correctly reporting the Citigroup statistic, and the data it's based on — both the Fed survey and Wolff's analysis — are respected. But this comparison shows that you can crunch numbers different ways and get different results. Indeed, Alan Reynolds, a scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute, expresses skepticism of most narrower definitions of "wealth," suggesting that removing factors like home equity — a more widely held asset than stocks and bonds — biases these calculations. In fact, Moore would be wrong if he used the broader category of net worth to make his assertion. According to the 2004 Fed survey, the top 1 percent held 34.3 percent of the nation's net worth, compared to a collective 41 percent for the bottom 95 percent. (In fact, Moore or his staff was careful enough to actually correct a mistake that Citigroup had made on this point; the memo had said, incorrectly, that the top 1 percent possessed greater net worth than the bottom 95 percent.) Moore's camp emphasizes that however you slice the numbers, the richest Americans continue to hold a disproportionate share of the wealth — and on this point, other experts concur. "The important point is that there's an enormous disparity" in wealth in the United States, said Brookings Institution scholar Ron Haskins. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 The Fed survey may actually understate the true concentration of wealth. The survey specifically excludes members of the Forbes 400 richest families in America. Because "the closer you get to the top, the bigger the disparity" between rich and poor, a lot of concentrated wealth gets left out, Haskins said. (The new version of Forbes' list, released on Oct. 1, 2009, found that the collective worth of the 400 richest families fell $300 billion compared to the previous year; if the wealth of slightly less rich households also decreased, that could change the numbers.) So let's recap. Moore correctly cited the Citigroup memo's contents, and on the larger question, he's correct that the richest 1 percent of Americans own a vastly disproportionate share of the nation's wealth. But we'll take him down a notch because, using another methodology, his statement would not be correct. So we rate his claim Mostly True

Gas will reach $4 a gallon under a cap-and-trade plan In a full-page ad in the Sept. 30, 2009, edition of the Washington Post , was this eye-catching claim about gas prices: "$4 GAS - Another unfortunate truth about the House's climate bill," said the ad from EnergyCitizens.org . "As Congress considers new climate legislation, Americans aren't getting the whole truth. A recent study found the House-passed bill could lead to $4 per-gallon gasoline. America is in the middle of a harsh recession. Think about the impact of $4 gas." We've heard a lot about the cap-and-trade plan — that it will increase the cost of energy and that it will eliminate jobs — but it's been a while since we put claims about the price of gas to the Truth-O-Meter. The concept of cap-and-trade is relatively easy to understand. A cap is put on greenhouse gas emissions, and firms are required to buy credits, either from the government or from other companies, to continue polluting. Iterations of a cap-and-trade plan have been introduced in Congress previously, but the most recent legislation, written by Democrats Henry Waxman of California and Ed Markey of Massachusetts, has been passed by the House of Representatives. Their bill aims to lower carbon pollution by 17 percent by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050. Under their plan, most pollution permits initially would be given out free. But eventually, companies would have to buy those permits from the government. Opponents of cap-and-trade argue that forcing industry to buy pollution credits will ultimately harm consumers and business. Firms will have no choice but to pass on the cost of buying those permits. And that's where the argument from EnergyCitizens.org comes into play. The group, a coalition of business organizations, antitax groups, transportation companies, and Washington heavy hitters such as the American Petroleum Institute and the American Farm Bureau Federation, says those higher prices will hit consumers in the form of higher gas prices. The ad cites a Heritage Foundation study of the bill published on June 16. The conservative think tank, which has been critical of the Waxman-Markey bill, contends higher energy prices "will spread throughout the economy as producers everywhere try to cover their higher production costs by raising their product prices. ... Even after adjusting for inflation, gasoline prices will rise 58 percent over the 2035 baseline price." We checked with the Heritage Foundation to find out if EnergyCitizens.org was correctly interpreting Heritage's study, and were told that the group was. Heritage also pointed us to another study the think tank did that looked at gas prices per state. Heritage assumes that under Waxman-Markey, gas will be at a minimum $3 a gallon in 2035, depending on where you live. A 58 percent price increase as a result of cap-and-trade would put the cost of a gallon of gasoline at more that $4. So, based on Heritage's data and assumptions, EnergyCitizens.org is in the ballpark. However, the group leaves out an important detail in its ad: These predictions are for 2035, 26 years from now when, presumably, our economic landscape will be very different. EnergyCitizens.org plays on people's anxiety about the recession by portraying these prices as something that would take effect immediately. To get more perspective, we looked at other estimates. For comparison, keep in mind that the current national average is $2.60 for unleaded regular. The Energy Information Administration, a branch of the Energy Department, published an analysis of the bill on Aug. 4, 2009, which predicts gas price increases will be relatively small compared to increases in the electricity sector, in part because emissions reductions from the fossil-fuel sector will only account for 12 to 20 percent of overall reductions. If the bill is enacted, gas prices will only be about 20 cents more per gallon in 2020 and 35 cents more in 2030, the report predicts. Another analysis by the Environmental Protection Agency predicts impacts on future gas prices would be minimal under the Waxman-Markey bill. Specifically, prices would go up $0.13 in 2015, $0.25 in 2030, and $0.69 in 2050, according to the June 23 report. Clearly, there's a difference of opinion on how much the price of gas will change as the result of cap-and-trade. For the most part, those differences have to do with what kind of assumptions are made about nonfossil fuels, such as nuclear and wind power. The EPA, for example, assumes that cleaner technologies and renewable energy will replace fossil fuel more quickly, which would translate to lower costs to consumers. Heritage takes an austere approach, assuming that traditional energy sources would be scaled back to meet new emissions standards, but would not be immediately replaced by new technology or renewable fuels. As a result, fossil fuel prices will go up and continue to rise. Another point to put this all in perspective: Gas prices fluctuate dramatically. In January 2009, a gallon of gas cost about a $1.80 a gallon. This week, gas costs $2.60 — about a $1.20 less than it was a year ago. So predicting how much gas will cost next week — let alone in 2035 — is an imperfect science. Based on the estimates, it's probably a safe bet that the price of gasoline will ultimately increase as a result of cap-and-trade. And the estimates vary based on reasonable disagreements about methodology. But Energycitizens.org is guilty of a significant exaggeration because the ad strongly implies the price hike would happen very soon. It fails to mention that $4-a-gallon gasoline wouldn't be the norm until 2035 — if it ever is. The group also leaves out other important studies that predict smaller increases. For a serious case of cherry-picking, we rate the ad Barely True. Featured Fact-check Instagram posts stated on October 30, 2022 in a photo “There are no greenhouse gas emissions in this photo” of cows grazing. By Kristin Hugo • November 7, 2022 Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly False.

Medicare officials have treated Humana and AARP inconsistently on how they can communicate with seniors A controversial mailing from Humana to Medicare recipients has Republicans charging unfair treatment in the way the government handled private insurance companies versus the AARP. The House Republican Conference said the government is silencing Humana about reforms that would change Medicare Advantage, while the AARP — a notable reform supporter — gets off scott-free. "This week the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced it was investigating Humana for providing 'misleading' information regarding the administration's proposed cuts to Medicare Advantage policies — and prohibited other Medicare Advantage plans from providing similar information on how Democrat health 'reform' could take away their current coverage," the release said. "Yet the administration's edict prohibiting plans from communicating with their beneficiaries failed to include AARP, which sponsors a Medicare Advantage plan but has been a prime advocate of Democrats' government takeover of health care — quite possibly because AARP has been supporting a health care overhaul from which it stands to gain overall handsomely," the statement said. We wanted to investigate whether there were two different standards at work. We found that AARP and Humana actually have very different roles with Medicare plans. AARP makes money by licensing its name to a private insurer that offers a Medicare Advantage plan. Humana is a different private insurer that takes money from the government to provide an Advantage plan. Humana contracts with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in a program called Medicare Advantage. Often called Medicare's HMOs, Advantage is an optional program in which the federal government pays private insurance companies a set rate to treat Medicare beneficiaries. The program was conceived as a cost-containment measure on the theory that competition among private plans would drive down costs. That has not happened, and Medicare Advantage actually costs the government more. President Barack Obama and groups like AARP have said it's time to bring the costs of Medicare Advantage in line with the cost of regular Medicare. Humana is the second-largest insurance company that handles Medicare Advantage, right after UnitedHealth Group. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the federal agency that runs Medicare and is often referred to as CMS, recently announced it was looking into mailings that Humana sent to its Medicare Advantage and Part D patients. (Part D is Medicare coverage for prescription drugs.) "We are concerned that the materials Humana sent to our beneficiaries may violate Medicare rules by appearing to contain Medicare Advantage and prescription drug benefit information, which must be submitted to CMS for review," said Jonathan Blum, acting director of CMS's Center for Drug and Health Plan Choices. "We also are asking that no other plan sponsors are mailing similar materials while we investigate whether a potential violation has occurred." According to the CMS, Humana's mailing warned beneficiaries that they might lose benefits under health care reform, a claim that Democratic officials dispute. The Huffington Post said it has obtained a copy of the mailer and posted it to its Web site. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 The impact of health care reform on Medicare recipients has been a matter of considerable debate. We examined a claim by President Barack Obama that Medicare benefits would not be cut and found it to be Half True. Experts told us basic benefits would stay in place but that it's conceivable or even likely that Medicare Advantage patients could see reduced benefits. In a letter to Humana, a CMS official said that Humana's communication could be considered "misleading and confusing to beneficiaries" and might be construed as official Medicare communications. The House Republican Conference said CMS did not target the seniors' group "quite possibly because AARP has been supporting a health care overhaul ..." Our research shows, however, that AARP has a very different relationship with its members than Humana does with seniors on Medicare Advantage. Here's how it works: AARP lends its name to insurance companies to sell policies specifically for AARP members. The insurance companies then pay AARP a fee for the policies they sell with the AARP name. AARP calls these payments royalties. (Read our story for more details on AARP's royalties .) AARP does profit indirectly from selling Medicare Advantage and Medicare supplemental policies, and it uses that money to fund its efforts as a nonprofit advocacy group. AARP partners with UnitedHealth on its Medicare plans. UnitedHealth is the No. 1 seller of Medicare Advantage, with 16 percent of the market, followed closely by Humana with 14 percent of the market, according to Mark Farrah Associates. So when AARP mails seniors, it's using its own private membership list for communication. Humana, on the other hand, is mailing people using personal information it receives as a government contractor. UnitedHealth would be bound by similar rules. We find that the House Republican Conference is off base when it claims that the CMS and the Obama administration have two different standards for AARP and Humana. Humana is a government contractor for Medicare Advantage; the AARP is not. We rate the statement Fals

White House Political Director Patrick Gaspard once served as the "right-hand man" for Bertha Lewis, who heads up ACORN A throwaway line in a blog posting in May — which turns out to be wrong — provided just enough fodder to allow political pundits to brand a top White House official with the political scarlet letter A, for ACORN. Under the spotlight is Patrick Gaspard, director of the White House Office of Political Affairs. It's a high-level position. In fact, that's the title Karl Rove held in President George W. Bush's White House (though senior adviser David Axelrod is probably closer to Rove's role for President Barack Obama). Gaspard had kept a very low media profile until this week, when some political pundits began calling him ACORN's man in the White House. The hosts of Fox and Friends ran with the claim about Gaspard's alleged ties to ACORN in a Sept. 29, 2009, interview with Fox News commentator Glenn Beck. "The White House political director is a fellow by the name of Patrick Gaspard," said host Steve Doocy. "And he apparently has been in bed with ACORN and, in fact, Bertha Lewis, who heads up ACORN. He, Mr. Gaspard, was her right-hand man. "So does ACORN have somebody in the White House in one way or another?" Doocy asked. "The answer to that is yes," said Beck. "You know what's really weird is he was also one of the top guys at SEIU (Local 1199 of the Service Employees International Union, United Healthcare Workers East, the largest local union in America). SEIU and ACORN, the same organization . . . The president has zero credibility when he says, 'I haven't been following this ACORN thing.' This is his army, SEIU and ACORN." Fox News host Sean Hannity also ran with the story. "And now questions are being raised about a top White House adviser's connections to the group," Hannity said on his Sept. 28 show. "Now the director of the White House Office of Political Affairs, Patrick Gaspard, is said to be closely affiliated with ACORN and, according to the American Spectator, he previously worked as the political director for none other than Bertha Lewis, who is now the chief organizer of ACORN. "Sounds like ACORN has somebody on the inside of the White House. Now there's a real comforting thought." The accusations about Gaspard's employment at ACORN have their roots in an article written by Matthew Vadum for the American Spectator on Sept. 28 under the headline, "ACORN's Man in the White House." Vadum is a senior editor at Capital Research Center, a Washington, D.C., think tank that studies the politics of philanthropy. "Newly discovered evidence shows the radical advocacy group ACORN has a man in the Obama White House," Vadum's article begins. "This power behind the throne is longtime ACORN operative Patrick Gaspard." "Evidence shows that years before he joined the Obama administration, Gaspard was ACORN boss Bertha Lewis's political director in New York." So what is the evidence? Vadum cites a May 16, 2009, posting from ACORN founder Wade Rathke's "Chief Organizer" blog. Rathke resigned last year as "chief organizer" for ACORN amid speculation about his role in helping to conceal from the full board almost $1 million embezzeled from ACORN by his brother. Bertha Lewis, then head of New York ACORN, took Rathke's place. In May, Rathke wrote this on his blog: "Tell me that 1199's former political director, Patrick Gaspard (who was ACORN New York's political director before that) didn't reach out from the White House and help make that happen, and I'll tell you to take some remedial classes in 'politics 101.'" Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 The part in parenthases comes from Rathke. But current ACORN officials say Rathke was wrong. "He (Gaspard) never worked for us," said Brian Kettenring, a spokesman for ACORN. It's a case of mistaken identity, Kettenring said. Rathke worked for ACORN national and not ACORN in New York. He clearly confused Gaspard with someone else, Kettenring said. Scott Levenson with the Advance Group, which does PR work for ACORN, echoed that in an e-mail saying, "There is NO accuracy to the fact that Patrick Gaspard ever worked for ACORN." And so we e-mailed Rathke. "I misspoke," Rathke responded. Rathke also addressed the issue in a postscript to a blog posting on Sept. 29. "Patrick was never on the staff of ACORN," Rathke wrote. "I double checked with people I still know there, and it appears that I dropped a stitch there. Hopefully my misstatement won’t lead to the White House throwing him in front of the bus in this rush to neo-McCarthyism that has become so prominent. In this case, my memory tricked me. I’m glad to carry the weight and simply say I made a mistake, and damned if I’m not sorry and hope no damage is done to a good man doing a hard job." Interestingly, Gaspard's brother, Michael Gaspard, works for the Advance Group. And again, the Advance Group in New York does communications work for ACORN. But Kettenring said he was not aware that Michael Gaspard has, himself, actually done any work for ACORN. But back to Patrick Gaspard. The White House provided a resume for him going back 20 years. It showed he worked for SEIU and the Howard Dean campaign, among other places, but had not worked for ACORN. We're not saying Gaspard has had no interaction with ACORN, or that he doesn't have ties to ACORN's Bertha Lewis. They both were involved in New York politics and SEIU and ACORN officials run in similar circles. In fact, in an April 28, 2009, story in Roll Call , Lewis is quoted as saying that while "we don't have our own special ACORN entrance at the White House or our own special hot line," she did say she has particularly good relationships with Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan and Gaspard. The conservative Red State recently ran a story that Gaspard's contact info appears in Lewis' Rolodex, for whatever that's worth. But the claim here wasn't just that the two are friends. It's that Gaspard was employed by ACORN as Bertha Lewis' political director in New York. ACORN officials say he was not. And the source of that information, ACORN founder Wayne Rathke, said he misspoke when he made that claim in a blog posting. For their part, Doocy, Beck, Hannity and others are relying on the reporting of Vadum in the American Spectator . And Vadum relied on Rathke's blog posting. So the mistake is understandable. But in their zeal to paint an "A" on Gaspard's sweater, the pundits never made an effort to find out if it was right. And it wasn't. We rule the statement False

AARP is "the largest reseller of insurance in the country" and "has a vested interest in seeing that the market for reselling supplemental insurance expands. 0

"Health care mandate will require imprisonment and fines for Americans who can’t afford to purchase insurance or pay hefty government penalties. As the Senate Finance Committee took up its version of health care legislation, conservatives ramped up their opposition to a variety of provisions in the bill. One of them touches two hot buttons for conservatives: taxes and the long arm of the federal government. On Sept. 29, 2009, a subsidiary of the conservative group Americans for Prosperity sent out an e-mail headlined, "Health Care Mandate Will Require Imprisonment and Fines for Americans Who Can’t Afford to Purchase Insurance or Pay Hefty Government Penalties." The group was referring to an exchange in the Senate Finance Committee between Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., and Joint Committee on Taxation chief of staff Thomas Barthold on Sept. 24, 2009. Both the House and Senate bills would impose taxes designed to prod Americans who are currently uninsured into buying insurance. Exemptions would be provided for families of limited means. The idea is that by expanding the pool of Americans paying for coverage, insurers can use the additional revenue to improve benefits, eliminate barriers for pre-existing conditions and reduce costs for others enrolled in the plans. Initially, the Senate version would have had families above 300 percent of the federal poverty level pay $3,800 a year if they did not have health insurance. Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., later agreed to lower that amount by half, to $1,900. Backers hope that no American actually pays the tax; they want to see people spending those dollars on health insurance instead. Still, Ensign is among those who balk at the idea. "Some people hold the Constitution pretty high in their lives, and if they believe that this thing is unconstitutional and they then say ... 'I choose not to have health insurance. I'm not going to buy it,'" Ensign said at a markup of the contentious bill. "We could be subjecting those very people ... to fines or the interpretation of a judge potentially all the way up even to imprisonment." The bill summary that the Senate committee considered did not mention specifics about enforcement and sentencing for violations. So, at the markup, Ensign questioned Barthold — the top professional staffer on the joint House-Senate panel that advises both chambers on tax legislation — about what penalties would be assessed. Barthold told him that they would be "penalties under the Internal Revenue Code." Ensign asked for "the maximum penalty" for a "willful" — that is, intentional — violation. Is it "possible that somebody could go to jail over this?" Ensign asked. Barthold answered, "Could be criminal, yes, if it were considered an attempt to defraud." Later, several news outlets reported that Barthold delivered a hand-written note to Ensign after the hearing confirming that violators could be charged with a misdemeanor and could face up to a year in prison or a $25,000 penalty. When PolitiFact contacted the Joint Committee on Taxation to confirm the contents of the letter, a spokeswoman said that such communications were confidential, but she pointed us to Section 7203 of the Internal Revenue Code, titled, "Willful failure to file return, supply information or pay tax." The text of that section appears to jibe with the reported contents of Barthold's note. It says, "Any person required under this title to pay any estimated tax or tax, or required by this title or by regulations made under authority thereof to make a return, keep any records, or supply any information, who willfully fails to pay such estimated tax or tax, make such return, keep such records, or supply such information, at the time or times required by law or regulations, shall, in addition to other penalties provided by law, be guilty of a misdemeanor and, upon conviction thereof, shall be fined not more than $25,000 ($100,000 in the case of a corporation), or imprisoned not more than 1 year, or both, together with the costs of prosecution." (A House Ways and Means Committee spokesman said that the same rules would apply to the House bill.) After the hearing, Patients First, a project of the conservative advocacy group Americans for Prosperity, issued a news release that played up the possibility that people who didn't buy health coverage could end up in prison. The release was headlined, "Health Care Mandate Will Require Imprisonment and Fines for Americans Who Can’t Afford to Purchase Insurance or Pay Hefty Government Penalties," and its first sentence referred to "a draconian health care measure under consideration in Congress that would imprison uninsured Americans who fail to pay a penalty for not buying health insurance." We were struck by the statement that the bill would "require imprisonment and fines" for nonpayment of the tax. Nothing in the Internal Revenue Code suggests that violators would have to go to jail. It's simply one of the possible penalties that could be assessed. When we contacted Eric Novack, the senior fellow in health policy for Patients First and Americans for Health Prosperity who was quoted in the release, he conceded the point. "I would make the case that the headline is hyperbole, but it got people's attention," Novack said. "It is a bit of artistic license. I guess I would agree that it's a bit strongly worded." He added that he believes the news release's larger point stands. Such enforcement of the tax would be "turning people who can't afford health insurance into criminals." The headline would have been correct if it had said the mandate " could require imprisonment or fines." In fact, further down, the text of the release reports more accurately that "under the health care bill outline[d] in the Senate Finance Committee, uninsured Americans who fail to pay a stiff penalty for not purchasing insurance would face up to one year in prison or a $25,000 fine." That part of the release, with its "or," acknowledges that violators would likely face just one of those penalties. And it's worth noting that, as with other violations in which people have refused to pay taxes, sending someone to prison is an extreme measure used as a last resort. First off, as Barthold testified to the committee, the Internal Revenue Service would likely undertake normal collection procedures such as wage garnishments before resorting to a criminal case. Tax lawyers we spoke to said it's possible for an unsuccessful debt collection to be referred to federal criminal prosecutors, though criminal prosecutions more commonly arise from audits. If a nonpayment case with "willful" aspects did make it to the criminal docket, then it still has a long way to go until prison time kicks in. Of the 3,749 criminal investigations initiated by the IRS in fiscal year 2008, the agency recommended 2,785 prosecutions. Of those, 2,547 led to an indictment or criminal information and 2,144 produced convictions. And of those, 1,957 defendants were sentenced to prison, a halfway house or home detention. To put this in perspective, the IRS audited almost 1.4 million tax returns in 2007. That year, the number of confinement sentences was 2,123, meaning that less than two-tenths of 1 percent of audits resulted in prison time. And based on past prosecution trends, it's highly unlikely that someone would be sentenced to prison for a debt as small as $1,900, tax lawyers said. Larry A. Campagna — a Houston-based tax lawyer with the firm Chamberlain, Hrdlicka, White, Williams & Martin and vice chair of the American Bar Association Tax Section's Committee on Civil and Criminal Tax Penalties — said that judges in tax cases use sentencing guidelines based on the size of the financial loss to the government. The chart is complicated — and factors like a guilty plea or help in prosecuting others could reduce the sentence — but he suggested that only a tax conviction involving a sum of higher than $12,500 would give a taxpayer a reasonable probability of going to prison. And prison still wouldn't be likely until someone owed $30,000. Both of these sums are vastly more than the $1,900 unpaid amount envisioned in the Senate Finance bill. Much more common in nonpayment cases are fines. On this point, the critics of the Baucus plan have a point: the $25,000 fine in the plan is unusually high compared to fines for other tax matters involving such a small amount of money. Most fines are calculated as a percentage of the sum owed, at a rate as high as 75 percent if fraud is involved. For a $1,900 nonpayment, the fine would be $1,425 — if prosecutors even bothered to chase a haul that small with criminal charges, something they generally don't. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 One more hurdle before anyone goes to prison: a likely court battle. "I would have a hard time imagining someone going to jail on the health care issue without the case first going to the Supreme Court to test the constitutional merit of the government forcing everyone to get health insurance," said Steven Street, general manager of the Alexandria, Va., accounting firm Ross & Moncure. So let's recap. It is a significant exaggeration to say that the Baucus bill's "health care mandate will require imprisonment and fines for Americans who can’t afford to purchase insurance or pay hefty government penalties." It won't "require imprisonment and fines" — those are simply two of the options for enforcement, and experts say that neither a prison term nor a fine anywhere near that high is likely to be used. The official responsible for the Patients First release acknowledges that his headline overstated what the Joint Committee on Taxation chief of staff said, but the release does accurately report the penalties in the body of the text. The notion that one could go to prison for not buying insurance is certainly attention-grabbing, but based on past patterns of prosecution, the likelihood of it happening is extremely small. So while the fear seems to us to be overheated, the possibility exists. We rate the statement Barely True. Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly Fals

"The Defense Department received only one-half of 1 percent of the nearly trillion-dollar stimulus package funding. President Barack Obama's recent decision to halt plans for a missile defense system in Eastern Europe has opened the door for Republicans to rekindle an attack they've used before: that Democrats are weak on defense. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, in a Sept. 23, 2009, speech to investors in Hong Kong, joined Fox talk show host Sean Hannity, Republican chairman Michael Steele, and others in attacking Obama for being too soft on defense. "Though we are engaged in two wars and face a diverse array of threats, it is the defense budget that has seen significant program cuts and has actually been reduced from current levels!" she said. She added, "the Defense Department received only one-half of 1 percent of the nearly trillion-dollar stimulus package funding — even though many military projects fit the definition of 'shovel-ready.' " She went on to cite examples of defense projects that she said Obama wants to cut. We recently examined a claim by Hannity that Obama has cut defense spending (we found it Half True), but we wanted to see if Palin was right that a tiny sliver of stimulus spending will go toward defense projects. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 17, 2022 in una publicación en Facebook "Ministros de Defensa de OTAN deciden invadir a RUSIA para prevenir ataque de Putin”. By Maria Ramirez Uribe • October 17, 2022 The total cost of the stimulus, known officially as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, is $787 billion. According to the Defense Department, $7.4 billion will be spent on defense projects when the spending from the economic stimulus package is all said and done. That works out to slightly less than 1 percent of its total cost. That's slightly higher than Palin's "one-half of 1 percent," but still very much in the ballpark. The White House says that the $7.4 billion for the military in the stimulus bill comes on top of an already increased military budget (indeed, when we checked Hannity's claim, we found that Obama increased defense spending 3.9 percent from 2009 to 2010, while the budgeted amount for future years would essentially be flat). And the goal of the package was to directly stimulate the economy. So Palin's underlying point that Obama is going soft on defense is a bit of a stretch. The amount of defense spending in the stimulus bill is not a good measurement of the administration's overall commitment in that area. But she is correct that defense was a small portion of the stimulus and her number is off only slightly. So we find her statement to be Mostly Tru

"For the first time in history, the Democratic Congress will not allow an increase in the social security COLA (cost of living adjustment). So every year you've gotten a little bump in your Social Security check due to inflation. Maybe you've come to consider it an annual raise from Uncle Sam. Well, this January, you might not get one. And a chain e-mail making the rounds tells you to blame Democrats in Congress. "For the first time in history, the Democratic Congress will not allow an increase in the Social Security COLA (cost of living adjustment)," the e-mail states. There are actually two versions of this e-mail floating around. One pins the blame generically on "Congress," while the other says "the Democratic Congress." The second version seems to have gotten more traction on the Web, so we focused on the latter version. Up until 1975, it took an act of Congress to adjust Social Security payments for inflation. But a law enacted in 1972 — and signed by President Richard Nixon, a Republican — created a formula to automatically calculate the COLA every year. The Social Security cost of living adjustment was tied to the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W). The government compares that index in the third quarter (July, August and September) of the current year to the third quarter of the previous year. Every year since the formula was put into effect (1975), it has resulted in a cost-of-living increase . High oil prices last summer contributed in large part to a sizable COLA increase in January of 5.8 percent , the highest increase in more than 25 years. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 This year, the CPI-W is expected to decrease. That's due in part to lower consumer prices and low inflation from the recession. But mostly, it's tied to oil prices, which fell markedly from last summer's highs. As a result, a Social Security Trustees report last fall forecast no COLA next year. And the Congressional Budget Office recently projected that the formula will fail to yield a COLA in 2010 or 2011. The law does not allow COLA to be adjusted downward , so the effect is that Social Security payments would remain stagnant next year. This all has consequences for Medicare as well. For the three-quarters of seniors who have premiums for Part B of Medicare withheld from their Social Security checks, the COLA freeze will also mean a freeze in Part B premiums. That's because of a "hold-harmless" provision in the law. But millions of seniors exempt from the provision — some wealthy people, people new to the program and those who don't have Part B premiums withheld from their Social Security payments — could actually see smaller Social Security checks. "It has nothing to do with Democrats or Republicans," said Mark Hinkle, a spokesman for Social Security. "It's been the law since 1975, and it's based strictly on the numbers." Congress could vote to increase Social Security payments even though the COLA formula doesn't call for it. And, in fact, several pieces of legislation have been offered with that very goal. One is the Emergency Senior Citizens Relief Act, introduced in the Senate by Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and in the House by Peter DeFazio, D-Ore. It would provide a one-time payment of $250 to Social Security recipients next year. Another is the Emergency COLA Bill, introduced earlier this week by Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C. It would provide a COLA for 2010 equal to the average of the COLA over the past 10 years — roughly 3 percent. Obviously, these bills are coming from both sides of the aisle. If this e-mail had merely gotten some facts wrong, we'd be comfortable rating it False. But given that it targets senior citizens on an important pocketbook issue with an incorrect allegation that has no basis in fact, we have to go one more notch and set the meter ablaze. Pants on Fir

Barack Obama and the Democrats have "proposed a tax for not having health insurance. The Republican National Committee launched a new ad attacking health care reform as a big tax increase. "Barack Obama and Democrats promise that health care reform will lower costs, but their plans deliver increased taxes," the ad says. It then lists several taxes it says the Obama plan will increase. Here we're checking the claim that "they've even proposed a tax for not having health insurance." The ad then flashes to video of Obama and George Stephanopoulos arguing over the meaning of the word tax on This Week with George Stephanopoulos , with Stephanopolous reading the dictionary definition. Obama said the measure is necessary to make sure that everyone takes responsibility for having health insurance. He also said that a tax penalty is not the same thing as raising people's taxes. The tax in the Democrats' bills won't affect anyone who has insurance. But if health care reform passes, it will be an issue for those who don't have insurance. The tax is the mechanism that Democrats want to use to prod people to get health coverage. If they fail to get insurance, they would have to pay it. We've studied the health reform proposals being considered in Congress right now, and the main Democratic versions propose a tax penalty on people who don't carry health insurance. Policymakers usually call this provision the "individual mandate." Among Democrats, there is much consensus that an individual mandate is needed to make sure everyone is covered, especially when coupled with other measures to make affordable coverage more widely available. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 Obama opposed the individual mandate when he was a candidate, but he has since changed his mind and now supports it, as long as it contains a hardship exemption for individuals who are truly unable to find affordable coverage. The proposals in Congress each handle the individual mandate differently. In the bills in the House of Representatives, a person who failed to get coverage would face a penalty of 2.5 percent of their modified adjusted gross income up to the cost of basic health insurance, as defined by the new national health insurance exchange. The House grants exemptions for dependents, religious objections and financial hardship. In the Senate, the Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee caps the penalty at $750. It exempts residents of states that don't establish health insurance exchanges, those for whom affordable coverage is not available, and those without coverage for fewer than 90 days. The Senate Finance Comittee specifies a tax penalty of $950 for an individual and a maximum penalty of $1,900 per family. The penalties are a little lower if the person's income is below 300 percent of the poverty level. People are exempt from the mandate if they live below the poverty level, if the lowest cost insurance exceeds 10 percent of their income, or if there is financial hardship or religious objections. We should note that the bills tend to leave the definitions of financial hardship up to other officials, such as the secretary of Health and Human Services. We're going to duck, for now, the question asked by Stephanopolous, about whether Obama is breaking his promise on raising taxes. If health reform passes, then we'll evaluate the mandate with respect to our Obameter campaign promises database . Promise No. 515, "No family making less than $250,000 will see 'any form of tax increase,'" is currently rated Compromise . The details for these mandates are very much a work in progress, and Congress will ultimately have to vote on one set of standards for the mandate. But all of the Democratic plans include the mandate, which is a tax penalty on those who don't have insurance. The RNC called it "a tax for not having health insurance," and there's no doubt that it is a form of tax. There are provisions for those who face hardship, but absent special circumstances, everyone will have to have coverage. We rate the RNC's statement True

"House Republicans pledged to introduce a bill to reform America’s health care system," but "the 'party of no' has . . . failed to produce legislation. No matter which party controls Congress, its leaders usually refer to the opposition as "the party of no." The Republicans did it when they were in control, and now it's Democrats' turn. The latest complaint from House Democratic leaders is that Republicans have failed to produce an alternative to the five major health care bills circulating in Congress. In a Sept. 28, 2009, news release, Democratic Leader Steny Hoyer made this claim: "In June, House Republicans pledged to introduce a bill to reform America’s health care system. Now, over 100 days and numerous excuses later, the 'Party of no' has not only failed to produce legislation, but they have yet to offer any real solutions or ideas on how to make health care more affordable and accessible to American families." It's a matter of opinion whether Republicans have offered any "real solutions." But we can fact-check whether the GOP has, indeed, failed to introduce an alternative. Back in June, when the health care debate was just starting to heat up, Republicans were quick to say they wanted to be involved. Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio said there would be a Republican alternative, one that he said would make health care affordable for everyone; protect people from "being forced into a new government-run health care plan"; let people keep their doctors and their coverage; ensure that medical decisions are made by doctors; and improve health through prevention and disease management programs. "We believe our plan is a big improvement on the current system that will cost far less than what the administration is proposing," said Boehner. Republican Roy Blunt of Missouri, who is leading the GOP's Health Care Solutions Group, pledged his party would offer a bill based on those principles soon enough. "I guarantee you we will provide you with a bill that costs less and provides better care for the American people,” he said. Let's pause for a moment to explain some important Washington parlance. On Capitol Hill, many lawmakers present "plans" or "blueprints." Think of them as a rough draft for an eventual bill. Actually writing a bill is a slightly bigger step, although thousands of bills get introduced every year that never see the light of day — let alone the lights of a committee hearing. In that regard, Republicans have been prolific. Since the beginning of the year, they have introduced more than 35 health care reform bills. Many deal with small slices of the health care debate. For example, one, by Rep. Sam Johnson of Texas, would allow small businesses to band together to negotiate health care plans with providers. Another, by Rep. Darrell Issa of California, would allow nonfederal employees to enroll in the same health care plan that is currently enjoyed by members of Congress and federal employees. One bill, sponsored by Rep. Tom Price of Georgia, the leader of the conservative Republican Study Committee, got our attention because it has 44 co-sponsors and tackles many of the goals the GOP leadership outlined early in the summer. The Empowering Patients First Act, would, for example, allow patients to keep their coverage, as Republicans vowed. But neither that bill nor the others from Republicans has emerged as the Republican alternative. That's partly because the Democrats are in control and have used their own bills as the main legislation, but also because no GOP bill has drawn enough support to get momentum. We asked Michael Steel, Boehner's spokesman, whether Price's bill is the Republican-backed legislation that Blunt promised back in June. "It's an alternative," he said of the Price bill, pointing us to a Web site that lists several Republican health care bills. For now, there is no single Republican bill, Steel said. A single bill is exactly what the Democratic leadership is looking for, said Hoyer spokeswoman Stephanie Lundberg. "The RSC bill is not the Republican alternative," she said. "When we say that the Republicans don't have a bill, it's because they said they would have an alternative bill," backed by the party. So, back to Hoyer's claim. He contends that the Republicans "pledged to introduce a bill to reform America’s health care system" but have failed to do so. That's incorrect in that there are dozens of GOP bills, including several that are highlighted on the Republicans' Web site. But he's right that the Republicans have not rallied behind a single bill the way they suggested back in June. That leaves the Truth-O-Meter stuck in the middle. Half True. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022

Goldman Sachs was Barack Obama's "No. 1 private contributor. Liberal filmmaker Michael Moore has a new film coming out — Capitalism: A Love Story — and he appeared on Comedy Central's The Colbert Report to promote it. The show's ironically conservative host, Stephen Colbert, defended capitalism and the bailouts of late 2008, which led to a mock debate between them. At first, Wall Street was actually angry about the bailouts, Colbert claimed. "Because it might come with strings attached," he explained. "But they forgave Obama when he didn't add any. Now all is forgiven." "That's why you like Obama so much now?" Moore asked. "I don't like Obama so much," Colbert said. "On this, I do. And your film is helping me like Obama, because you're a critic of his. You think he's in the pocket of guys like Goldman Sachs." "I point out in the film that Goldman Sachs is his No. 1 private contributor," Moore answered. "But I voted for the guy. I'm still hopeful that he's going to do the right thing and side with us, and not Wall Street. But the jury's out on that." Featured Fact-check Instagram posts stated on October 25, 2022 in an Instagram post The documentary “2,000 Mules proves” Democrats “cheated on the 2020 elections.” By Jon Greenberg • October 28, 2022 We'll let you draw your own conclusions on their debate. We wanted to check Moore's statement about Obama's contributors and the financial services firm Goldman Sachs. Obama made a big deal during the election that he didn't accept money from federal political action committees or lobbyists. But laws require individuals to disclose their occupation and their employer when they donate to federal political candidates. We checked with the Center for Responsive Politics, a well-respected nonpartisan group that specializes in analyzing campaign data. Their numbers include contributions from employees and their immediate families. Their analysis of the 2008 presidential campaign found that University of California employees were Obama's top donor, giving a collective $1.6 million. That system is run by the state of California, and hence is a public employer. No. 2 was Goldman Sachs. Goldman employees gave Obama $994,795. Obama's next biggest donors were the employees of Harvard University, Microsoft, Google, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Time Warner, the law firm Sidley Austin, and Stanford University. View Obama's complete list and amounts here. Incidentally, Goldman Sachs ranked No.4 on John McCain's list of employee contributions, at $230,095. Moore said that Goldman Sachs is Obama's "No. 1 private contributor." The data shows that is correct. We rate his statement True

The Obama administration is "cutting back on defense During an interview with Sen. John McCain, Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity closed by asking the former Republican presidential candidate whether President Barack Obama was getting soft on defense. "Do you think the president is adopting a pre-9/11 mentality?" Hannity asked McCain. "I know those are pretty strong words, but I believe he is. I believe he is weakening our national reaction. I think if you look at Gitmo, Mirandizing enemy combatants, cutting back on defense, you know, slowing down our nuclear. It seems to me it's beyond the pre-9/11 mentality." For this item we'll focus on just one of Hannity's assertions: that Obama is "cutting back on defense." After speaking to several defense budget experts, we've found a clear consensus on that question: maybe. Hannity did not include a time frame or provide qualifiers, so we need to look at his claim by examining some different ways to measure defense spending: -- The base budget vs. the war budget . Anyone looking at the defense budget must consider two main numbers. One is the base budget, which includes most everything outside of direct war spending. The second is war spending. To compare apples to apples, our sources advised us to stick to the base budget. That avoids lots of budgetary volatility, since war spending can quickly spike or decline depending on the needs on the front lines. The base budget, by contrast, is a more stable indicator of Obama's priorities. Comparing Obama's fiscal year 2010 base budget request for defense to the 2009 fiscal year (which was funded under President Bush) shows an increase from $513.4 billion to $533.8 billion — a jump of 3.9 percent. That's certainly not a cut, and if the budget for 2010 were the only measurement considered, Hannity would be flat-out wrong to say the budget is decreasing. (We should point out that the fiscal year 2010 number includes a one-time shift into the base budget of some items that had been categorized under the war budget during the administration of President George W. Bush. This shift effectively increases the base budget by about $13 billion without affecting how much money is spent on those items. However, even subtracting the newly shifted amount from the fiscal year 2010 increase, the base budget still increased from one year to year the next, so it would not be correct to call that year's change a cut.) And President Obama has proposed that the base budget will continue to rise in absolute dollars through 2014, though by smaller percentages. For fiscal year 2011, it rises by 1.5 percent; for fiscal year 2012, it rises by 1.6 percent; for 2013, it rises by 1.9 percent; and for 2014, it rises by 2.4 percent. Again, using this factor, Hannity would be wrong to say that Obama is cutting defense. -- But what about inflation ? Is it possible for an increase in spending to actually be a cut? In the topsy-turvy world of Washington wonkery, it's possible — if inflation rises more quickly than spending. In the case of the 2009 to 2010 comparison we cited above, experts say inflation is currently so low that it's unlikely to make much of a dent in that increase. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 17, 2022 in una publicación en Facebook "Ministros de Defensa de OTAN deciden invadir a RUSIA para prevenir ataque de Putin”. By Maria Ramirez Uribe • October 17, 2022 Generally, though, inflation plays a significant role. Michael O'Hanlon of the centrist-to-liberal Brookings Institution wrote in a June 10, 2009, op-ed that under Obama, the average increase in the base defense budget between 2010 and 2014 would be about 2 percent a year, which in his view translates into "no real growth" because that increase would be largely eaten up by inflation. "The administration is hardly slashing funds for defense; it is simply adopting a policy of zero real growth in the base budget," he wrote. "With the inflation rate expected to average over 1.5 percent, the net effect is essentially no real growth. Cumulatively, that would leave us about $150 billion short of actual funding requirements through 2014." Making the problem worse is that inflation for defense costs is traditionally higher than inflation for the economy as a whole. "The cost of almost everything we've been doing in defense has been accelerating upward too fast even for growing budgets to keep up," said Stephen Daggett, a defense specialist with the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, in congressional testimony he gave in February 2009. Daggett and O'Hanlon agree that such increases have been driven by personnel costs, including health care and benefits; operations and maintenance; purchases of increasingly complex equipment; and efforts to reorient the military branches to new threats. In other words, just to keep pace, defense spending should really run a couple percentage points higher than general inflation — and under the Obama blueprint, it probably would not do that. (By contrast, during the Bush years of 2001 to 2009, the base defense budget grew at an average real rate of 4.6 percent annually, according to Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments .) If you factor inflation into the equation, then, Obama is effectively decreeing a slowing of the rate of growth. Hannity could certainly make a case that this amounts to a cut even though Obama is still increasing spending on a year-to-year basis. -- How big is the defense budget compared to gross domestic product ? Another measure of defense spending is to compare it to the United States' gross domestic product. According to Mackenzie Eaglen of the conservative Heritage Foundation, the Obama defense budget drops from 3.81 percent of GDP in 2010 to 3.01 percent in 2019. These calculations are always iffy because it's hard to predict GDP a full 10 years out — and the decrease could result from an expansion in the economy rather than a fall in defense spending. But if this measure were used, Hannity could argue with some legitimacy that this amounts to a defense cut. -- Do cuts of particular programs count ? Setting aside what's happening with the defense budget as a whole, the administration is clearly making specific cuts in programs. The administration has said it would cut such programs as the F-22 fighter, the DDG-1000 destroyer, parts of the Army's Future Combat System, the presidential helicopter fleet, aircraft carrier production runs, the airborne laser missile defense program and the next-generation bomber. These certainly qualify as "cuts" by the strictest definition of the word, but a more appropriate description might be that they represent a reshuffling of priorities. "These are specific cuts, but they are balanced by increases in other areas," said Harrison of CSBA. "The cuts to specific programs get a lot of attention, but the additions to others don't." In our view, the cutting of specific weapons programs doesn't count as "cutting back on defense" as long as the defense budget is increasing as a whole. So if Hannity was using specific program cuts as his yardstick, his assertion about Obama's defense budget would be unfair. Now it's time to recap. By some measurements, including defense spending as a percentage of GDP, Hannity is right that Obama is "cutting" defense. But from 2009 to 2010, the Obama administration is increasing the defense budget, and for a few years after that, he's increasing it in absolute terms (albeit at a slower rate than expected inflation). So whether Hannity is accurate depends on what measurement you use. We're rating his assertion Half True

"Medicare does just as good, if not better, at keeping people healthy" as Medicare Advantage President Barack Obama defended plans to cut funding for a program called Medicare Advantage in an interview on This Week with George Stephanopolous . Stephanopolous cited defenders of Medicare Advantage, such as Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson of Florida, who say cutting the program isn't fair to people who are currently enrolled in the optional Medicare program. Obama vigorously defended his plan. Medicare Advantage programs, he said, get "about 14 percent more (in) overpayments, basically subsidies from taxpayers for a program that ordinary Medicare does just as good, if not better, at keeping people healthy. "Now, they package these things in ways that, in some cases, may make it more convenient for some consumers, but they're overcharging massively for it." Obama added that he would use the money to close the so-called "doughnut hole," a gap in prescription drug coverage for seniors. We know from our previous reporting that Medicare Advantage is more costly than regular Medicare. But we were curious if it had been proven that Medicare and Medicare Advantage produced the same patient outcomes. For those who need a little help on Medicare basics: Traditional Medicare is health insurance that the government offers to senior citizens. Seniors go to their regular doctors (as long as the doctors agree to accept Medicare), and Medicare picks up the bills. The billing system is called fee-for-service, which means that doctors bill for every service they provide. Anyone who is eligible for Medicare can choose to sign up for Medicare Advantage, which pays private insurance companies a set rate to treat Medicare beneficiaries. It was conceived as a cost-containment measure on the theory that competition among private plans would drive down costs. That has not happened. Some people prefer Medicare Advantage plans, though, because of convenience or because some plans offer extra benefits, such as additional coverage or even cash back through rebates on co-pays. About 23 percent of Medicare beneficiaries choose a Medicare Advantage plan. Medicare Advantage includes several types of programs, everything from HMOs to PPOs to traditional fee-for-service plans. The details of each plan tend to differ depending on geographic location. All this diversity means it's hard to talk about one set of outcomes for Medicare Advantage. We asked the White House what evidence it had to show that "Medicare does just as good, if not better, at keeping people healthy" as Medicare Advantage. Staffers pointed us to a March 2009 report from the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, or MedPAC, an independent congressional agency that advises Congress on Medicare policy. We read MedPAC's report, and it seemed pretty down on Medicare Advantage, primarily because of its expense. "Paying a plan more than the cost for delivering the same services under the FFS (fee-for-service) system is not an efficient use of Medicare funds, particularly in the absence of evidence that such extra payments result in better quality compared to FFS," the report said. But the report also noted how difficult it is to compare Medicare Advantage with traditional Medicare. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 The indicators of quality "differ greatly among plans and across plan types in MA (Medicare Advantage), and we currently do not have a basis for comparing plan performance with the quality of care in FFS Medicare." MedPac said it plans to study the topic and issue a report in March 2010 under a mandate from Congress. MedPac was able to report, however, that Medicare Advantage HMOs, especially established HMOs, tend to have better outcomes than other Medicare Advantage plans. Additionally, a report from America's Health Insurance Plans, an industry group, said that Medicare Advantage HMOs in California and Nevada reduced hospital days and readmissions compared with traditional Medicare. But HMO plans are not the areas of Medicare Advantage that are growing the most. "While payment policy in the MA program has led to growth in the number of plans available, growth in access to plans across the country, and increased enrollment, the additional funding has not necessarily resulted in cost containment or better quality of care for enrollees," MedPac concluded. "Much of the enrollment growth is in new plans, which are not showing improvement in quality." MedPAC is an independent agency, but we wondered if there was any other research on the topic. We checked with two independent policy experts on Medicare — Stuart Guterman of the Commonwealth Fund and Marilyn Moon of the American Institutes for Research — and they both said the information was limited. "There's not a lot of good data to compare, so there's not really good evidence to say one way or another," Guterman said of Medicare versus Medicare Advantage. "All the plans have to provide the same benefit package that traditional Medicare provides." Moon said that while Medicare Advantage is open to everyone, there is evidence that the oldest and sickest beneficiaries tend to stay in traditional Medicare, probably because they are more change-averse. So it's possible that Medicare Advantage is paid more to take care of healthier seniors. "That bothers me considerably," Moon said. We also reviewed consumer advice on Medicare plans. Most of the advice says that individuals should research and select their plans carefully based on their own health conditions and preferences. We didn't see any advice that drew broad conclusions about which was better, Medicare or Medicare Advantage. Finally, the White House sent us a statement emphasizing the president's point and renewing his promise to curtail extra payments to Medicare Advantage. "There is no evidence that this extra payment leads to better quality for Medicare beneficiaries," said White House spokeswoman Katherine Bedingfield. "Insurers, not beneficiaries or the Medicare program, determine how these overpayments are used — and this includes marketing and other administrative costs. This means that seniors do not always get the full overpayments back in the form of extra benefits. Additionally, some plans offer lower cost-sharing for drugs and vision care but higher cost-sharing for services such as hospitalizations and home health services. As a result, seniors can end up spending more out of pocket under a Medicare Advantage plan, not less. "Reducing these Medicare overpayments will affirm President Obama’s promise to strengthen the Medicare program, extend its solvency and reduce premiums for all beneficiaries." President Obama said, "Medicare does just as good, if not better, at keeping people healthy" as Medicare Advantage. We found little statistical evidence that would definitively confirm or refute this. MedPAC, the independent agency that reports to Congress, said it had no reason to think that Medicare Advantage overall was superior to regular Medicare. Nevertheless, there is uncertainty that merits further study. We rate Obama's statement Half Tru

"FDR was called a socialist and a communist. Sound familiar? The president was accused of being "a socialist, not a Democrat." His plan was described as "undisguised state socialism." One critic, who controlled some powerful media outlets, suggested that communists had infiltrated the president's administration. Those are some of the attacks that Franklin Delano Roosevelt faced in the 1930s — attacks cited recently by President Barack Obama to emphasize that he's not unique. Obama has mentioned the Roosevelt comparison several times recently, including during an interview on Late Night with David Letterman on Sept. 21, 2009: "What's happened is that whenever a president tries to bring about significant changes, particularly during times of economic unease, then there is a certain segment of the population that gets very riled up," Obama said. "FDR was called a socialist and a communist." Indeed, Roosevelt was called a socialist or a communist many times. Most of that criticism came in the 1930s, when he was enacting programs intended to pull the country out of the Great Depression. • "Roosevelt is a socialist, not a Democrat," declared Republican Rep. Robert Rich of Pennsylvania during a debate on the House floor on July 23, 1935. That remark came after Republicans hinted they were considering a move to impeach Roosevelt, according to the New York Times . • "The New Deal is now undisguised state socialism, declared Senator Simeon D. Fess (R-Ohio) today as he pictured President Roosevelt as the New Deal's leading socialist," reported the Chicago Daily Tribune on Aug. 7, 1934. "The president's recent statements," Fess said, "remove any doubt of his policy of state socialism, which necessitates increased activities of the government in either ownership or operation of industry, or both." • "The Russian newspapers during the last election [1932] published the photograph of Franklin D. Roosevelt over the caption, 'The first communistic President of the United States,'" said Sen. Thomas Schall, a Republican from Minnesota. "Evidently the Russian newspapers had knowledge concerning the ultimate intent of the President, which had been carefully withheld from the voters in this country. In fact, the voters of the United States were meticulously misled as to such intentions." We found Schall's comments in the book, All But the People: Franklin D. Roosevelt and his Critics, 1933-1939 . Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 And then there's FDR being called a socialist by William Randolph Hearst. Hearst, a newspaper mogul, initially supported Roosevelt. But he gradually became disillusioned with the new president's policies. He especially hated Roosevelt's plan to increase taxes on the wealthy, and his papers routinely referred to the New Deal as the Raw Deal. By 1936, when Roosevelt was running for re-election, Hearst decided to support Republican Alf Landon and oppose Roosevelt with all the power of the press he could muster. Historian Ben Procter summarized this moment in history in his book William Randolph Hearst: The Later Years, 1911-1951 : "On September 6, Hearst newspapers began a prolonged assault on the administration. The New York American published a front-page editorial titled, 'The Radical Brand on the New Deal.' It charged that radical and communist leaders had already given their approval to support Roosevelt against Landon. During the next two weeks Hearst editors trumpeted these recurring themes: that communists had infiltrated the New Deal; that communism was un-American and undemocratic; that 'America can only judge Mr. Roosevelt and his administration by the strange silence that has prevailed in official quarters.'" That was as much as Roosevelt was willing to take. The White House issued a statement that mentioned "a certain notorious newspaper owner," and rebutted the accusations. The statement concluded, "The American people will not permit their attention to be diverted from real issues to fake issues which no patriotic, honorable, decent citizen would purposefully inject into American affairs." Hearst shot back in a front-page editorial, which he signed personally. "Let me say that I have not stated at any time whether the President willingly or unwillingly received the support of the Karl Marx Socialists, the Frankfurter radicals, communists and anarchists, the Tugwell bolsheviks, and the Richberg revolutionists which constitute the bulk of his following," Hearst wrote. "I have simply said and shown that he does receive the support of these enemies of the American system of government, and that he has done his best to deserve the support of all such disturbing and destructive elements." Hearst's efforts were for naught. Roosevelt won the 1936 election in a landslide, while the Hearst newspaper chain slid into bankruptcy. There's not much controversy on this one, but it did provide an interesting opportunity to review American history. We rate Obama's statement True

"Recent census data shows that the average American family spends over $13,000 a year for health care coverage. One of the biggest skirmishes in the health care debate has been over how much ordinary Americans pay for coverage — either under the current system, as Democrats like to point out, or under the new Democratic proposals, as Republicans regularly emphasize. In a Sept. 16, 2009, speech on the House floor, Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley of Iowa argued in favor of the House health care bill, H.R. 3200, by asserting that the status quo is financially unsustainable. "Recent census data shows that the average American family spends over $13,000 a year for health care coverage," Braley said. "And if we don’t change what we are doing right now, in 10 years the average American family will be spending over $25,000 a year on health care coverage. That’s why the time to act is now, and H.R. 3200 does that by expanding access to quality, affordable coverage and bringing true health care reform to the American people." For this item, we'll focus on the assertion that the average American family spends over $13,000 a year for health care coverage. We called Braley's office, and staffers acknowledged that Braley misspoke when he said the numbers come from the Census Bureau. In fact, the numbers come from a study released the day before Braley spoke — a survey of employer-provided health care undertaken annually by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Health Research & Educational Trust, an affiliate of the American Hospital Association. The Kaiser/HRET study found that the average annual premium for family coverage under an employer-based plan is $13,375. To come up with that figure, the study used data from 3,188 randomly selected employers with three or more employees. But there's a problem: It's not accurate to say, as Braley does, that "the average American family spends over $13,000 a year for health care coverage." It's true that Kaiser/HRET found the total cost of health care premiums for a family to be $13,375 — but that is not the amount the average family pays out of its own pocket. This is not a trivial distinction. For employer-based health care, which was the only kind Kaiser/HRET studied, the employer pays nearly three-quarters of the freight — $9,860 to be exact, compared with $3,515 for the employee. Now, there are legitimate concerns about health care costing $13,375 per family per year. It's a substantial economic burden for companies to pay so much for their workers' health care, and doing so probably holds down employee wages and economic growth. But Braley didn't say that the high premiums are an economic burden on the economy or on companies. He specifically said that $13,000 is what "the average American family spends." And that's not correct. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 The Kaiser/HRET estimate of the family share being $3,515 is in the same ballpark as others. The Consumer Expenditure Survey, produced by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, found that household health care expenditures — which go beyond just health insurance premiums — were $2,853 in 2007, the last year for which data are available. (Only Americans with employer-sponsored health care are included in the Kaiser/HRET survey, which accounts for much of the difference between the two surveys.) A third study, brought to our attention by Braley's staff, was by Milliman Inc., a health care and benefits consulting firm. A study of 2009 health care costs found that the average cost for a family of four is $16,771. The number is a bit higher than Kaiser/HRT's because it also includes family out-of-pocket costs rather than just the cost of insurance premiums. Calculating it this way does increase the size of the employee share of all health care costs. According to the Milliman study, employees paid $4,004 for health premiums and $2,820 out of pocket, for a total of $6,824. (The employer contribution was $9,947.) So, Milliman has employers paying a larger dollar amount than what Kaiser found, but the family portion is still well short of the $13,000 Braley cited. As was the case in a number of other recent PolitiFact items we deemed False (including this one and this one ), Braley would have been correct if he'd simply tweaked what he said. If he'd cited data showing that "the annual health care premiums for the average American family are greater than $13,000," he would have been right. But by adding confusion to the debate, Braley has muddied some already murky waters. In a Sept. 20, 2009, column prompted by the Kaiser/HRET study, Ezra Klein of the Washington Post summarized why misconceptions about the cost of health care matter. "Imagine if people who touched a hot stove felt only a small fraction of the pain from the burn," Klein wrote. "That's pretty much what's happening in our health care system. It hurts enough that we would prefer it to stop, but the urgency is lost. That's the dilemma for Washington wonks trying to fix this mess: They look at the numbers and see health care costs crushing our economy, overwhelming our government, swallowing our wages. But the public isn't feeling it. Virtually no one cuts a $13,375 check for health care. Most pay 27 percent of it, or even less." Jeff Giertz, the communications director for Braley, acknowledged PolitiFact's interpretation of the data, but added, "Regardless of how you measure it, the costs are high and getting higher — there’s certainly no disputing that." Still, even inadvertently glossing over the meaning of these numbers gives the false impression that American families are paying approximately four times as much as they actually are for health care. We rate Braley's statement False

"Under the Baucus bill ... federal funds would subsidize coverage of elective abortions. In his plan for health care reform, Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., hoped to eliminate abortion as a wedge issue. Good luck with that, senator. With an issue as contentious and complex as abortion, appeasing both sides is almost impossible. "This is a health care bill, not an abortion bill," Baucus said. "The attempt here is to find language that just maintains the status quo." The National Right to Life Committee is having none of it. In a sharply worded news release on Sept. 16, NLRC legislative director Douglas Johnson said the Baucus bill "contains an array of proabortion mandates and federal subsidies for elective abortion." Legislators on both sides of the abortion issue are choosing their words carefully as they discuss the health care reform plans. We decided to look at two claims by Johnson that we think get to the heart of the rhetoric. In a separate item, we examine a claim from Johnson that the Baucus bill "contains provisions that would send massive federal subsidies directly to both private insurance plans and government-chartered cooperatives that pay for elective abortion." The Baucus plan would, in fact, allow private companies participating in the exchange, as well as the co-op, to offer abortion services. And people in both those plans could see federal subsidies. We looked at this issue in some detail here and ruled the claim True. But in this item we delve into a second claim in Johnson's statement. Contrary to President Barack Obama's pledge before Congress on Sept. 9 that "no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions," Johnson said, under the Baucus bill, "federal funds would subsidize coverage of elective abortions." Some may say this Johnson statement is the same as the other one. If the government subsidizes people who are allowed to get plans that provide abortion coverage, then taxpayers are subsidizing abortion, right? It's not that simple, and we'll explain why. First let's look at some of the particulars of the Baucus plan as it relates to abortion. According to Baucus' chairman's mark, which provides a blueprint for the plan, abortion cannot be mandated as part of any minimum benefits package except in cases of rape, incest or if the mother's life is in danger. However, health plans in the exchange or co-op would not be prohibited from providing abortion coverage. The exchange is a virtual marketplace where people can comparison shop for an insurance plan. Baucus' alternative to a public option, a co-op, would be one alternative on the exchange (think of it as a credit union for health insurance). The Baucus plan explicitly states that no federal funds — whether through tax credits or cost-sharing credits — could be used to pay for abortions (again, unless the pregnancy is due to rape, incest, or if the life of the mother is in danger). Insurers participating in any state-based exchange that offers coverage for abortion "must segregate from any premium and cost-sharing credits an amount of each enrollee's private premium dollars that is determined to be sufficient to cover the provision of those services." The Health and Human Services secretary would also have to estimate, on an average actuarial basis, the cost of abortion coverage (not less than $1 per month). And any money used for abortions would have to come out of that pot of money. So the dollars would be technically segregated. And lastly, every state exchange would have to provide one plan that covers abortion and one that does not. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 But Johnson said that still "amounts to a surcharge specifically for elective abortions." The wording in the bill isn't entirely clear, but by our reading, the way it would work is that the government would provide health care subsidies of a certain amount whether an insurer covers abortion or not. So if an insurer wants to cover it, that additional cost would be on the insurer, who would presumably pass that cost on to the insured. And the insurers would have to keep a tab on the extra amount paid for abortion coverage and make sure that any money used for abortion comes strictly from premiums paid by its customers, not from federal subsidies. The bottom line is that people who choose plans that cover abortion would have to pay the added cost of such coverage. But according to Johnson, that's little more than a bookkeeping exercise. "Funds spent by federal agencies are, by law, federal funds," Johnson stated. "The claim that under these bills, a federal agency would use 'private funds' to subsidize abortions is absurd on its face — a political hoax." When this issue came up in a House version of the plan, we at PolitiFact ruled that an amendment from Rep. Lois Capps, D-Calif., seemed like a reasonable effort to segregate funds so that tax dollars would not go to directly fund abortions. We caught a lot of flak from people who argued the public option envisioned in the House plan, because it might include abortion and certainly would pay subsidies to some who bought into it, was tantamount to federal subsidies for abortion. In an article titled, "Does Health Care Cover Abortion or Not? Fact Checking the Fact Checkers," BeliefNet editor in chief Steven Waldman took us to task a bit for our black-and-white finding and concluded, "Some of this does not involve matters of 'fact' or 'truth' or 'lies' but rather subjective judgment calls, a land where ideologues don't function well but legislators must." In an article this week, Waldman wrote that Baucus may have solved the abortion riddle, largely because Baucus' plan does not include a public option, which left open the possibility that it would cover abortions. "There's a more nuanced debate about whether it would subsidize abortion directly, but Baucus short-circuits that debate by eliminating the public option entirely," Waldman wrote. Johnson highlights another part of the Baucus plan to bolster his case. The Baucus plan would provide $6 billion in federal seed money to cover startup costs and meet solvency requirements for the co-ops. Johnson argues there's no telling how co-ops might use this money, that there isn't any language to prohibit it from being used to fund abortions. We think the earlier language — that specifically prohibits federal funds to be used for abortion — covers that. And while we can see an argument that that $6 billion provides a benefit to co-ops that may have abortion coverage, we think it's a stretch to call that subsidizing abortions. "You get into some real gray areas," Waldman told us in a phone interview. In Waldman's estimation, the Baucus bill still allows for some indirect federal funding of abortion. "The only question is, is it indirect enough?" Waldman said. "Is it very indirect or very, very, very indirect subsidizing. And that's a legitimate question." Here's Planned Parenthood's take on the Baucus plan: "Planned Parenthood acknowledges that there are some compromises that need to be made to move health care reform forward, and we are willing to do so if it means more women can access affordable, quality health care from the provider of their choice. While we are concerned that the language in the Senate Finance bill specifically singles out abortion, we understand it is necessary to move health care reform forward. "As it currently stands, it is a carefully crafted compromise which assures that access to abortion would neither be mandated nor prohibited — and that women would not lose health care benefits that they have had for decades, while also addressing concerns that no federal funds would be used for abortion." We agree with Johnson that federal dollars would be going to insurers that may provide abortion coverage — and this is some new territory for the federal government. And we see the argument about the bookkeeping shell game of segregating premiums from government funding so that abortion costs are not pulled from the pot of money kicked in by the government. But if the government isn't paying any more to an insurance company to pay for abortion coverage, it means that insurance companies that offer such coverage are. So essentially that cost will be passed on to the insured people who select plans that cover abortions. Perhaps a federal court would view this differently, but we think the court of common sense says that if someone claims abortion would be subsidized with federal funds, it suggests more federal tax dollars would pour into plans that cover abortion. But they won't. The added cost will be borne by the people who select plans that include abortion coverage. Those premiums will pay for abortions. We found Rep. John Boehner's claim that Democratic plans for health reform would provide federal subsidies for abortion False as it related to the Capps Amendment in a House version of health care reform, and we find it's even more of a stretch in Baucus' plan, which does not even include a public option. And so we rule this claim False

The Baucus bill "contains provisions that would send massive federal subsidies directly to both private insurance plans and government-chartered cooperatives that pay for elective abortion. With the recent release of the Senate Finance Committee plan for health care reform, the abortion issue has re-emerged in the health care debate. And both sides are choosing their words carefully to score political points. We are examining two seemingly similar statements from the National Right to Life Committee that we think get to the heart of the rhetoric. One is that under the bill proposed by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., federal funds (tax dollars) would subsidize abortions; and the other is that federal subsidies would go to insurance companies that offer abortion coverage. They sound similar, but we ended up with rulings at opposite ends of our Truth-O-Meter. We take a look at the first claim, that federal tax dollars would subsidize abortions, in a separate item and conclude the statement is False . In this item, we deal with a statement from NLRC legislative director Douglas Johnson that the Baucus bill "contains provisions that would send massive federal subsidies directly to both private insurance plans and government-chartered cooperatives that pay for elective abortion." If you look carefully, the issue here is government involvement in plans that offer abortion. And that's a big deal. The 1976 Hyde Amendment prohibits the use of federal funds for abortions through Medicaid except in cases of rape, incest or when the mother's health is in peril. So states that want to offer abortion coverage have to pay for it themselves. Similar restrictions on public funding for abortions applies to federal health care coverage extended to active and retired military and federal employees. Baucus said he attempted to "find language that just maintains the status quo" on abortion, because he didn't want the issue to be a distraction. "This is a health care bill, not an abortion bill," Baucus said. Maintaining the status quo, however, is a matter of perception. And that's because there are two competing realities. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 On the one hand, as President Barack Obama acknowledged in a July 21 interview, "We ... have a tradition of, in this town, historically, of not financing abortions as part of government-funded health care." In other words, the more than 250 private health plans that cover federal employees — because they are subsidized by the federal government — cannot offer full abortion services. On the other hand, many private plans (outside the government) currently offer abortion services. If the government starts providing health care subsidies but bans the participation of any plan that offers abortion services (as some legislators have suggested), abortion rights groups argue it would strip millions of women of benefits they currently get. According to a 2002 Guttmacher Institute study, 87 percent of employment-based insured health plans offered coverage for abortions (though not all companies select it for their employees). A 2003 Kaiser Family Foundation survey found that 46 percent of covered workers had coverage for abortions. The two surveys asked different questions, but the bottom line is that a significant percentage of women have health insurance that covers abortions. According to Baucus' chairman's mark, which provides a blueprint for the plan, abortion cannot be a mandated as part of any minimum benefits package except in cases of rape, incest or if the mother's life is in danger. However, health plans in the exchange or co-op would not be prohibited from providing abortion coverage. In fact, every state exchange would have to provide one plan that covers abortion and one that does not. The exchange is a virtual marketplace where people can comparison shop for an insurance plan. Baucus' alternative to a public option, a co-op, would be one alternative on the exchange (think of it as a credit union for health insurance). The plan provides federal dollars — through tax credits or cost-sharing credits — to subsidize the cost of insurance for people with modest incomes. So clearly, you'd have federal subsidies going to plans that cover abortions. But no more federal money would go to plans that offer abortion, so the added cost would presumably be passed on to consumers who choose plans that offer abortion, and efforts have been made to segregate funding so that only money from premiums — not tax dollars — would be used to pay for abortions. But if millions of uninsured people would now get insurance due to the health care plan, and some of the plans offer abortion coverage, we think it's fair to conclude the Baucus plan (or any other Democratic plan under consideration) would mean more women would have access to abortion services. That obviously doesn't sit well with National Right to Life and other antiabortion groups. Johnson said they'd like to see an amendment that would prohibit any insurer that gets federal subsidies from offering abortion services. Amendments to that effect failed in the House. The plan, as proposed, would lead to more abortion coverage, and therefore more abortions, Johnson said. The Hyde Amendment, he said, is "one of the most important abortion reduction policies adopted by Congress." Not only can't the federal government subsidize abortion, he said, it can’t subsidize plans that offer abortion. The Baucus bill, he said, is "a big departure from where we are now." Here's Planned Parenthood's take on the Baucus plan: "Planned Parenthood acknowledges that there are some compromises that need to be made to move health care reform forward, and we are willing to do so if it means more women can access affordable, quality health care from the provider of their choice. While we are concerned that the language in the Senate Finance Bill specifically singles out abortion, we understand it is necessary to move health care reform forward. "As it currently stands, it is a carefully crafted compromise which assures that access to abortion would neither be mandated nor prohibited — and that women would not lose health care benefits that they have had for decades, while also addressing concerns that no federal funds would be used for abortion." In the abortion debate, nothing is simple. And as we said, words are chosen carefully. Regarding Johnson's claim that the Baucus plan would result in "federal subsidies directly to both private insurance plans and government-chartered cooperatives that pay for elective abortion," we think he is on solid ground. One could argue whether or not this is a departure from making the bill "abortion neutral" — each side has its take on that — but the fact is the plan would allow insurers to offer abortion. And the plan includes federal subsidies to some who might choose to join such a plan. And so we rule Johnson's statement True

"In some states, it is still legal to deny a woman coverage because she's been the victim of domestic violence. In his effort to pass a health care overhaul, President Barack Obama has enlisted help from a close ally — his wife, Michelle. On Sept. 18, 2009, the first lady gave a speech about the importance of health care reform to women, and cited several reasons she thinks the current system is gender-biased. This line caught our attention: "Women are affected because, as we heard, in many states, insurance companies can still discriminate because of gender," she said. "And this is still shocking to me. These are the kind of facts that still wake me up at night. ... In some states, it is still legal to deny a woman coverage because she's been the victim of domestic violence." Health reform bills under consideration by Congress would prohibit insurance companies from denying coverage based on pre-exisiting conditions, an issue we've already explored ; we've also examined how pregnancy can sometimes be a basis to deny coverage, and how pre-exisiting conditions already lead to health care rationing by private health insurers. But we'd never heard domestic abuse could count as a pre-existing condition, so we decided to look into the claim. The issue first came to light in 1994, when a Pennsylvania woman was denied health, life and mortgage disability insurance because of domestic violence, according to the Women's Law Project. That group, along with the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence, began advocating for legislation to expressly prohibit the practice. Since then, most states, including Pennsylvania, have adopted laws prohibiting the practice. But, as Mrs. Obama said in her speech, denying coverage due to a history of domestic abuse is still legal in some states. Those states are Idaho, Mississippi, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota and Wyoming, and the District of Columbia, according to the National Women's Law Center. The claim has become a popular talking point for groups supporting health care reform such as the Service Employees International Union. (It's been discussed so much recently that Arkansas, which had no prohibition, this year passed a law prohibiting discrimination against domestic violence victims.) A Huffington Post story about the laws last week prompted several states and insurance companies to say that the laws have been changed or that the companies don't treat domestic violence as a pre-existing condition. The North Carolina situation is a matter of some disagreement. Although the Women's Law Center says the practice is still allowed, state officials say they interpret the laws to mean it is not. Mississippi Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney told the Jackson Free Press that he wanted to explore whether insurance companies were taking advantage of the law: "I've got to get some of my lawyers to do some research on this, but we have only six mandated (conditions that must be covered) in our state statues, and we have 25 or more optional coverages, but domestic abuse doesn't seem to be one of them. ... The whole situation is bad. Let's say a woman works with a company that had Blue Cross/Blue Shield, and she gets beat up in her house and Blue Cross says 'we're not covering you because getting beat up is your pre-existing condition.' That's terrible." Meanwhile, Wyoming Department of Insurance staff attorney James Mitchell told the Huffington Post that state law does not expressly prohibit insurers from using domestic abuse as grounds to deny coverage, though he'd found no cases of the practice in his state. Mitchell's response raises an important point: Just because it's legal in some states for insurance companies to cite domestic violence as a pre-existing condition, it doesn't mean that insurance companies are actually taking advantage of the loophole. Back in the 1990s there was evidence that the practice was widespread. In 1994, a House Judiciary Committee panel conducted an informal survey and found that eight of the 16 largest insurers in the country used domestic violence as a factor in deciding coverage. And a year later, the Insurance Commission of Pennsylvania reported that a formal survey showed that 24 percent of accident, health and life insurers took domestic violence into account when deciding whether to issue and renew insurance policies. But that data is more than 10 years old, so we asked Lisa Codispoti, senior counsel for the National Women's Law Center, if insurance companies are still denying health care coverage based on domestic violence history. Examples are hard to come by, she said, because people who get coverage through an employer don't usually face exclusions about pre-existing condititions. Only people who apply for individual coverage would, she said. "It's such a small number of people who apply for individual insurance," she said. "And it's not like insurance companies have to tell you why you're being denied coverage." Indeed, underwriting standards are private, said Nancy Durborow, health projects coordinator for the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence, making it difficult for groups such as hers to find out how widespread the practice still is. "This is very secretive stuff," she said. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 A spokesman for the association representing insurance companies told us he's not aware of any insurers that deny women coverage based on history of domestic abuse. And the group supports a proposal by the National Association of Insurance Commissioners that would fully prohibit the practice. "No one should be denied coverage because they are victims of domestic abuse," said Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for America's Health Insurance Plans. We find that the first lady is correct that "in some states, it is still legal to deny a woman coverage because she's been the victim of domestic violence." Putting aside the disputed North Carolina law, there still are several other states — including Mississippi and Wyoming — that have no specific laws prohibiting the practice. It's important to note that we couldn't find this was happening on a widespread basis — or even just a little bit. But still, Mrs. Obama is correct and we rate the claim True

Families are paying $900, on average, "in higher premiums because of uncompensated care. President Barack Obama went on the Sunday news shows to make the case for health reform. This Week host George Stephanopolous questioned Obama on his support for an individual mandate, which requires everyone who can find affordable coverage to purchase health insurance. Obama defended the matter as a fairness issue to people who now have coverage. "Here's what's happening," Obama said. "You and I are both paying 900 bucks on average — our families — in higher premiums because of uncompensated care. Now, what I've said is that, if you can't afford health insurance, you certainly shouldn't be punished for that. That's just piling on. "If, on the other hand, we're giving tax credits, we've set up an exchange, you are now part of a big pool. We've driven down the costs, we've done everything we can, and you actually can afford health insurance. But you've just decided, 'You know what? I want to take my chances,' and then you get hit by a bus, (then) you and I have to pay for the emergency room care." Health policy experts call this dynamic "cost-shifting." The idea is that hospitals treat uninsured patients for free or for below their costs, then make up for it by charging insured patients more. The hospitals bill the insurance companies at artificially higher rates, and the insurance companies pass the cost to customers through higher premiums. Obama said for family coverage, the shift is $900. That's supported by a 2005 study by Families USA, a liberal advocacy group, which found the cost shift to people with insurance was $922 for a family policy and $341 for an individual policy. Perhaps Obama was recalling this figure from the presidential campaign, though, because Families USA — a consumer-oriented nonprofit that advocates for better health care — commissioned a study released this year that found cost-shifting was higher. Insured people paid $1,017 more for a family policy and $368 more for an individual policy due to cost-shifting, according to the report. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 But here's where things get a bit tricky. In 2008, the Kaiser Family Foundation released a report questioning the methodology of the Families USA study and hypothesizing that cost-shifting is not that significant. Let's step back and explain what the experts are counting. They use federal data on medical expenditures to calculate the total amount spent on care for the uninsured. Then they subtract whatever the uninsured themselves paid for care, then what government and charities paid. The remainder of the cost is what people with insurance are paying for through higher premiums, according to Families USA. When Kaiser looked for what the government was paying for uninsured care, it found a lot more than Families USA. To give you an idea of how technical this can get, we'll quote from the Kaiser study about the additional government spending it found. It found "a share of Medicare IME, a portion of Medicaid supplemental payments made through upper payment limit (UPL) provisions, and federal and state direct service programs (community health center grants, maternal and child health grants, Ryan White CARE Act funds, the National Health Service Corps, Indian Health Service, and the Veterans Health Administration)." The Kaiser study documented fluctuations in private premiums over many years, and the data don't seem to correlate with costs for the uninsured. Rather, cost-shifting is "more strongly related to fluctuations in payments by Medicare and Medicaid," the Kaiser study said. The Kaiser study did not set a per-policy number the way the Families USA study did. But Kaiser did say that cost-shifting might account for 1.7 percent of all private premiums. So who is right? We reviewed the three studies and we don't see any obvious problems or conflicts. Families USA advocates for consumers, but its 2005 study was conducted under contract by Dr. Kenneth Thorpe of Emory University, a well-respected health care policy expert. Barring new evidence, this seems like a genuine disagreement between experts on a complex issue. President Obama said "You and I are both paying 900 bucks on average — our families — in higher premiums because of uncompensated care." That's an accurate citing of older data. But another study found that cost-shifting for the uninsured was not significant. Because there's major disagreement on this issue, we rate Obama's statement Half True

"Mathematically, the White Sox can still get in the playoffs. At the conclusion of a wide-ranging interview on NBC's Meet the Press , President Barack Obama said he was holding out hope that his beloved Chicago White Sox can still make the playoffs. Host David Gregory asked him, "On a lighter note, before I let you go, Mr. President, you were brazen this summer at the All-Star Game wearing your Chicago White Sox jacket out there to throw out the first pitch. Hate to break it to you, but doesn't look so good for your White Sox here. So I want to know who is your pick to win the World Series?" Obama replied, "You know — I am — I think mathematically, the White Sox can still get in the playoffs." Here at PolitiFact, we're focused more on the American League East (Go Rays!), so we had lost track of how the White Sox were doing in the AL Central. We turned to our favorite baseball writer, Marc Topkin of the St. Petersburg Times , to find out if Obama was right. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 Topkin told us that while the White Sox are out of the running to be the wild-card team for the American League, it's mathematically possible they could still win their division and then be in the playoffs. As of Sunday morning when Meet the Press aired, the White Sox were 5 1/2 games behind the first-place Detroit Tigers. Topkin told us the White Sox "wouldn't be mathematically eliminated until there were 6 games left, and going into today they have 13 left." So Obama can hold out hope for at least another week or so. The odds are against the Sox — they play the Tigers and the Minnesota Twins, the No. 2 team in the division, in the next week. And Topkin noted that a lot of things have to break in favor of the Sox. But Obama is right that it's at least mathematically possible, so he earns a Tru

The Obama administration's cap-and-trade plan would create "a $1,761 yearly energy tax. It's hard to keep track of all those estimates about how much a cap-and-trade bill would cost American families. So, the latest prediction, coming from Sen. Lamar Alexander and other Republicans, is just adding to the confusion. In a Sept. 16, 2009, press release, the Tennessean said, "American families can’t afford a new $1,761 yearly energy tax." Similar numbers were widely posted on conservative blogs. A story on the Weekly Standard was headlined, "Obama Admin Concedes: Cap and Trade Will Raise Your Taxes by 15%." Those were new numbers to us, so we decided to look into the claim. But first, a little recap. At its heart, cap-and-trade is a simple concept: To slow climate change, the government would set a cap on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions. To comply, companies such as electric utilities must either upgrade to cleaner technologies or buy credits — also known as allowances — to continue polluting. The cap-and-trade bill currently making its way through Congress was written by Reps. Henry Waxman and Edward Markey, Democrats from California and Massachusetts, respectively. Their goal is to lower carbon pollution by 17 percent by 2020 and 83 percent by 2050. Under their plan, most pollution permits initially would be given out for free. But eventually, companies would have to buy those permits from the government. It's an issue we've explored several times over . Opponents of cap-and-trade argue that forcing industry to buy pollution credits is nothing more than a tax on consumers and business. Firms will have no choice but to pass the cost of buying those permits on to consumers. There has been much debate about how much those costs could be, and it's been difficult to come up with a reliable number because the bills have been changing as they move through the House and the Senate. Republicans have cited numbers as high as $3,000 per year, a claim that when it was combined with a falsehood on health care, earned our Pants on Fire rating. Republicans often refer to it as a tax, although we have found that is incorrect. Only utilities that exceed their limits would have to pay for the allowances, which does not sound to us like a tax on families. Recent estimates by the Congressional Budget Office and the Environmental Protection Agency are much lower — between $80 and $340 a year, depending on income. The new numbers spring from some Treasury Department documents recently acquired by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, through a Freedom of Information Act request. Some of the documents are from 2008, shortly after the election, according to the group, and others are undated, though they appear to be from early 2009. Nowhere in the documents does the Treasury Department cite the $1,761 figure. It seems Alexander got that number from a Sept. 15, 2009, story by Declan McCullagh, a blogger who writes the "Taking Liberties" column for CBS News. (Our calls to Alexander's office were not returned.) So it's worth noting that Alexander is relying not on a study by an economist, but on an estimate from a blogger. "The Obama administration has privately concluded that a cap and trade law would cost American taxpayers up to $200 billion a year, the equivalent of hiking personal income taxes by about 15 percent," McCullagh wrote. "A previously unreleased analysis prepared by the U.S. Department of Treasury says the total in new taxes would be between $100 billion to $200 billion a year. At the upper end of the administration's estimate, the cost per American household would be an extra $1,761 a year." We contacted McCullagh via e-mail, and he told us that he came up with $1,761 per household annually by simply dividing the number $200 billion by the number of households in the United States. According to the census, there are about 113.5 million households in the country this year. We reviewed the estimate with people involved in the climate change debate who told us there are significant flaws in McCullagh's methodology. Stephen Seidel, vice president for policy analysis and general counsel for the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, said the math is too simple and doesn't reflect the true impact of the House bill, which specifies that any revenue from the plan be rebated to consumers to offset higher electrical bills they might have to pay. Featured Fact-check Instagram posts stated on October 30, 2022 in a photo “There are no greenhouse gas emissions in this photo” of cows grazing. By Kristin Hugo • November 7, 2022 "What [Treasury] was looking at was a situation where 100 percent of the permits were auctioned, and ignored what would be done with revenue," he said. The Waxman-Markey bill "uses revenue to offset cost to consumers." There also have been changes to the bill since that Treasury document was created. Obama originally envisioned that every polluting permit would be sold, starting when the bill was enacted. But in the spirit of compromise, Waxman and Markey scaled back that plan by giving about 85 percent of the permits for free in the early years of the bill's implementation. Also, under the latest version of the Waxman-Markey bill, which passed the House in June, 30 to 40 percent of the revenue would go back to electric utilities to be passed on to consumers to offset higher rates they would have to pay. The money would be passed to consumers through rebates or expanded efficiency programs, and an additional 15 percent of the revenue would go directly to low-income consumers. "The bottom line is that it goes back to the consumers," Seidel said. Seidel said there's another problem with the blogger's report, as quoted by the senator: the Treasury documents report that $100 billion to $200 billion in revenue raised each year by selling those pollution permits we mentioned earlier. Alexander and McCullagh incorrectly portray them as taxes. There are legitimate questions that can be raised about how much the cost might ultimately be passed on to consumers, but it is not correct to refer to the revenue as a tax. And higher energy costs are not a sure thing. Regional cap-and-trade programs in Europe and in the northeast United States show that auctioning most or all credits have actually decreased the cost of energy, said Barry Rabe, a public policy professor at the University of Michigan. "What we've seen is that there's a lot of volatility," he said. "It's hard to make those projections and say how these things are going to work as a result. That just underscores the difficulty of attaching numbers to these things that people can live with." Alan Krueger, the Obama administration's assistant treasury secretary for economic policy, sent us this statement via e-mail: "The reporting on the Treasury memo is flat-out wrong," he wrote. "Treasury's summary is consistent with public analyses by the EIA [Energy Information Administration], EPA, and CBO, and the reporting and blogging on this issue ignore the fact that the revenue raised from emission permits would be returned to consumers under both administration and legislative proposals." We spoke with Christopher Horner with the Competitive Enterprise Institute about the documents. He conceded that they don't reflect legislation currently under consideration, but he pointed out that the Senate is planning to start from scratch on the climate issue. "Congress writes legislation for one reason," Horner said. "This [document] sets forth the administration's desire and expectations." In the meantime, McCullagh has been fielding criticism about his column. On Sept. 16 he defended his analysis and wrote that revenue returned to consumers in the form of tax cuts and rebates is uncertain. "The tax revenue might end up being directed at income tax cuts (or rescuing kittens and feeding orphans, for that matter), or it could end up being wasted on boondoggles," he wrote. "If it is returned to American citizens, it's unlikely to be a wash: some people will end up paying much more in taxes, some will pay a little more, and some will see a net benefit." But back to Alexander's original claim. His statement that households will pay $1,761 in new taxes every year is based on a blogger's incorrect assumptions and overly simple math. The estimate does not account for revenue that will be returned to consumers in the form of rebates and other efficiency measures. Furthermore, the number is based on old numbers; the Treasury estimate was written on the premise that all permits would be sold, which, ultimately, is not the form that the Waxman-Markey legislation has taken. Finally, both Alexander and McCullagh portray money raised by selling these permits as a tax. We rate Alexander's claim Fals

Health insurance companies deny "1 out of 5 treatments prescribed by doctors. Supporters of health care reform have portrayed insurance companies as insensitive and too quick to deny claims. In a recent television ad, Health Care for America Now, a group supporting the Democrats' health care reform bill, says insurance companies get wealthy by denying those claims. The group's ad mockingly explains "how to get rich" by showing a "book" written "by America's health insurance companies." Chapter 3 reads, "Deny 1 out of 5 treatments prescribed by doctors." A news release issued by HCAN attributed this statistic to a study released Sept. 2, 2009, by the California Nurses Association titled, "California's Real Death Panels: Insurers Deny 21% of Claims." (We checked another claim from the ad, about insurance companies paying CEOs $24 million per year, and rated it Barely True.) In a news release summarizing the findings, the nurses' group — an influential union — explained that researchers from its staff and its affiliate, the National Nurses Organizing Committee, examined data disclosed by insurers to the California Department of Managed Care, the state agency that regulates HMOs. The researchers reported that from 2002 through June 30, 2009, six of the largest insurers operating in California rejected 47.7 million claims for care, or 22 percent of all claims. According to the nurses' group, during the first six months of 2009, PacifiCare denied 39.6 percent of claims; Cigna denied 32.7 percent; HealthNet denied 30 percent; Kaiser Permanente denied 28.3 percent; Blue Cross denied 27.9 percent and Aetna denied 6.4 percent. But the California Department of Managed Care told us the study was misleading. Lynne Randolph, the department's deputy director of communications, said that what the nurses' group portrayed as denials are not necessarily what most consumers would think of as denials. Most patients probably think of a denial as when their claim is rejected because the plan doesn't cover a treatment or a particular doctor, or because the patient has hit a limit on coverage. But Randolph said that a sizable chunk of the denials counted by the nurses' group — though the exact amount is unclear — are for other reasons that are simply part of the health care bureaucracy that do not really affect a consumer's care. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 For instance, a claim might be denied because it was sent to the wrong insurer. (This is a common occurrence in California, Randolph and other experts said, because the state has many complicated business relationships between health plans and groups of doctors, and it's easy for claims to be unintentionally misdirected.) In fact, a patient may never even know that a given claim has been sent to the wrong place. Yet in the data used by the nurses' group, these claims are counted as denials. For that matter, any claim denied during a given quarterly report is counted as a denial, even if that claim is eventually paid during a subsequent quarter. Claims could also be counted as denied because information on the form was missing or incorrect, even if that is later corrected and the claim is paid. And a claim sent simultaneously to two payers is counted twice, meaning that the same claim might be counted as both a completed payment and a denial. Asked whether the nurses' group remains comfortable with its 1-in-5 estimate, spokesman Charles Idelson said it is. He noted that in the wake of the study's release, the state attorney general's office announced an "independent inquiry into how health maintenance organizations review and pay insurance claims submitted by doctors, hospitals and other medical providers." And he added that the group has received hundreds of reports from Californians about denied payments. "There's no doubt that these type of denials are occurring," Idelson said. Idelson added that even if the caveats cited by Randolph are valid, the fact that one of every five claims is denied at some stage adds to an administrative burden that hikes the cost of health care without improving care for patients. Randolph and Idelson actually agree on one point: Reliable statistics on why denials are made are not currently available. While the department undertakes periodic audits by sampling claims data, Randolph said, officials do not have good data on the causes of denials, forcing them to speculate. Idelson said he hopes the attorney general's investigation provides a better handle on the reasons for denials. The nurses' union numbers are significantly higher than other studies of denial rates. In 2007, America's Health Insurance Plans — a group representing insurers — conducted an internal survey of data from 19 health plans to determine the percentage of claims denied for "reasons that could affect consumers, including non-covered services, authorization issues, or network issues." The survey found that 2.36 percent of claims were denied. Specifically, 1.2 percent were denied due to non-covered services, 0.36 percent were denied due to benefit limits having been met, and 0.34 percent were denied due to pre-authorization, referral or utilization review issues. Smaller percentages were denied for the provider not being in the patient’s network, for issues with eligibility or pre-existing conditions and for issues related to experimental or unapproved treatments. A second study was produced by the American Medical Association, the main group representing doctors. The 2008 National Health Insurer Report Card found that for the biggest health insurers, rejection rates ranged from 2.65 percent to 6.8 percent — higher than AHIP's figures, but well below the nurses' study. It should be noted that all three groups have vested interests in the health care debate. In fact, it's also worth noting that the nurses' group has clashed with California's Republican governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who appointed the head of the California Department of Managed Care, although the department is mostly staffed by civil servants. Meanwhile, the state attorney general who is overseeing the investigation sparked by the nurses' report is Democrat Jerry Brown, a former governor who is running for an open gubernatorial seat next year. Now that we have the politics out of the way, let's recap. The Health Care for America Now ad said that insurers "deny 1 out of 5 treatments prescribed by doctors." But that claim is based solely on one study in one state, and in our view it doesn't provide enough evidence to back up the claim. The independent state agency that collected the data used in the nurses' study has raised significant doubt on the group's interpretations of that data. Many "denials" that were counted were not really what most people would consider a denial. And studies by other groups show much lower denial rates. So we rate this claim False

Insurers delayed an Illinois man's treatment, "and he died because of it. To show that insurance companies can be callous, President Barack Obama recently cited the case of an Illinois man who Obama said had died because of an insurer's decision. "More and more Americans pay their premiums, only to discover that their insurance company has dropped their coverage when they get sick, or won't pay the full cost of care," the president told a joint session of Congress on Sept. 9, 2009. "It happens every day. One man from Illinois lost his coverage in the middle of chemotherapy because his insurer found that he hadn't reported gallstones that he didn't even know about. They delayed his treatment, and he died because of it." The man Obama was referring to was Otto S. Raddatz, who died earlier this year. But Lynn Sweet, a reporter with the Chicago Sun-Times , found the president was wrong to blame Raddatz's death on the insurance company. Raddatz, a restaurant owner, was insured by Fortis Insurance Co., according to congressional testimony by his sister, Peggy. In September 2004, at 59, he was diagnosed with stage IV non-Hodgkins lymphoma and began chemotherapy. As he was preparing for a stem cell transplant for which timing was crucial, he was told that his coverage was being rescinded due to a "routine" review that had found that he'd failed to disclose having gallstones and an anyeurism. Explaining that the doctor had never even told him about the discovery, and that no treatment had ever been urged, Peggy Raddatz went to the state attorney general for help. Within weeks, the attorney general's office got the decision reversed, and Raddatz was able to proceed with his transplant. The case drew national attention, including stories in Slate and on National Public Radio, and Peggy Raddatz testified twice to congressional commitees about her brother's story. But the president's version of the story was challenged by a Sept. 13, 2009, blog post by Sweet, who covers the White House for the Sun-Times . She noted that the transplant went ahead and Raddatz lived for another three years — an indication that the company's decision to rescind his treatment didn't cause his death. Peggy Raddatz's testimony backs this up. On June 16, 2009, Raddatz recounted the experience before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. Raddatz is still angry with the insurer — in her prepared testimony, she called what the company did to her brother "unethical" and "cruel" — but she gave no indication that the delay hampered her brother's survival. At one point, the full committee's ranking Republican, Joe Barton of Texas, asked Raddatz whether her brother had received the stem cell transplant he needed. "He did indeed receive the stem cell transplant," she responded. "It was extremely successful. It extended his life approximately three-and-a-half years. He did pass away January 6th of 2009, and he was about to have a second stem cell transplant. Unfortunately, due to certain situations, his donor became ill at the last minute, and so he did pass away on January 6th. But again, (the initial transplant) extended his life nearly three-and-a-half years. And at his age, each day meant everything to him." The White House acknowledges that the facts got garbled, but insists that the larger lessons from the story are unchanged. "The story President Obama referenced in his speech underscores what so many Americans have learned the hard way: Insurance companies look for ways to rescind their coverage when you need it most," White House spokeswoman Kate Bedingfield said. "A media account of Mr. Raddatz’s story that the president relied on in his speech confused some of the details, but the underlying point remains the same. President Obama wants to end the practice that allows insurance companies to pull insurance for individuals like Mr. Raddatz when they need it most." Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 In her piece, Sweet noted that a fellow Sun-Times reporter, Cheryl V. Jackson, talked to Raddatz after the speech, and she had no complaint with Obama's account of her brother's death. "The point is that my brother lost his insurance coverage when he was dying," the article quoted Raddatz as saying. Still, the president said that Otto Raddatz's death was caused by a delay in his surgery caused by the insurer's decision to rescind his policy. But as Peggy Raddatz testified, government intervention enabled her brother to have the procedure, and he lived, despite his cancer, for another three and a half years. When Raddatz eventually died earlier this year, his sister said that his death came while waiting for a second procedure that did not happen because the transplant donor unexpectedly fell ill. Critics can still blame the insurance company for insensitivity — and it's true that the company only paid for Raddatz's treatment after the attorney general's office acted — but the evidence shows that it's inaccurate to say a delay in care caused his death. So we rate the president's statement False

For middle-class families under the Baucus plan, "13 percent of what they make could be deducted directly from their paychecks . . . the so-called 'Max Tax.' When it comes to health reform, all eyes have been watching the powerful Senate Finance Committee. The committee has been trying to reach consensus between Democrats and Republicans. The committee released its findings on Wednesday in the form of a "Chairman's mark," a report that sets out the parameters of legislation. None of the committee Republicans would support the bill at this stage. And some Democrats didn't like it much either. Liberal commentator Keith Olbermann of MSNBC savaged the proposal on his show Countdown that night, reserving particular criticism for committee chairman Sen. Max Baucus, a Democrat from Montana. "If it were up to Senator Max Baucus, middle-class families would be forced — literally forced — to pay far more on health care than they already do right now," Olberman said. "Thirteen percent of what they make could be deducted directly from their paychecks and mainlined to insurance companies, the so-called 'Max Tax.'" A few moments later he described the plan in more detail. Baucus' plan, he said, "would give coverage to 30 million Americans who currently do not have any, first, by extending Medicaid, the state-federal insurance program for the poor; next, by providing government subsidies to modest-income families and individuals to help them buy over-the-counter coverage. ... That means any individual making more than $32,500, or any family of four making more than $66,150, is on their own subject to the 'Max Tax' of 13 percent." For families earning $66,000, he added, "that is $700 a month they'd have to pay. If the families do not buy that insurance at that rate, they would be fined nearly half that amount." We wanted to see if he was accurately describing the plan as a 13 percent "tax" for the middle class. We found Olbermann got a lot right —- especially in his lengthier explanation — but he also left out details that would provide a fuller picture of the Baucus plan. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 He was right about the expansion of Medicaid. Anyone who makes less than 133 percent of the poverty level would be eligible for Medicaid under the new plan. Right now, in addition to being poor, you also have to be either elderly, pregnant, blind or disabled. Olbermann's claim about the 13 percent "tax" is based on the caps that limit how much people would pay for health insurance. Baucus' plan caps the premiums for those who earn 133 percent to 400 percent of the poverty level. Some of these people would get credits to make up the difference between the caps and what the insurance would cost. If they get a credit, they would send their premium payments to the federal government, which would then pay the insurer. The caps on how much people would have to pay for insurance are based on their income. The caps gradually increase from an estimated 4.7 percent for people at the lowest income levels, up to 13 percent of income for people who earn 300 percent of the poverty level. They stay at the 13 percent level up to 400 percent of the poverty level. Olbermann used the example of a family of four at 300 percent of the poverty line. According to the plan, the family would have income of $66,150 and pay premiums of $8,600 a year, or $716 a month. So Olbermann's numbers are solid. We have to add a few caveats here, though. Olbermann twice called these payments a tax. They are not a tax. They are a cap on premiums paid for health insurance. Other Democratic health reform plans in Congress have similar requirements that "force" people to buy insurance or pay a penalty. Their caps on premiums are more generous than 13 percent, but they still require people to pay a percentage of their income for insurance. For a detailed comparison of the three Democratic bills on this point, the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has created a handy chart . The center has criticized the Baucus plan for not being as generous for people of modest incomes as the other Democratic plans. Another caveat to Olbermann's remarks is that under Baucus' plan, none of this applies to people who already have coverage some other way. If people of modest incomes get coverage through work, for example, they keep paying whatever it is they pay now. They would not have to pay additional premiums or a penalty. Finally, we want to note that it is very difficult to make a direct comparison of how much people who now buy insurance on their own would pay under the reform plans, because the proposals would substantially change requirements for what medical treatment must be covered. We hoped to either confirm or refute Olbermann's statement that families would be forced "to pay far more on health care than they already do right now." But if they buy on the individual market, we're not sure what they're paying now. We looked for current data on this point, but were unable to find it. Right now, standards for minimum coverage vary greatly from state to state. This state-to-state variation also makes it difficult to find current data on what an "average" price for a family of four pays for an "average" plan. Obviously, if a family is uninsured now, they're going to pay more to get coverage. So back to the statement we are fact-checking. Olbermann said that for middle-class families, the Baucus plan would mean that " 13 percent of what they make could be deducted directly from their paychecks and mainlined to insurance companies, the so-called 'Max Tax.'" He's right that for people who are uninsured now, the upper limit would be 13 percent, and that money would go to insurance companies. But it's to pay for coverage they don't have now — not a tax — and some people would pay less. And all of the plans under consideration in Congress require people to pay something for coverage. So we rate Olbermann's statement Half Tru

Health insurance companies pay CEOs $24 million a yea Supporters of health care reform have portrayed insurance company CEOs as overpaid villains. In a recent television ad, Health Care for America Now, a group supporting the Democrats' health care reform bill, takes direct aim at the CEOs. The group's ad mockingly explains "how to get rich" by showing a "book" written "by America's health insurance companies." Chapter 2 reads, "Pay your CEO $24,000,000 a year." A news release issued by HCAN attributed the assertion to the entry for Ronald A. Williams, CEO of insurance giant Aetna, in the 2008 Forbes magazine executive compensation survey. We checked Forbes , which compiles the total compensation from public filings of salaries and stock options, and the $24 million figure does indeed jibe with the entry the group cited. But we wondered whether it was fair to use Williams as an example of health insurance CEOs. So we looked through the magazine's full rankings for a bit more context. One thing to note up front is that HCAN used Forbes ' 2008 survey, even though the 2009 survey is available. Oddly, if the group had used the more recent numbers, Williams' compensation would actually have been higher: In the 2009 Forbes survey, Williams' compensation was listed as $38.125 million. That said, Williams' pay package was easily the highest in the health insurance sector, according to Forbes . Here are seven health insurance CEOs who made the 2009 Forbes list. (All lead publicly traded companies, which have more stringent disclosure requirements than private firms.) -- 22nd place among all CEOs: Ronald A. Williams, Aetna, $38.125 million -- 135th place: H. Edward Hanway, Cigna, $10.27 million -- 269th place: Stephen J. Hemsley, UnitedHealth Group, $5.035 million -- 306th place: Angela F. Braly, WellPoint, $4.07 million -- 359th place: Robert B. Pollock, Assurant, $3.14 million -- 387th place: Allen F. Wise, Coventry Health Care, $2.6 million -- 399th place: Michael B. McCallister, Humana, $2.39 million The average for the other six executives above was $3.93 million — almost one-tenth of what Williams was paid. So it's clear that HCAN has chosen the highest-paid CEO for its purposes. We should note that executive compensation is notoriously complicated to calculate, since it often includes a mix of salary, benefits, deferred compensation and stock options. Indeed, different sources reported the same CEO pay package differently. For instance, the current listing on Yahoo! Finance has Williams' salary at $3.04 million with no stock options — a number that would have made HCAN's ad highly misleading. However, for the sake of consistency, we will stick with the Forbes methodology. We won't venture an opinion on whether these CEOs' salaries are merited, but we did talk to one expert who provided some cross-industry context: Graef Crystal, a veteran consultant and analyst on executive compensation who is also a columnist for Bloomberg News. In a recent column inspired by congressional Democrats' denunciations of the health insurance sector, Crystal offered some calculations designed to gauge whether CEOs in the health insurance sector were overpaid or underpaid compared to executives in other sectors. Crystal's math is complicated, but the bottom line is that when he looked at compensation for the five biggest health insurers' CEOs in 2007 and 2008, Williams' pay package was the only one of that group that in both years was bigger than the typical compensation package for CEOs throughout all the industries Crystal studied. Most of the other health insurance CEOs were paid 15 percent to 81 percent below the typical level calculated by Crystal. In other words, Williams was the one health insurance CEO who has consistently been paid on the highest end of the scale. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 The ad leaves viewers with the impression that $24-million is a typical compensation for a health insurer's CEO. But in fact, it is the highest example and the average of the others is considerably lower — just under $4 million. So HCAN has certainly cherry-picked the most dramatic number. We find the claim Barely True. Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly Fals

"Medicare began as a public option and now holds 97 percent of the market share. Rep. Tom Price of Georgia sent a letter to doctors in September 2009 urging them to oppose Democratic initiatives on health reform. "If health care reform is taken down the wrong path, it will end in nothing short of disaster," the three-term Republican wrote. Price, who is an orthopedic surgeon, singled out plans for a public option for the most criticism. "As a fellow doctor, I know you have personally navigated the federal health care system of our first 'public option' — Medicare," Price wrote. "And I know your experience will tell you that government-run programs many times mean restrictive coverage rules, endless bureaucratic delays, and inadequate financing structures. . . . "There will be no turning back, no reversing the government intrusion that Democrats desire," he warned. "Medicare began as a public option and now holds 97 percent of the market share." We were interested in checking whether Medicare began as a public option and whether Price is right about its current market share. To check this, we turned to several books on the history of Medicare and spoke with a couple of experts in the field. It's difficult to concisely summarize decades of health policy and legislative history, but we'll try. Medicare had been discussed by presidents since the 1940s, but its big moment began in 1964, when Lyndon Johnson was elected by a large margin, along with Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate. Johnson relied on Rep. Wilbur Mills, a conservative Democrat from Arkansas, to craft the legislation and move it through the House Ways and Means Committee. Johnson kept close tabs on the process. There were arguments about what should be in the bill and how it should be paid for. Mills decided to combine the proposals of several factions into one package to maximize support. He started with the administration's proposal to cover hospital services for the elderly, now known as Medicare Part A. He also included a proposal promoted by the committee's senior Republican member, John Byrnes of Wisconsin, who wanted coverage for physicians' services, now Medicare Part B. Finally, Mills included coverage for poor elderly Americans, which is today's Medicaid. The histories of Medicare that we reviewed emphasized that the part of Medicare that covered visits to doctors' offices was voluntary. Here's how an April 8, 1965, report in the New York Time s described the plan: Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 "As revised, the bill provides the basic hospitalization and nursing care benefits originally proposed by the administration while covering major doctor bills and many other medical expenses under a supplementary insurance program in which participation would be voluntary. "The basic benefits, financed by increases in the Social Security payroll tax, would be automatically available to persons over 65. The additional coverage would be available to those over 65 who enrolled in the voluntary plan and paid premiums of $3 a month. Half of the voluntary plan's cost would be financed by federal subsidies of about $600 million a year from general tax revenues." Johnson signed the Medicare law on July 30, 1965, and the program's aministrators began an intensive recruitment drive. At the end of the first year, participation was up to 93 percent of the elderly, according to The Politics of Medicare , a history by Theodore Marmor. Subsequent research indicates that Medicare participation has remained very high among those who qualify for the program, at roughly 97 percent in recent years, according to Medicare: A Policy Primer , a 2005 book by Marilyn Moon. All of this supports Price's statement, with one exception. As we reviewed the history of Medicare, we noticed that legislators and policymakers drafting the legislation seemed to assume that Medicare participation would be very high. We could find nothing implying that Medicare coverage would compete with private insurers in paying for coverage. Marmor, author of The Politics of Medicare , confirmed that perception when we asked him. Marmor witnessed the Medicare negotiations firsthand when he worked as assistant on the drafting of the 1965 legislation. "The voluntary part was a mirage," he said. "They fully expected most people to join, because the terms were so attractive. And that's exactly what happened." This is markedly different from today's debate and discussion about the public option. Obama has said the public option would be one among many insurance proposals from which people could choose, and that it would be a backstop to keep private insurers honest. He also said it should not be subsidized by other tax revenues but pay for itself with customer premiums. A spokesman for Price said the Democrats can say the public option will be limited, but it won't be. "While they claim it's a public option, the end goal is saturation," said Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Price. We're noting that disagreement for the record. For a fuller explanation of the public option and how it fits into overall reform effort, read our story Health care reform: A simple explanation . But getting back to Price's statement, we find the following: He is right that Medicare was a public plan and its coverage of physicians' services was voluntary, which is another way to say "optional." And its participation rate among eligible seniors is close to 97 percent. But we take a notch off our rating to acknowledge that people disagree about whether the words "public option" today are the same as Medicare's "voluntary" Part B in 1965. It's important to note that the founders of Medicare expected that nearly every senior would be covered by Part B, while the Democrats' "public option" today is envisioned as just one of many options in the health care exchange. We rate Price's statement Mostly Tru

The House of Representatives has never passed a resolution of disapproval to condemn a member's behavior Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina has received a proverbial slap on the wrist for yelling "You lie!" during President Barack Obama's recent address to Congress. The scuffle officially ended Sept. 15, 2009, when the House of Representatives passed 240-179 a resolution disapproving of Wilson's behavior during the speech six days earlier. But before the vote, Republican Leader John Boehner gave the majority a piece of his mind. "We all know Joe Wilson. He is a decent man. And to put him through this on the floor of the House I think is unacceptable, and it is a partisan stunt," Boehner said on the House floor. "There has been behavior that has gone on around here far more serious than this, and it didn't bring a resolution to the floor to condemn someone's behavior. Yes people have made mistakes. Some have come down to the floor and apologized, others have not. But none of it -- none of it -- required a resolution. ... Never has this happened before." Passing the resolution would set a bad precedent, Boehner said. Given all the mischief lawmakers have gotten themselves into in the past, we wondered whether Boehner was right, that the House had never passed a resolution of disapproval to condemn a member's behavior. Some background: During his Sept. 9 speech, Obama said, "There are also those who claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false — the reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally." Wilson yelled from the crowd, "You lie!" We put Wilson's outburst to the Truth-O-Meter, which you can read about here . According to the Constitution, Congress has a right to punish its own members for such misconduct. Article 1, Section 5, Clause 2 of the Constitution states that, "Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behavior, and, with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member.” And it turns out such reprimands can come in multiple forms, according to the Office of the Historian of the House of Representatives. An expulsion, for example, requires a two-thirds majority vote in the House. The maneuver was most recently used on July 24, 2002, to rid the chamber of former Rep. James Traficant, a Democrat from Ohio who went to jail for trading political favors for cash and gifts. He was released from prison on Sept. 2, 2009. Other examples include censures and reprimands, which only require a majority for passage and simply express a formal disapproval of the conduct. A resolution of disapproval -- Wilson's punishment -- is more often used as a way for the House to condemn a foreign or executive branch action. It is a sentiment and carries no force of law. However, it is rarely used as an internal disciplinary tool, said Anthony Wallis, research analyst for the historian's office, who described the action as the least severe of the many forms of congressional punishment. While there may be more such instances deep in congressional history - finding them would require reviewing reams of legislation introduced since the founding of Congress - the only example the historian's office could readily find was against Rep. Bill Thomas, who, in 2003 as the Republican chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, called in the U.S. Capitol Police to remove Democratic panel members who were protesting Thomas' handling of a pension bill. The resolution was dropped by a vote of 170-143. So, back to Boehner's claim. In recent history, there's only been one instance of the chamber specifically using a resolution of disapproval to punish a lawmaker, though the historian's office said there may be more. Given that small bit of uncertainty, we give Boehner a Mostly True. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022

"Every other democracy in the world has a health care system that covers everybody, and we don't. Supporters of health care reform have often said health coverage in the United States lags behind other countries. On the Sept. 13 edition of NBC's Meet the Press , former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean said the United States should meet the standards of its international peers. Dean, who just stepped down after serving as chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said that "America can do anything. Every other democracy in the world has a health care system that covers everybody, and we don't. Of course we can do this. How ridiculous." But is he right that the United States is alone among democracies? No. It is true that most, if not all, industrialized democracies in Western Europe have systems that experts consider universal coverage, as do wealthier countries such as Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. But other democracies fall short, according to international statistics and a half-dozen experts we spoke with. While dozens of countries are classified as democracies, we chose to examine a few that are large and have been politically stable in recent years. Here's the lowdown on their degree of health coverage: -- India. In the cities, and especially for families with means, the medical care ranks among the best in the world. But hundreds of millions of Indians are desperately poor, and about three-quarters live in rural villages. For these Indians, health care is sporadic and substandard. "In theory, India has a publicly financed and publicly provided health care delivery system, aside from its large private sector, that is available at heavily subsidized rates to everyone," said Ajay Mahal, an international health economist at Harvard's School of Public Health. "Thus, one could say that it does have a health system that 'covers' everybody. In practice, however, at least at primary health care facilities in rural areas, doctors and health workers are often absent from work. Drugs tend to be unavailable in many public facilities and there are long lines to contend with at public hospitals. This leads to lots of people opting for private care — and for that they have to pay out of pocket. In this sense you could say that the system does not cover everybody." -- Mexico. The United States' southern neighbor has a constitution that guarantees universal health care, and observers credit the Mexican government with launching Seguro Popular, a federal program that targets the uninsured. For better-off Mexicans, health insurance and facilities are similar to what is found in richer nations. But in practice, the Mexican system falls short of universal coverage. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a group of wealthy countries that includes Mexico, reported that in 2007, 65.7 percent of Mexicans had either public or private health insurance. All other OECD countries — except for Turkey (see below) and the United States — either reached 100 percent or came very close to doing so. David C. Warner, a professor of health and social policy at the University of Texas who has studied health care in Mexico, said that "in reality, I would say it falls short" of universal coverage. Mexicans are "guaranteed public health clinics and hospitals, but those tend to be fairly spotty." -- Turkey. The other OECD nation besides the United States to fall short of full coverage is Turkey. The most recent statistics, from 2003, show that 67.2 percent of Turks were covered. A 2008 report by the U.S. Library of Congress found that "the rural population is poorly served by the health care system" and that "workers in Turkey’s large informal economic sector generally lack health coverage." For the past six years, the governing party has been implementing a plan to broaden coverage, so the number has likely risen. "Turkey is in transition to make health care universal," said Mustafa Younis, a health economist at Jackson State University who has studied the Turkish system. A number of other large democratic countries have struggled with carrying out their stated promises to provide universal coverage. In South Africa and the Philippines, for instance, widespread poverty, insufficient health budgets and a shaky medical infrastructure — especially in rural areas — have posed steep challenges, experts say. We called Dean to ask about his comment. A spokeswoman said that the former governor "simply misspoke. He meant to say, as he has for years, that every other industrialized democracy" has universal coverage. If Dean had said that, he'd probably be right. But on Meet the Press , he didn't, so we rate his statement False. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022

The Obama administration "was successful in rushing a massive spending bill through Congress in just two days — after which it sat on the president's desk for three days, while he was away on vacation. In a recent column in Investor's Business Daily , economist and political commentator Thomas Sowell said that President Barack Obama was trying to rush his health care bill through Congress. Sowell cited the quick passage of the economic stimulus bill in February 2009 as proof that Obama is too hasty in passing major legislation. Sowell wrote that "the administration was successful in rushing a massive spending bill through Congress in just two days — after which it sat on the president's desk for three days, while he was away on vacation." We wondered if Sowell was right, so we checked the bill's timeline. It's important to note that the bill had been under discussion for at least two months before it was formally introduced. When Obama announced his selection of economic advisers on Nov. 24, 2008, he said he had asked his team to come up with a stimulus plan to help struggling automakers, stabilize the financial system, create jobs and invest in infrastructure. A search of Thomas , the Library of Congress Web site that tracks legislation, shows that H.R. 1, the economic stimulus bill known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, was formally introduced in the House on Jan. 26. (In fact, four days before the bill was formally introduced, it was discussed by the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.) On Jan. 28, two days after the bill was introduced, it was passed by the full House in a party-line vote. The Senate took longer. Senators received the bill Jan. 29 and passed it Feb. 10. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 Then, the House and Senate had to work out their differences in a conference committee. It finished work on Feb. 12. Finally, on Feb. 13 — almost three weeks after the bill was introduced in the House — the final version was approved by both houses. So it took nearly three weeks to pass Congress, not two days as Sowell claims. And the bill had been under discussion since at least November. The second part of Sowell's claim was that that bill "sat on the president's desk for three days, while he was away on vacation." We checked with the White House, and a spokeswoman told us the president received the bill on Feb. 16, 2009, and signed it into law the very next day. The Thomas Web site confirmed that. Although the bill was cleared for the White House by the Senate on Friday, Feb. 13, it wasn't formally presented to the president until the following Monday, Feb. 16. He signed it Feb. 17. Obama did spend that weekend in Chicago to celebrate Valentine's Day with first lady Michelle Obama, but the bill had not been formally presented to him, contrary to Sowell's claim that it was sitting on his desk. (Sowell did not respond to an e-mail from PolitiFact.) Congress acted quickly on the stimulus bill — after all, the purpose was to rapidly pump money into the economy — but it took far longer than the two days that Sowell claimed. And Obama signed the bill the day after he received it, not three days later as Sowell claimed. We rate his claim False

The U.S. ranks 37th in the world for health care With biting sarcasm, singer Paul Hipp says the United States should be proud of its global ranking on health care. "We're No. 37!" he sings in a YouTube video released Sept. 9, 2009. With some electric guitar riffs and topical references to the summer's vitriolic debate over health care reform — including Rep. Joe Wilson's "You lie!" heckle of President Barack Obama — the satiric romp "celebrates" the United States' standing: We're No. 37 We're the U.S.A. We're No. 37 And we're so proud to say We got old people crying at the pharmacy Pay your deductible This ain't the land of the f-f-f-free Grandma We're No. 37 We're the U.S.A. The number refers to the World Health Organization's ranking of the United States as the 37th best health care system in the world, out of 191 countries. In a cheeky countdown, the video shows viewers a cross-section of nations that ranked better than the United States in WHO's tally — a mix of industrialized nations in Western Europe, Scandinavia and Asia; wealthy oil producers from the Middle East; tiny realms of prosperity such as Monaco and Luxembourg; and some seemingly unlikely nations such as Colombia, Cyprus, Morocco, Dominica and Costa Rica. It's an anthem for health care reform that even shows its sources: Hipp includes a shot of himself looking at WHO's report. So he wins points for transparency in sourcing. But as hummable as the song is, we thought it deserved a bit of scrutiny. How did WHO arrive at the numbers? And how widely accepted is the health organization's methodology? Ultimately, did Hipp choose a good benchmark on which to base his song? Observers generally agree on two things about the report. It was a landmark study that attracted a lot of attention around the world. And its conclusions have inspired controversy for nearly a decade. We should point out that the ranking is actually not new. WHO, an arm of the United Nations, published the international comparison in its World Health Report 2000 , and it hasn't been updated since. (Other groups have offered their take, as we explain below.) Five factors went into WHO's calculation: • Health level, as defined by a measure of life expectancy, which shows how healthy a country's population is. This factor gets a 25 percent weight. • Responsiveness, which includes factors such as speed of health services, privacy protections, choice of doctors and quality of amenities. This factor gets a 12.5 percent weight. • Financial fairness, which measures how progressive or regressive the financing of a country's health care system is — that is, whether or not the financial burdens are borne by those who are economically better off. This factor receives a 25 percent weight. • Health distribution, which measures how equally a nation's health care resources are allocated among the population. This factor receives a 25 percent weight. • Responsiveness distribution, which measures how equally a nation's health care responsiveness (which we defined above) is spread through society. This factor gets a 12.5 percent weight. Once these statistics were collected, the WHO combined them into two summary rankings. One, called "overall attainment," is the basic weighted average of the five factors listed above. The other, called "overall performance," took that number and adjusted it for how well a country's health system was doing compared to how well WHO's experts believed it should be doing based on education level and economic resources. Using the second of the two ratings — overall performance — the United States does indeed rank 37th. But using the first factor — overall attainment — the United States does better, finishing 15th. One might be tempted to downgrade Hipp's song for cherry-picking the less favorable number, but Hipp seems to be on solid ground here. The WHO itself considers overall performance to be the more important ranking of the two. In a news release accompanying the original report, the WHO placed the 37th-place ranking right near the top and never even mentioned the 15th-place ranking. So it seems fair to us for Hipp to focus on that number. Of course, any ranking — whether it's U.S. News and World Report 's ranking of universities or the WHO's ranking of health systems — is subject to disputes over what factors should be included. In his 2009 book, The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper and Fairer Health Care , journalist T.R. Reid finds value in the WHO's study even as he acknowledges that it is "all but impossible to design a single rating scale that would accommodate countries ranging from Monaco (population, 33,000; per capita income, $30,000 per year) to Nigeria (population 101 million; per capita income, $310 per year)." Despite some quibbling on technical matters, most observers broadly agree that two of the WHO's five measures — health level and responsiveness — are reasonable. The first statistic gauges health outcomes, which are obviously a health care system's No. 1 goal, and the second seeks to measure how well a health system works when interacting with patients, another widely agreed upon mission. But there is far less consensus over the other three factors. Concerns stem from a mix of methodology and ideology. Glen Whitman, an associate professor of economics at California State University at Northridge, offers one critique in a paper for the libertarian Cato Institute. "Suppose, for instance, that Country A has health responsiveness that is 'excellent' for most citizens but merely 'good' for some disadvantaged groups, while Country B has responsiveness that is uniformly 'poor' for everyone," he writes. "Country B would score higher than Country A in terms of responsiveness distribution, despite country A having better responsiveness than Country B for even its worst-off citizens." Whitman also joins other conservatives in taking issue with the assumption that the rich should pay a similar percentage of their income for health care as the poor do. Because basic mathematics suggests that those with smaller incomes will naturally spend a larger share on highly important items such as food and health care, doing well in WHO's rankings almost requires a steeply progressive tax structure. WHO officials make no bones about their desire to push countries in the direction of aiding the have-nots. They gave the controversial factors that reward socioeconomic fairness 62.5 percent weight, compared with only 37.5 percent for the broadly accepted factors of health level and responsiveness. Tweak the weighting a little bit and a country such as the United States rises or falls in the rankings. For instance, judged on responsiveness alone, the United States ranked No. 1 in the world. A bigger weight for that factor — and a smaller weight for financial fairness, where the United States ranked 54th in the world — would have given the country a much higher ranking. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 Adding other factors could also change the results. A 2001 paper in the journal Science found that adding just one more variable into the mix changed the rankings dramatically for 79 of 96 countries studied. Meanwhile, Whitman also raised questions about the WHO's "overall performance" measure — the one in which a country's health ranking is adjusted for its education level and economic resources. (This is the category in which the United States finished 37th.) The implication from the WHO itself as well as subsequent news reports, Whitman wrote, "is that the United States performs badly ... despite its high expenditures." In fact, he writes, in the WHO's statistical model, America's first-in-the-world expenditures for health care actually hurt its ranking in overall performance by setting the theoretical bar it had to reach very high. "A more accurate statement is that the United States performs badly because of its high expenditures, at least in part," Whitman writes. Finally, a number of other critics say that WHO listened to the experts but did not measure public satisfaction with health care. A paper published in the journal Health Affairs found the rankings did not necessarily reflect whether people were happy with their country's health coverage. For instance, Italy finished second in WHO's study, even though only 20 percent of its citizens say they were satisfied with their health care system. Meanwhile, Denmark ranked 16th in the WHO report even though 91 percent of Danes say they were satisfied. So while Hipp is right that the United States ranked 37th in the most widely known barometer in the WHO study, it ranked 15th by another WHO ranking and, for one factor (responsiveness) it actually ranked No. 1. Still, this is a rock song, and a well-sourced one at that. So we find Hipp's claim to be Mostly True

Photo of "tea party" protests shows crowd sprawling from Capitol to Washington Monumen 0

As a candidate, President Obama "declared that everyone deserves access to reproductive health care that includes abortion, and vowed that this 'right' would be at the heart of his health care reform plan if elected president. To build opposition to the health care bill, Republicans have been saying it would expand coverage of abortion. To back up that claim, House Republican Leader John Boehner sent a "GOP Leader Alert" that said President Barack Obama was doing that to fulfill a campaign promise. "During his quest for the presidency, now-President Obama declared that everyone deserves access to reproductive health care that includes abortion, and vowed that this 'right' would be at the heart of his health care reform plan if elected president," Boehner wrote in the Sept. 10, 2009, message. There's never been any question that Obama favors abortion rights. On Jan. 22, 2008, for instance, Obama released a statement on the 35th anniversary of the Roe vs. Wade decision that legalized abortion that said, "Throughout my career, I've been a consistent and strong supporter of reproductive justice, and have consistently had a 100 percent prochoice rating with Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America." But he has been somewhat more coy, or perhaps strategically fuzzy, about exactly where he would draw the line on federal funding for abortion in his own health care plan. His comments on abortion rights have often used the phrase "reproductive care" rather than abortion. We'll take a separate look at the three parts of Boehner's sentence. Did candidate Obama say that everyone deserves access to reproductive health care? Did he say that such issues are at the heart of his health care reform plan? And did his definition of "reproductive health" care include abortion? On the first and second questions, we think then-candidate Obama did say something that closely matches what Boehner says he did. In a July 17, 2007, appearance before the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, Obama said the following: "In my mind, reproductive care is essential care. It is basic care, so it is at the center and at the heart of the plan that I propose. Essentially what we're doing is, we’re going to set up a public plan that all persons and all women can access if they don’t have health insurance. It will be a plan that will provide all essential services, including reproductive services, as well as mental health services and disease management services, because part of our interest is to make sure that we’re putting more money into preventive care." (This one is not included in our Obameter database of promises, but we'll examine next week whether it should be.) The words Obama used are slightly different from the ones cited by Boehner, but we think that to say reproductive care is "essential" means that "everyone deserves" to have it. Meanwhile, inferring from Obama's language that it's a "right" requires a slight leap, but it's close enough that we won't quibble. So the key to whether Boehner is right comes with the third question: Does Obama's definition of "reproductive health care" necessarily include abortion? On this question, the evidence is suggestive but not quite a slam dunk. Abortion opponents rely on a few pieces of evidence to support the assertion that Obama believes reproductive health care includes abortion. One is a story that ran in the Chicago Tribune on July 18, 2007, the day after Obama's Planned Parenthood speech. In it, Washington bureau reporter Mike Dorning wrote that when Obama was asked about his proposal for expanded access to health insurance, the candidate "said it would cover 'reproductive health services.' Contacted afterward, an Obama spokesman said that included abortions." Another source is a candidate questionnaire by RH Reality Check, which describes itself as "an online community and publication serving individuals and organizations committed to advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights." Posted Dec. 21, 2007, the questionnaire was filled out by "Sen. Barack Obama's campaign staff." The question that's most relevant to Boehner's assertion is this one: Q: Does Sen. Obama support the Hyde amendment (which bars the use of federal funds to pay for abortions)? Under what circumstances does he believe that Medicaid should cover abortions (all pregnancies, life- or health-threatening pregnancies, pregnancies that are a result of rape or incest, extreme fetal malformation)? A: Obama does not support the Hyde amendment. He believes that the federal government should not use its dollars to intrude on a poor woman's decision whether to carry to term or to terminate her pregnancy and selectively withhold benefits because she seeks to exercise her right of reproductive choice in a manner the government disfavors. Both of these comments suggest, fairly strongly, that Obama would include access to abortion in his health care plan — but they leave a degree of doubt. While we are not aware of any pushback from the campaign once these two items were published, both statements were made by campaign staffers, not the candidate himself. On his campaign Web site, Obama did not specifically address the federal funding issue. In the "women's issues" section, the campaign said only that "Barack Obama understands that abortion is a divisive issue, and respects those who disagree with him. However, he has been a consistent champion of reproductive choice and will make preserving women's rights under Roe vs. Wade a priority as president. He opposes any constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court's decision in that case." Asked for any additional evidence to back up Boehner's assertion that Obama was referring specifically to abortion, Douglas Johnson, legislative director for the National Right to Life Committee, told PolitiFact that Obama was speaking in "terms of art" that his Planned Parenthood audience would immediately grasp. "'Reproductive health services' is one of those conventions that all of the players understand. It is not limited to abortion, but it always encompasses abortion. It is like when a prolife candidate says, 'I support strong legal protection for the right to life of unborn children.' Everyone on all sides understands that this means he thinks abortion generally should not be legal, and no doubt he also supports fetal homicide laws . . . I suppose someone could argue that since he didn't specifically mention abortion, there is the theoretical possibility that he wants to keep abortion completely unrestricted and only wants to pass fetal homicide laws. But that would be to ignore the lexicon that groups develop on these issues and the way they are understood in context." So back to Boehner's claim. He said that candidate Obama "declared that everyone deserves access to reproductive health care that includes abortion, and vowed that this 'right' would be at the heart of his health care reform plan if elected president." The record shows that Obama did indeed make those statements. His message to the abortion rights group may have been deliberately fuzzy, but it's clear what he meant — and it was confirmed by the campaign to the Tribune reporter. We find Boehner's claim to be True. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022

A new bill "was written into the new health care reform initiative ensuring that Congress will be 100 percent exempt. A chain e-mail claims that Congress has exempted itself from health care reform. The e-mail appears to have been created shortly after President Barack Obama appeared in a forum on health care with Charlie Gibson of ABC News, an event that took place on June 24, 2009. It has the subject line, "The $64,000 Question." (For you young whippersnappers, The $64,000 Question was a popular game show that aired in the 1950s and revived in the 1970s as The $128,000 Question .) Here's the text of the e-mail: "Finally ... The $64,000 question was asked ... Yesterday on ABC TV (better known as the all Barack Channel) during the 'Network Special on Health Care' ... Obama was asked: "'Mr. President, will you and your family give up your current health care program and join the new "universal health care program" that the rest of us will be on????' ... (Bet you already know the answer) ... There was a stoney silence as Obama ignored the question and chose not to answer it!!! "In addition, a number of senators were asked the same question, and their response was ... 'We will think about it.' And they did. It was announced today on the news that the 'Kennedy Health Care Bill' was written into the new health care reform initiative ensuring that Congress will be 100 percent exempt! "So, this great new health care plan that is good for you and I ... is not good enough for Obama, his family or Congress...?? We (the American public) need to stop this proposed debacle ASAP!!!! ... This is totally wrong!!!!! Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 "Personally, I can only accept a universal health care overhaul that extends to everyone ... Not just us lowly citizens ... While the Washington 'elite' keep right with their gold-plated health care coverage. If you agree please pass this on ... " A reader sent us the e-mail and asked if it was true. To start with, the e-mail seems to assume — though it doesn't say so explicitly — that the health care reform plan sends everyone into a new public plan. This is not the case. The Democratic health care legislation under consideration in Congress leaves in place employer-provided health insurance for the vast majority of Americans. But people who work for small businesses, are self-employed or currently uninsured would be eligible for a separate system known as the health care exchange. It would offer a variety of plans, including a government-run plan that is known as the public option. Much of the controversy about health care reform has surrounded the public option. Critics say it could create a large bureaucracy and would not provide coverage as good as private insurers, while supporters say it would stimulate competition for people in the exchange. People who receive health insurance coverage from large employers would not be eligible for the public option. Members of Congress are offered insurance through their employer, which in this case is the federal government. They can purchase it through the Federal Employee Health Benefits Plan, which is offered to all federal employees. (We've written about this plan previously.) Under the plan, federal workers — and members of Congress — can choose from a variety of insurance plans just as people would in the new health care exchange. There's nothing in the health care bills that exempts Congress from the same requirements as regular citizens. However, some Republicans have attempted to pass amendments that would require members of Congress to drop their current coverage and force them to enroll in the public option. Republicans have said it would prove to the American people that the public option is a good thing. But Democrats have largely voted against these amendments, as we've reported previously . But the chain e-mail doesn't address this. Instead, it says members of Congress have somehow exempted themselves from reform, which is not correct. Under the bill, the lawmakers would continue to receive the same insurance they get now, just as most Americans would. Members of Congress are treated like any other citizens under the terms of the bill. We rate the chain e-mail's statement False

"Nothing in any of the Democrat bills would require individuals to verify their citizenship or identity prior to receiving taxpayer-subsidized benefits. The issue that drove Rep. Joe Wilson to become a heckler during President Barack Obama's health care address on Sept. 9, 2009, was the question of whether illegal immigrants would receive coverage from Democratic health care reforms. On the night of Obama's speech, we ruled that Wilson's outburst — shouting "You lie!" after Obama said that health reform would not insure illegal immigrants — was False. Since then, many Republicans have said there's nothing in the bill that ensures people would have their citizenship verified before getting coverage, a claim that we will explore with this item. In a "myth vs. fact" statement responding to the president's address, the House Republican Conference quoted President Obama saying, "There are also those who claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false. The reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally." The Republican conference then says, "Fact: Nothing in any of the Democrat bills would require individuals to verify their citizenship or identity prior to receiving taxpayer-subsidized benefits, making the President's promise one that the legislation itself does not keep.'" To explore that, we first need to explain that there are two kinds of benefits in the bill that can be considered taxpayer-subsidized: tax credits and access to the public insurance option. Democrats say the main health care bill, HR 3200, explicitly prevents illegal immigrants from getting "affordability credits" — tax credits for low-income people to buy health insurance on a national health insurance exchange. While illegal immigrants would be able to buy insurance just as a qualifying legal resident could, they would have to pay for it themselves without the "affordability credit" subsidy. (If you want to check, it's on page 132, section 242.) That's essentially keeping the status quo, in which illegal immigrants are able to buy private insurance on their own dime. Critics of the health care bill, however, cite a couple of possible loopholes. We'll address the one cited by the House Republican Conference, which has also been noted by the Federation for American Immigration Reform, an organization critical of illegal immigration. Both groups contend that the Democratic bills lack verification procedures to make sure that illegal immigrants aren't signing up for the affordability credits. Such safeguards, FAIR says, were included in the Welfare Reform Act of 1996, the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. From our examination of the House bill, we don't see any verification system, either. The Congressional Research Service, a nonpartisan research arm of Congress, agrees. In a report issued Aug. 25, 2009, CRS wrote that "HR 3200 does not contain a mechanism to verify immigration status." (We also noted that in our original item when we checked Wilson's heckle, here .) FAIR notes that the House Ways and Means Committee rejected an amendment that would have required those seeking affordability credits to verify eligibility with two databases used to check it for federal benefits such as Medicaid. But there are two caveats that keep the Republican assertion from being fully accurate. The first is if the tax credits are administered through the Internal Revenue Service, there would be built-in scrutiny. For instance, if a system were set up for taxpayers to declare insurance expenses and then receive a refund or a rebate, illegal immigrants couldn't obtain coverage, "because illegal immigrants do not have legitimate Social Security numbers," said Marc Rosenblum, a senior policy analyst with the Migration Policy Institute, a group that is generally proimmigration. "Screening out illegal immigrants through the tax system would prevent them from obtaining health care-related subsidies." The second caveat is that language in the House bill does provide clear authority for the new government official who will run the exchange to set up that verification, as the CRS report notes. Featured Fact-check Blake Masters stated on October 15, 2022 in a tweet Immigrants illegally in the country are treated “better than military veterans.” By Jon Greenberg • October 21, 2022 Rosenblum concurs. "The commissioner could enforce these restrictions in one of two ways: through document- and database-based screening requirements as in the Medicaid system, or by reimbursing health care expenses through tax refunds," he said. Because the House Republican Conference assertion referred to "any" of the Democratic bills, we also looked through the bill reported by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. The bill is generally more vague on these issues, but we did find the following passage, which seems to grant similar authority as the House bill passage cited earlier. "The Secretary (of Health and Human Services), in consultation with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, shall develop interoperable, secure, scalable, and reusable standards and protocols that facilitate enrollment of individuals in Federal and State health and human services programs. ... The Secretary shall facilitate enrollment of individuals in programs ... through methods which shall include (i) electronic matching against existing Federal and State data to serve as evidence of eligibility and digital documentation in lieu of paper-based documentation; (ii) capability for individuals to apply, recertify, and manage eligibility information online, including conducting real-time queries against databases for existing eligibility prior to submitting applications; and (iii) other functionalities necessary to provide eligible individuals with a streamlined enrollment process." Now for the second issue: access to the public option. FAIR and many Republicans have argued that while the bill bars illegal immigrants from getting the affordability credits, it still permits them to take part in the public option. We believe that reading is correct. But FAIR asserts that the public option is "taxpayer-funded," something Democrats insist is not true. They say the public plan will be self-supporting through its participants' premiums. Obama reiterated that point in his speech. "I have insisted that like any private insurance company, the public insurance option would have to be self-sufficient and rely on the premiums it collects," he said. Nothing we've seen so far has persuaded us that the public option will provide subsidized care. So let's recap. There is explicit language in the House bill that says illegal immigrants should not receive the subsidized benefits. But we find the Republican conference is right that the legislation does not directly mention verification procedures and, for that reason, it's possible that illegal immigrants who are determined to beat the system might be able to get around the ban. But it's likely that the IRS would, at least indirectly, help to police that. And, the health choices commissioner would have the authority to set up a verification system. On balance, we rate the Republican claim Half True

Health reform will "give every American the same opportunity" to buy health insurance the way members of Congress do President Barack Obama extolled the virtues of a national health insurance exchange in a speech to a joint session of Congress. "If you lose your job or change your job, you will be able to get coverage," Obama said. "If you strike out on your own and start a small business, you will be able to get coverage. We will do this by creating a new insurance exchange – a marketplace where individuals and small businesses will be able to shop for health insurance at competitive prices." Obama went on to compare this exchange to the Federal Employee Health Benefits Plan, which is offered to all federal employees. (We've written about this plan previously.) "Insurance companies will have an incentive to participate in this exchange because it lets them compete for millions of new customers. As one big group, these customers will have greater leverage to bargain with the insurance companies for better prices and quality coverage. This is how large companies and government employees get affordable insurance. It's how everyone in this Congress gets affordable insurance. And it's time to give every American the same opportunity that we've given ourselves," he concluded. But saying every American will get the same opportunity that Congress has to purchase insurance is not correct. There are several key differences between the Federal Employee Health Benefits Plan and the national health insurance exchange. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 The biggest issue is that there are significant limitations on who gets to use the exchange. Right now, the House bill allows in individuals and people who work for small businesses. Pending legislation in the House says that only individuals and small businesses of fewer than 10 employees would be able to use the exchange during the first year, and only individuals and small businesses with fewer than 20 employees in the second year. In the third year, businesses are allowed in "based on the number of full-time employees of an employer and such other considerations as the Commissioner deems appropriate." This sounds like employers will gradually be allowed into the exchange based on size, as well as "other considerations as the (health exchange) Commissioner deems appropriate." But people who can get insurance through a large employer will not be eligible to purchase on the exchange if their employer offers a plan that meets minimum requirements for coverage. We should also add that many employers offer only a few choices of plan. Some only offer one plan. Federal employees, on the other hand, choose from an array of plans, with different levels of coverage. They are part the largest employer-sponsored program in the world, covering over 9 million employees, retirees, former employees, family members and former spouses, according to the Office of Personnel Management's Web site. To say, as Obama does, that "every American" could get similar coverage as Congress on the exchange is not accurate. People who can get insurance through work are specifically excluded under the House bill. Obama lays out the right categories of people who would be allowed to shop ont the exchange in the first part of his statement: people who lose coverage or who are part of a small business. But he crossed a line when he told Congress, "It's time to give every American the same opportunity that we've given ourselves." There are significant limitations on who will be allowed on the exchange. We rate his statement False.

"You lie!" (in response to President Obama saying health reform would not insure illegal immigrants. We suspect it's rare that the president gets heckled during a speech to a joint session of Congress, but Rep. Joe Wilson didn't hold back. "You lie!" shouted the South Carolina Republican. This was in response to President Barack Obama's statements on illegal immigrants. "There are also those who claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants," Obama said. "This, too, is false — the reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally." So who's right here? Wilson or Obama? Incidentally, Wilson apologized for the outburst after the speech, but said he still disagreed with Obama's statement. We've been monitoring claims about health care reform and illegal immigrants for some time now. Most notably, a chain e-mail claimed that page 50 of the House bill gave free health care to illegal immigrants. That page didn't say that. Rather, it included a generic nondiscrimination clause that said insurers may not discriminate with regard to "personal characteristics extraneous to the provision of high quality health care or related services." So we rated the chain e-mail's claim Pants on Fire . We read all 1,000-plus pages of the health care bill and were struck by the fact that it is largely silent on health care for illegal immigrants. Keep in mind that experts estimated there were 6.8 million uninsured illegal immigrants in the United States in 2007, out of a total of 11.9 million illegal immigrants. Right now, there are laws on the books that require hospitals to treat severely ill people who arrive at the hospital, regardless of immigration status, and we didn't see anything that would change those laws, either. Most illegal immigrants are also now excluded from Medicaid, the government-run health care for the poor. We didn't see anything that would change that. Featured Fact-check Blake Masters stated on October 15, 2022 in a tweet Immigrants illegally in the country are treated “better than military veterans.” By Jon Greenberg • October 21, 2022 One place where the bill does mention immigration status is for "affordability credits." These are tax credits for people of modest means need to buy health insurance. The credits would help them buy insurance on a national health insurance exchange. The bill specifically says that people in the United States illegally are not eligible for tax credits, on page 132, section 242. Still, given all that, we have heard from people who said that other aspects of reform could benefit illegal immigrants. One of the most detailed responses was from the anti-immigration group Federation for American Immigration Reform, called FAIR. You can read their statement on the matter on their Web site. Primarily, they argue that illegal immigrants would be permitted to purchase insurance on the national health insurance exchange because the bill does not include a mechanism for verifying citizenship. So illegal immigrants would have the chance to purchase insurance in the public option, a government-run health care plan that would offer basic coverage at a low price. FAIR also argues for more robust verification measures for the affordability credit and making sure that illegal immigrant parents won't be able to receive coverage if their citizen children are eligible. FAIR has a point that illegal immigrants would likely be able to buy insurance on the national health insurance exchange. We don't see anything in the bills that would hinder that. A Congressional Research Service report issued Aug. 25, 2009, confirmed our observation. The House bill "does not contain any restrictions on noncitzens participating in the Exchange — whether the noncitizens are legally or illegally present, or in the United States temporarily or permanently," the report said. But it's worth pointing out that illegal immigrants participating in the exchange would be paying for their insurance like everyone else. That's similar to the current system — we're not aware of any particular restrictions that stop illegal immigrants from buying private insurance now. Under health care reform, illegal immigrants would be able to buy private insurance or the public option. When we look at all of this evidence, it seems that health reform leaves in place the status quo on illegal immigration, and certainly does not provide any new benefits particularly for illegal immigrants. We hope to look at this issue more in the days ahead, because some hospitals are concerned about recouping their costs for treating illegal immigrants, and we're curious to know more about that problem and how it might or might not be solved by reform. The best argument that we find that health reform would help illegal immigrants is that some might be able to purchase the public option — if it passes, and it might not — on the new health insurance exchange. They would purchase that at full cost. Obama said, "The reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally," which Wilson said was a "lie." Actually, Obama can make a pretty thorough case that reform doesn't apply to those here illegally. We don't find the public option argument enough to make the case that Obama "lied." We rate Wilson's statement False

"It’s a plan that incorporates ideas from many of the people in this room tonight – Democrats and Republicans. In his address on health care to a joint session of Congress on Sept. 9, 2009, President Barack Obama suggested the health care bills in Congress are a bipartisan collaboration. "It’s a plan that incorporates ideas from many of the people in this room tonight — Democrats and Republicans," Obama said. Earlier in the day, in a conference call with the media, Obama's deputy communications director, Dan Pfeiffer, argued that while the health bills in the House and Senate have not gotten Republican votes, the process was bipartisan because dozens of Republican amendments were adopted. And that's technically true. But it's a stretch to characterize it as bipartisan. The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions adopted 159 amendments offered by Republicans, but only two of them were significant or controversial enough to merit roll call votes. One of those two affected the manufacture of biologics medication and another required members of Congress and congressional staff to enroll in the government-run option. Don Stewart, a spokesman for Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, said 132 of the 159 were for "technical amendments" and that it was a misnomer to call them proof of bipartisanship. None of the Republicans' priorities have gotten any traction, he said: Tort reform, equalizing the tax code, reducing the proposed cuts to Medicare spending, and scrapping the proposed "public option." In fact, he said, only one big-picture Republican issue seems to have gotten the attention of the Democratic majority: creating incentives for wellness, such as cutting insurance costs for people who exercise or don't smoke. Over in the House, several versions of health care bills have passed various committees. Here's how Republican amendments fared there: In the Energy and Commerce Committee, 16 Republican amendments were adopted. With the exception of one that would create a pathway for nonpioneer drug companies to manufacture "follow-on" biologics, said Lisa Miller, a spokeswoman for Republicans on the committee, none of the Republican amendments could be considered major, and none change the core of the legislation. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 "The process in our committee was bipartisan only in that we were given the opportunity to mark up the bill," said Miller. "In large measure, the bipartisanship that existed during the E&C markup was that of luck and circumstance, not intent among Democrats." In the Education and Labor Committee, just six of the 17 amendments offered by Republicans were adopted. Several "probably are best described as technical," said Alexa Marrero, a spokesman for Republicans on the committee. And one, which sought to have members of Congress be enrolled in any government-run plan that would be created, was defeated by Democrats in other committees. One, from Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., would allow employers who would have to cut jobs to meet health coverage costs the opportunity to seek a waiver from the bill’s requirements. It was adopted by voice vote. In the House Ways and Means committee markup, all 38 of the Republican-sponsored amendments were rejected along a party-line vote. To see a more detailed accounting of some of the Republican amendments that have been considered, click on some of the links in our list of sources. But suffice to say, we didn't come across many that passed that seem significant. Michael Steel, spokesman for House Republican Leader John Boehner, said that while it's true that some Republican or bipartisan amendments were accepted, the legislation itself has received zero Republican votes. "No amendments have changed the core of the legislation" or altered the public option, Steel said. Back when the House Education and Labor Committee considered its version of the bill in mid July, several Republican legislators complained that there was little real effort to engage a bipartisan process, and they called on Democrats to scrap the plan and start over. According to an article in Congressional Quarterly , the panel’s chairman, George Miller, D-Calif., said that Republicans and Democrats simply have a "serious difference in opinion on how to approach health care in this country." We also note that after Obama's appeal to the joint session of Congress, the man designated to offer Republican rebuttal, U.S. Rep. Charles Boustany, R-La., again called on Obama and Congress to "start over on a common-sense, bipartisan plan focused on lowering the cost of health care while improving quality." When Obama said the health plan incorporated ideas from Democrats and Republicans, we think he grossly overstated the bipartisanship of the process to date. Both sides claim the other party is to blame for that, an issue that we will not wade into here. However, we note that none of the plans that have graduated from congressional committees have received a single Republican vote. Yes, Congress adopted dozens of the amendments proposed by Republicans, but we couldn't find any that dramatically altered the plan. Still, to the extent there were at least some, we give Obama's statement a Barely True. Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly Fals

Preventive care "saves money. President Barack Obama defended his health care plan in a speech to a joint session of Congress, promoting the benefits of reform for those who already have coverage. One of those benefits, he said, is that insurers will be required to cover checkups and other preventive care. "Insurance companies will be required to cover, with no extra charge, routine checkups and preventive care, like mammograms and colonoscopies — because there’s no reason we shouldn't be catching diseases like breast cancer and colon cancer before they get worse," Obama said. "That makes sense, it saves money, and it saves lives." Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 It may make sense and save lives, but does it save money? Experts say no. The head of the Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan group that does all the number-crunching for Congress, has said this isn't the case, despite claims from many Democrats to the contrary. "The evidence suggests that for most preventive services, expanded utilization leads to higher, not lower, medical spending overall," CBO director Douglas Elmendorf wrote in an Aug. 7 letter to Rep. Nathan Deal, the top Republican on a congressional subcommittee involved in the debate. Elmendorf explained that, while the cost of a simple test might be cheap for each individual, the cumulative cost of many tests could be quite expensive: "But when analyzing the effects of preventive care on total spending for health care, it is important to recognize that doctors do not know beforehand which patients are going to develop costly illnesses. To avert one case of acute illness, it is usually necessary to provide preventive care to many patients, most of whom would not have suffered that illness anyway. . . Preventive care can have the largest benefits relative to costs when it is targeted at people who are most likely to suffer from a particular medical problem; however, such targeting can be difficult because preventive services are generally provided to patients who have the potential to contract a given disease but have not yet shown symptoms of having it." In fact, a new government policy to encourage prevention could end up paying for services that people are already receiving, including breast and colon cancer screenings and vaccines, Elmendorf went on. The CBO did not put a price tag on the costs or savings associated with preventive care measures in bills being considered in the House of Representatives because budgeting rules prevent them from doing so. But a few other studies back up the CBO's analysis, including a Feb. 14, 2008, article in the New England Journal of Medicine that was written in response to campaign promises for more preventive care. "Sweeping statements about the cost-saving potential of prevention ... are overreaching," according to the paper. "Studies have concluded that preventing illness can in some cases save money but in other cases can add to health care costs." And a study conducted by researchers from the American Diabetes Association, American Heart Association and the American Cancer Society concluded that, while interventions to prevent cardiovascular disease would prevent many strokes and deaths, "as they are currently delivered, most of the prevention activities will substantially increase costs." So, the consensus is that, while preventive care will almost certainly save lives, it won't reduce government spending on health care. As a result, we rate Obama's statement Fals

If you "already have health insurance through your job, or Medicare, or Medicaid, or the VA, nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have. Seeking to jump-start efforts to pass a health care bill, President Barack Obama defended his reform plan in a speech to a joint session of Congress. He sought to reassure Americans they would not lose their current coverage. "First, if you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance through your job, or Medicare, or Medicaid, or the VA, nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have," Obama said. "Let me repeat this: Nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have." Obama is correct that the plans under consideration do not force those who currently have insurance to change plans. The proposals seek to build on the current system, where many Americans get coverage through work. The plans do, however, implement new consumer protections and introduce new ways of regulating health insurance companies. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 These new rules will surely change the current health care system. The bill in the House of Representatives gives employer-provided insurance five years to come into compliance with new rules, such as caps on out-of-pocket expenses and coverage for preventive care. Right now, employers have the freedom to change or drop coverage, and they will continue to have that freedom under health reform. Doctors, too, can opt in or out of accepting various insurance plans, including Medicare. Because of this inherent instability to the health care system, and because of the new regulations, we rated one of Obama's earlier statements on the effects of reform — "If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan" — Half True . Given what we know about reform, it seems likely that at least some people will have employers who decide to change plans when insurers alter their offerings under the new regulations. This would be most likely for any small businesses that currently offer health insurance. They will be allowed to use a national exchange where insurers compete to offer insurance, and prices are expected to be lower. Obama's statement from the speech is more carefully phrased than his earlier statement. In his speech, he said that if you are "already have health insurance through your job, Medicare, Medicaid, or the VA, nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have." That is true, there is nothing in the plan that proactively forces these kinds of changes, and the bills clearly intend to leave much of the current health care system in place. We rate Obama's statement True

"Switzerland and the Netherlands . . . cover all their citizens using private insurers, and they do so for much less cost. People on both sides of the health care debate like to make comparisons with other countries. Critics of President Barack Obama's plan have warned that the United States could end up with programs similar to those in Canada and the United Kingdom, which they say have long waits and substandard care. But Matt Miller, a former Clinton White House aide now working as a management consultant, is citing two other countries — the Netherlands and Switzerland — as useful models for the United States because they have private insurance but still manage to provide universal coverage. In a Washington Post op-ed on Sept. 8, 2009, he wrote that those nations illustrate how the United States could achieve the goal of covering the uninsured without expanding direct government-run health care, such as offering a "public option," an approach supported by many Democrats but opposed by many Republicans. "The first fallacy of the 'public option or nothing' mantra is the notion that we'll never cover everyone without a Medicare-style program for Americans under 65. The experiences of Switzerland and the Netherlands prove that this isn't the case. Both have pioneered market-based universal health care. Both cover all their citizens using private insurers, and they do so for much less cost — 10 percent of gross domestic product for the Dutch and 12 percent for Switzerland, compared with 17 percent in the United States, where nearly 50 million people are still uninsured." Let's take Miller's assertions individually. First, he's right that both countries have systems in which private companies provide the insurance. In both countries, citizens must buy health insurance from a company that must provide the customer with a basic package of services defined by the government. Subsidies are provided for people who need them. Because everyone is covered, the insurers can spread their financial risk across a large and diverse group of beneficiaries. Companies cannot compete against each other on the basic package (and in Switzerland, any profit they make on basic services must be used to reduce premiums the following year). Instead, they can make a profit by offering supplementary packages that cover certain services such as dental care, eyeglasses and cosmetic surgery. In Switzerland, many insurers also provide life insurance or homeowners insurance. The degree of government mandates and restrictions for private insurers in the Netherlands and Switzerland goes well beyond what is practiced by the U.S. government. But the insurers are indeed private, profit-seeking companies, as Miller said they are. Miller's second point is that both countries have universal coverage. Yes, both require people to have health insurance (just as the Democratic bill would). In the Netherlands, for instance, the penalty for not having insurance is having to pay 130 percent of the premium during the time one is not insured. In both countries, the government can forcibly enroll uninsured citizens in a plan if they do not do so themselves. Enforcement of the law is probably not 100 percent in either country, but it's close. Finally, Miller asserts that both nations spend less on health care than the United States does. Here, too, he is correct. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development — a group that analyzes statistics on wealthier, industrialized countries — the Dutch spent 9.8 percent of gross domestic product on health care in 2007, while the Swiss spent 10.8 percent and the United States spent 16 percent. So while Miller slightly overstated the percentage for Switzerland and the United States, he's close. As for the number of uninsured Americans, the most commonly cited number is 46 million. (We looked into the validity of this number here .) The recession has almost certainly bumped that number upward, so his "nearly 50 million" assertion is probably pretty close. So let's recap. Miller is correct that both the Netherlands and Switzerland achieve universal coverage through systems that use private insurers. And he's right that both countries do so more cheaply than the United States. So we rate his statement True. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022

"The Obama Administration's own White House Council of Economic Advisers has estimated 4.7 million Americans will lose their jobs if the (health care) bill passes. In an argument, it's always helpful to quote your rivals when they seem to undermine their own case. That's what Republicans have been doing as they attempt to cast doubt on the Democratic push for health care reform. This summer, a number of Republican lawmakers and conservative commentators have asserted that Christina Romer, who chairs the White House Council of Economic Advisers, believes that the Democratic health plan could result in 4.7 million Americans losing their jobs. Here's a recent version of this claim, made by Rep. John Carter, R-Texas, in an Aug. 31 column on the Web site of the Christian Coalition of America: Answering his own question, "Will the Bill Cost American Jobs?" Carter writes, "No argument here either. The Obama administration's own White House Council of Economic Advisers has estimated 4.7 million Americans will lose their jobs if the bill passes, as employers who cannot afford health insurance or the 8 percent payroll tax penalty will have to fire their employees, move overseas, or go out of business." But Obama's Council of Economic Advisers has not said that. Rather, the number comes from calculations made by the Republican staff of the House Ways and Means Committee, based on ideas in two papers co-authored by Romer, who was an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, before joining the administration. Another Republican lawmaker, House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio, put it more accurately when he wrote in a July 20 column, "According to methodology developed by Dr. Christina Romer, the chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, the government takeover would cost Americans 4.7 million jobs over the next 10 years." But since many other Republicans have cited the same numbers, we thought it would be helpful to explore whether they are accurate. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 We obtained a copy of the math behind the claim from the Ways and Means GOP staff and, to be honest, it's pretty complicated stuff. (Readers with a taste for econometrics can read a more detailed version here .) But despite the complexity, we think that a thorough examination of the statistic is warranted because one of the major Republican arguments against the bill is that it's a job killer. And, based on the number of Internet hits we see on the 4.7 million jobs figure, this statistic has become a key talking point for the party. (Complicating matters further, the Ways and Means Republican staff later issued a revised estimate, and the new number — as many as 5.5 million jobs lost — has begun to pop up as well, including in a national radio address by Rep. John Kline, R-Minn., on Sept. 5, 2009. However, because commentators have been using the 4.7 million jobs figure for most of the summer and continue to do so, we're mainly going to scrutinize the calculations that led to that number.) First, a little explanation of the math by the Ways and Means Republican staff. They focused on a tax in the health care bill that is informally known as "play or pay." It requires employers to either pay for health care coverage (that's the "play") for their workers or else pay a penalty equal to 8 percent of wages. The Republicans sought to estimate how many jobs would be lost from businesses being forced to cut back on expenses if this tax was implemented. In assembling their calculations, Republican staffers referred to two papers by Romer. One, from 2007 when she was a professor, was co-authored with her husband and fellow economist, David Romer. It explores how changes in tax policy affect the broader economy. The second paper, released by the Obama transition team on Jan. 9, 2009, sought to quantify how many jobs would be created by the economic stimulus package. The Ways and Means staff took two key numbers from Romer's papers, both of which are what economists call "multipliers." A multiplier is a number that shows how much of an added impact a given statistic (say, a tax increase) has on a different statistic (say, job numbers). Essentially what the GOP staffers did was to take three basic facts — the size of the health bill's tax increase, the size of the U.S. gross domestic product and the current number of jobs in the United States — and use the theory outlined in Romer's papers, including the multipliers she came up with, to figure out how many jobs the tax hike threatened to eliminate. When we talked to independent economic experts and the White House, we didn't hear a lot of complaints about the multipliers chosen by the Ways and Means staff. But we did hear a range of other concerns: — The size of the tax increase in the health bill. The figure used in the Republican calculation was $300 billion over 10 years. But a July 14 estimate by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office pegged it at $163 billion. The Ways and Means Republican staff did use the $163 billion in its second set of calculations, but because the $300 billion figure was built into the math that led to the 4.7 million jobs number, we're focusing on that number here. Simply put, using the $300 billion figure for the tax hit, rather than the $163 billion figure, inflates the job-loss number cited by Carter and others. — An expanded exemption for small businesses. On July 31, 2009, the House Energy and Commerce Committee adopted an amendment to the House health care bill (H.R. 3200) to make more small businesses exempt from the "play or pay" provision. In the original bill, companies with payrolls smaller than $250,000 annually were to be exempt. The amendment made the cutoff level $500,000. There's no guarantee that this provision will make it into the final bill, and even if it does, the CBO has not estimated the impact. But if the new limit becomes law, it seems likely that the size of the tax hit will go down — another factor that would decrease the Republican estimate of 4.7 million lost jobs. — What's the purpose of the tax hike? Romer's 2007 paper takes pains to distinguish between two types of tax policy changes. One type accompanies significant increases in spending — perhaps, as Romer suggests, to combat a recession, to fund a war or to foot the bill for a new social insurance program. These tax changes tend to balance out the other major changes going on in the economy, she argues, and they tend to keep economic growth on an even keel. The other kind of tax changes are undertaken either to reduce the deficit or to spur long-term growth, in the absence of economic emergencies or major expansions in government programs. This distinction becomes relevant for the Republicans' calculation because Romer concludes that the broader economic effects of the first type of tax changes are harder to identify because more factors are changing at the same time. For this reason her paper focuses primarily on the second type of tax changes, which she found to have much more reliable and measurable impacts on the economy. But the tax increases studied by Ways and Means accompany a major expansion in social insurance, meaning that by Romer's own definition, this scenario is not a good candidate for reliable calculations under her formula. Republican economists dismiss those complaints, saying her approach works equally well in a deficit-reduction scenario as when a new program is being created. — Ten years vs. one year . Our biggest concern about the Republican estimate is a math assumption that could make the jobs estimate off by a factor of 10. In the Ways and Means calculation, the Republican staff determined the tax increase's size as a percentage of GDP — a necessary step in the calculation — by dividing the total tax increase over 10 years ($300 billion by their count) by the U.S. GDP in a single year ($14.047 trillion, the CBO's projection for 2009). This struck us as odd, since one would think that a tax increase spread out over 10 years should be divided by GDP over 10 years. Other economists agreed with us. The Ways and Means staff told us that Romer did it that way in her papers, but the White House told PolitiFact that Romer's papers did not make calculations in which 10 years' worth of taxes were divided by one year's worth of GDP. Economists outside the White House told us they found several indications in her writings to back up the White House's assertion. This question is important because dividing by one year's GDP rather than 10 makes the scale of the expected job losses 10 times bigger. Not 10 percent bigger — 10 times bigger. That's enough to skew the entire results. We recalculated the original Ways and Means formula — this time dividing by 10 years' worth of GDP and using the smaller CBO estimate of the size of the tax hit — and came up with job losses totaling 193,946, far less than 4.7 million. We also took the suggestion of J.D. Foster, an economist at the conservative Heritage Foundation, and divided the 10th year tax hit by that year's estimated GDP. Using this calculation, we came up with 323,980 jobs lost over 10 years. That's a higher number than our first attempt, but still less than one-tenth of what the GOP Ways and Means staff estimated. It should be emphasized that any calculation of this sort is just an estimate, and a rough one at that. For instance, several factors not included in Romer's calculation could either push the job loss number higher or lower. Republicans say the bill as written will create higher deficits, which they predict will increase the pressure on lawmakers to eventually raise taxes beyond what is currently envisioned in the bill. Those tax increases, which are not captured by the Romer formula, could increase job losses in future years. So, assuming big deficits far into the future, it's possible that the number of jobs lost due to the passage of health care reform would rise to something approaching, or even exceeding, 4.7 million. And Republicans are free to make that case. But if Rep. Carter is using Romer's handiwork to make the argument, he has an obligation to cite her work fairly. And it is a significant distortion to say that her Council of Economic Advisers made such an estimate. That by itself is enough for us to find his claim False. But the case doesn't get much stronger when they use the Republican interpretations of Romer's work. The number initially calculated by Ways and Means Republicans overstated the size of the tax hit which in turn would exaggerate the number of jobs lost. The number ignored an amendment that could end up further shrinking the size of the tax hit. It invoked Romer's position even as it contradicted her view of whether her formula was legitimate to use in this situation. And most importantly, it used a calculation that increased the scale of job losses by a factor of 10. So we find Rep. Carter's claim to be a major distortion, not just because of the questionable math he based it on, but because he distorted who said it. We find his statement False

The government is "going to have the right to get into your bank account with the health care bill and make transfers without you knowing it. On his radio program on Aug. 28, Rush Limbaugh continued to hammer the Democrat-backed health care bill, claiming ominously that it would allow government "the right to get into your bank account...and make transfers without you knowing it." A similar claim was included in a widely circulated chain e-mail that contains numerous distortions about the health care bill. We examined the claims in depth and reported on many of them here. Limbaugh has raised this issue several times. On Aug. 6, 2009, a caller to his radio program said, "Listen, of all the scary things in this health care bill, Rush, the scariest thing is this: The government, if this passes, will be able to go into your bank account or anybody's bank account — I just read this last night — anybody's bank account, take the money out to fund this monstrosity. Did you know that?" Said Limbaugh, "He's right, folks, he's right. That is in the House bill." The provision in question is in Section 163 of the House bill (page 59) , under the heading "Administrative Simplification." It broadly sets out goals for standardizing electronic health records. The legislative summary says the intent in the section is "to adopt standards for typical transactions" between insurance companies and health care providers. Edwin Park, a senior fellow at the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said the intent is to set standards for electronic communication between health providers and insurance companies and has nothing to do with an individual's bank account. So for example, a doctor would have access to real-time information about a patient's co-pays and whether a particular procedure or medication is covered under their plan, how much is owed, and so on, he said. Much of that already happens today, he said, but it would standardize electronic records so that with out-of-network transactions, everyone is using the same coding and standards. Park's interpretation is shared by Health Care for America Now, which is lobbying for health care reform. According to the group's Web site, the provision "continues the discussion of administrative standards, and authorizes electronic transfers of money within the government. In no way does this provision grant the government access to individual bank accounts." But some say the wording of the bill is ambiguous, and does appear to allow for the possibility of addressing electronic health payments from a patient's individual bank account. Robert Book of the Heritage Foundation pointed to a clause in Section 163 that states that it would "enable electronic funds transfers, in order to allow automated reconciliation with the related health care payment and remittance advice." Some interpret that as a vehicle to allow people to pay their health bills through automatic deductions from their personal bank accounts. And in an e-mail sent out by David Axelrod, a senior adviser to President Barack Obama, in which he sought to debunk some of the "lies and distortions" that have circulated in e-mails about health care reform, he seems to suggest that's exactly what is being contemplated. "No, government will not do anything with your bank account," Axelrod wrote. "It is an absurd myth that government will be in charge of your bank accounts. Health insurance reform will simplify administration, making it easier and more convenient for you to pay bills in a method that you choose. Just like paying a phone bill or a utility bill, you can pay by traditional check, or by a direct electronic payment. And forms will be standardized so they will be easier to understand. The choice is up to you – and the same rules of privacy will apply as they do for all other electronic payments that people make." Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 On the White House Web site, Nancy-Ann DeParle, director of the White House Office of Health Reform, spoke to the issue, saying, "Individuals, not the government, will be in charge of their bank accounts, just like they are today." We read Section 163 and found nothing that would require patients to participate in electronic payments. So Limbaugh is wrong that the bill would allow the government "the right to get into your bank account." The choice would be up to the person if they'd like to allow electronic withdrawals from their bank accounts. John S. Hoff, deputy assistant secretary for Health and Human Services under President George W. Bush, doesn't see much to support the critics' claims. But the bill was written in such an ambiguous way, he said, that it opens the door for this kind of speculation. Perhaps, he said, the provision is intended only to deal with standardizing electronic communication between health providers and insurance companies, he said. But the wording "seems to contemplate getting money from (an individual's) account electronically." Still, he said, "I think there is something that would protect you, that would allow you to block access to your account. It doesn't say that they could force you to do it. Does this override your relationship with the bank? No, I don't think so. Suppose you didn't want electronic transfers, you could tell the bank not to do it." Dr. Glenn Laffel, senior vice president of clinical affairs at Practice Fusion, which provides free, Web-based electronic health records, read the wording of the bill and came away confused. "At best, it's vague and ambiguous," Laffel said. "At worst, it would empower the government to do something that isn't right. It's something that needs to be addressed." So in summary, some of the experts we talked to said the wording of the bill is ambiguous enough to allow speculation like Limbaugh's that the government might be able to tap into an individual's bank account to square health payments. But there's nothing in the bill that suggests this program would be required. And while it sounds ominous to say the government could get into your bank account, the same is true for utility and mortgage companies for whom customers have given permission to extract regular electronic payments directly from their bank accounts. The way Limbaugh says it, it sounds like the government would require this program (that it would "have the right") to get into your account, that the government could do it without your permission. And we find no basis for that claim in the bill. We also think Limbaugh exaggerates when he says the government could then transfer money in your account without you knowing it. If you sign up for electronic withdrawal, you know about it. And so we rate this claim Barely True. Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly False.

A scheduled speech by President Barack Obama will be "the first time an American president has spoken directly to the nation's school children about persisting and succeeding in school. Education Secretary Arne Duncan urged the nation's principals to allow their students to watch a Sept. 8 address on the importance of education from President Barack Obama. "The president will challenge students to work hard, set educational goals, and take responsibility for their learning," Duncan wrote, adding, "This is the first time an American president has spoken directly to the nation's schoolchildren about persisting and succeeding in school. We encourage you to use this historic moment to help your students get focused and begin the school year strong." The speech drew fire from some Republicans who said schoolchildren should not be required to listen to the Democratic president's address. The Republican Party of Florida went further, saying Obama would "indoctrinate" schoolchildren with "socialist ideology," forcing them "to watch the president justify his plans for government-run health care, banks, and automobile companies, increasing taxes on those who create jobs, and racking up more debt than any other president." We rated that claim Pants on Fire! But Duncan was wrong when he wrote that Obama's speech would be "the first time an American president has spoken directly to the nation's schoolchildren about persisting and succeeding in school." President George H.W. Bush gave an address to schools nationwide in 1991, from a junior high school in Washington, D.C. News reports from the time said the White House hoped that the address would be shown at schools nationwide, and Bush began his remarks by saying he was talking to "millions" of students "in classrooms all across the country." You can read Bush's complete remarks via the Web site of his presidential library. Here's an excerpt: "When it comes to your own education, what I'm saying is take control. Don't say school is boring and blame it on your teachers. Make your teachers work hard. Tell them you want a first-class education. Tell them that you're here to learn. Block out the kids who think it's not cool to be smart. I can't understand for the life of me what's so great about being stupid. ... "If you don't work hard, who gets hurt? If you cheat, who pays the price? If you cut corners, if you hunt for the easy A, who comes up short? Easy answer to that one: You do. You're in control, but you are not alone. People want you to succeed. They want to help you succeed." The presidential library noted that the president spoke at 12:15 p.m. and that his remarks were "broadcast live by the Cable News Network, the Public Broadcasting System, the Mutual Broadcasting System, and the NBC radio network." You may have guessed this already, but news reports from the time indicate that Democrats criticized Bush for giving the speech. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 "The Department of Education should not be producing paid political advertising for the president, it should be helping us to produce smarter students," said Rep. Richard Gephardt, then the Democratic majority leader in the House of Representatives."And the president should be doing more about education than saying, 'Lights, camera, action.'" Patricia Schroeder, then a Democratic member of Congress from Colorado, said the speech showed "the arrogance of power," and that the White House should not be "using precious dollars for campaigns" when "we are struggling for every silly dime we can get" for education. Republicans, though, defended the right of the president to address students. "Why is it political for the president of the United States to discuss education?" asked Newt Gingrich, who was then the House Republican whip. "It was done at a nonpolitical site and was beamed to a nonpolitical audience. . . . They wanted to reach the maximum audience with the maximum effect to improve education." We also found that Ronald Reagan took questions from high school students at the White House in 1986, and the question-and-answer session was broadcast nationally. Reagan urged the students to stay in school and say no to drugs, but he also discussed overtly political matters, such as national defense funding, nuclear disarmament and — in suprising policy detail — taxes. (Read Reagan's complete remarks .) "When we came into office, the top personal tax rate that the federal government could put on your income was 70 percent," Reagan said in his opening remarks. "Now, you can understand, I think, that if you were getting up in those brackets — there were 14 different tax brackets, depending on the amount of money in each bracket you earned. And when you could look and say, 'If I earn another dollar, I only get to keep 30 cents out of it,' you can imagine the lack of incentive there. Well, we lowered it to 50 percent, and the economy really took off." Later in the session, a student asked Reagan what he considered his greatest achievement as president. Reagan said it was that the House and Senate had separately passed legislation cutting taxes, and he was looking forward to seeing the legislation finalized and become law. "So, I think the fact that we have finally gotten the Congress of the United States to deal with this problem of tax reform is the greatest achievement," Reagan said. "And I'm going to be riding herd all the way to see that we finally get it through." We looked for news reports of Democrats protesting Reagan's broadcast, but were unable to find any in electronic research databases. We should emphasize that this may be due to the fact that many news reports from 1986 are unavailable online. We feel that President George H.W. Bush's speech to students is enough evidence to show that Obama was not the first president to speak "directly to the nation's schoolchildren about persisting and succeeding in school." Bush's speech was quite explicitly "about persisting and succeeding in school." Duncan's statement is not accurate, so we rate it False

"It took Obama six months to pick out a family dog," but he's "cramming health care reform down the country's throat in a fraction of that time. Republicans have been complaining for weeks that President Barack Obama is trying to rush his health care reform bill through Congress. To make their point now, they've gone to the dogs. In an Aug. 13 op-ed in the Washington Examiner , Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour invoked Bo, the White House dog, to illustrate how quickly Obama has tried to pass the 1,000-page bill. Barbour, who chairs the Republican Governors Association and has been mentioned as a possible 2012 presidential contender, wrote, "It took Obama six months to pick out a family dog. Cramming health care reform down the country's throat in a fraction of that time scares people who have been told, accurately, the various bills contain a billion-dollar combination of tax increases and Medicare spending cuts." To judge whether Obama tried to pass the bill "in a fraction" of the time it took him to choose the Portuguese water dog requires examining the timeline for both the health care bill and the selection of Bo. And that's not as easy it might sound. We could choose various dates for the beginning of the dog selection. We could go as far back as Obama's mention of his dog promise in an interview with Men's Health magazine in August 2008, or as recently as his inauguration on Jan. 20, when he and his family moved into the White House. But we believe it's fair to say the process started with the Obama election night celebration on Nov. 4, 2008, when Obama declared that his daughters Sasha and Malia "have earned the new puppy that's coming with us to the White House." It was at that point that speculation began in earnest about what kind of dog they might get. The end date for the puppy hunt is a little imprecise as well. According to the definitive Washington Post account of the dog search, Bo had a "clandestine White House visit in which he won over the Obama girls and their parents" some time in March or early April. Not knowing exactly when it took place, we'll date the end of the search on April 12, when word of the new pooch became breaking news. Total elapsed time: 160 days. That's a bit less than the six months Barbour cited, but we think it's a reasonable estimate and won't knock Barbour for being a bit off. Now, on to more serious matters: health care reform. Here too we face some choices about the start and end dates. We could go all the way back to May 29, 2007, when candidate Obama first unveiled a comprehensive health care proposal in Iowa. Or we could use March 5, 2009, when Obama invited lawmakers and industry leaders to the White House for a forum that included "breakout sessions" and a question-and-answer period to discuss the possible elements of health care legislation. Or we could use July 14, 2009, when House Democratic leaders formally introduced H.R. 3200, the massive bill that's still under discussion. After much internal discussion, we settled on March 5, the date of the forum. That was the point when the Obama administration signaled that health care reform was a key priority. Obama told participants that the forum was "the first discussion in this effort, but it was not the last." As for the end date, Democratic leaders and the White House tried to have the bills passed by the House and the Senate by the start of the August recess — July 31, 2009, for the House and Aug. 7, 2009, for the Senate. It didn't happen, but that seems to be what Barbour was referring to when he said Obama had tried to "cram" the legislation through. (Barbour's office did not respond to our request for more details.) If you start the clock on March 5 and stop it at Aug. 7, it works out to 156 days. That is just a smidgen less than the 160 days it took to find Bo, but it's very close, so it is a stretch to say, as Barbour did, that the health care effort took "a fraction" of the time it took to find a dog. A more favorable comparison from Barbour's perspective would be to start the clock with the introduction of the House bill on July 14. That would make the total duration of the debate a mere 25 days. Using those dates, Barbour would be right to call it a fraction of the 160-day-long dog search. However, choosing such a late start date strikes us as cherry-picking. The health care discussion among lawmakers, the media and the public was well under way by July 14, and the details of the bill had been swirling for weeks, even if they were not in legislative language yet. Ultimately, determining whether Barbour is right depends on which dates you choose. Let us propose an additional caveat, however. No one ever promised that a bill would be ready for the president to sign by the start of August recess. Even if the original goal was to have a bill through both chambers by then, it would still require a House-Senate conference committee to iron out what were sure to be significant differences. Once lawmakers managed to hammer out a consensus bill, both chambers would need time to debate the new measure, pass the bill individually, and send it on to the president. That would likely take several weeks. Given this reality, another conceivable ending date would actually be Oct. 30, 2009 — the target date for the House to adjourn. Using that as the end date, the duration of the health care debate would be 240 days (when starting with March 5, which would be much longer than picking the dog) or 109 days (when starting with July 14, or shorter than the dog selection but not really "a fraction."). So this is one where reasonable people can reach different conclusions. We examined three scenarios and found his claim is only right under the most extreme one — when you start the clock at the July introduction of the bill and stop it at the August recess. But under what we consider the most realistic scenario, starting with the March forum and ending with the October adjournment, Barbour is wrong. So we find his claim Barely True. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly Fals

"Scientists project that the Arctic will be ice-free in the summer of 2013. Sen. John Kerry says climate change is happening faster than we think. In an Aug. 31, 2009, op-ed in the Huffington Post, the Massachusetts Democrat wrote that the threat of climate change "is not an abstract concern for the future." "It is already upon us and its effects are being felt worldwide, right now," he wrote. "Scientists project that the Arctic will be ice-free in the summer of 2013. Not in 2050, but four years from now. Make no mistake: catastrophic climate change represents a threat to human security, global stability, and — yes — even to American national security." We don't debate that the effects of climate change are already being felt. However, Kerry's claim that the Arctic will be ice-free in as little as five years is ominous and worth putting to the Truth-O-Meter. Arctic ice has long been considered a canary in a coal mine for climate scientists; they watch it closely because significant melts indicate an acceleration of climate change effects. In fact, temperatures actually rise faster in icy regions because of something known as ice albedo feedback loop. Ice is more reflective than land or water. When ice melts, the reflectivity of the Earth's surface decreases as well, and more solar radiation is absorbed by the land and the oceans. So, as ice melts, more and more heat from the sun is absorbed, accelerating the warming process. Melting has recently become a more serious problem, and 2007 was a particularly bad year for the Arctic. Then, about 552 billion tons of ice melted from Greenland's ice sheet during the summer — about 15 percent more than the summer average. The summer of 2009 didn't look much better. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, the average rate of melt in July of this year is nearly identical to that of July 2007, in part due to unusual weather patterns and an underlying trend toward higher temperatures. But does this mean ice will be completely gone in the next few years? We talked to Julienne Stroeve, a researcher for the NSIDC, for some perspective. Climate scientists "agree that we'll lose summer ice cover," she said. "As to the exact date, it varies between groups." The summer ice cover is what's left of the sea ice after the annual seasonal melting. It refreezes when temperatures drop. Indeed, predictions are all over the map. Kerry got his data from Wieslaw Maslowski, a researcher from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., who as early as 2007 predicted the Arctic would be ice-free by the summer of 2013. Similar projections have been trumpeted by a handful of other scientists, including Warwick Vincent, director of the Center for Northern Studies at Laval University in Quebec and NASA climate scientist Jay Zwally. (A Kerry spokeswoman directed us to this 2007 article about Maslowski's work.) Meanwhile, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations group relying on the consensus of hundreds of climate scientists, estimated in 2007 that summer ice would largely be gone in the latter part of the 21st century; and Stroeve said NSIDC supports a prediction of 2030. NASA climate researcher Gavin Schmidt wrote in an e-mail to us that Maslowski's prediction isn't necessarily a communitywide opinion. "A fair statement would be that some scientists have predicted summer ice free Arctic Ocean as soon as 2013, but others expect it to happen a little slower — say 2040-2060," Schmidt wrote. Differences occur when research focuses on the area of the Arctic — based on aerial satellite photographs — or on thickness and volume of the ice as well as area, according to Maslowski. In both cases, scientists have seen melting, Maslowski said. However, when estimates are based on the latter method, as Maslowski and his team of researchers have done, melting seems to be happening much faster. "There is no crystal ball, there is no final prediction, just estimates," Maslowski said. "All we are trying to show is that we better start thinking [ice-free summers] could start earlier than 2100 or 2030. We should be prepared for the worst-case scenario." Kerry's claim also leaves out an important nuance; as Stroeve said, most climate scientists agree that summer ice is likely to disappear at some point, but that the oceans will still freeze in the winter for a very long time. However, Kerry's op-ed could make it sound as if the Arctic will devoid of ice all year long. As always with the climate change debate, we've found that there's a wide range of informed opinion on the issue of Arctic melting. In a general sense, Kerry is correct that Arctic ice is melting at a quickening rate. However, he has based his prediction on the earliest and most extreme estimate, when a much wider range of estimates are available and most project the turning point will occur decades from now. And he makes it seem as if the Arctic will be totally ice-free within a few short years when in fact that would only be true for the summer. As a result, we rate Kerry's statement Barely True. Featured Fact-check Instagram posts stated on October 30, 2022 in a photo “There are no greenhouse gas emissions in this photo” of cows grazing. By Kristin Hugo • November 7, 2022 Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly False.

Over the past few months, we've learned that "we just can't count on the media to debunk" lies about health insurance reform Normally, modesty would forbid us factchecking an item about media factchecking. But we couldn't ignore statements in a recent e-mail from Organizing for America, the Democratic advocacy group that emerged from Barack Obama's campaign organization. "Friend," begins a fundraising e-mail from the group signed by director Mitch Stewart. "Over the past few months, two things have become clear about the fight for health insurance reform. "1. Our opponents will create and spread outrageous lies to try to stop President Obama from creating real change. 2. We just can't count on the media to debunk them." The e-mail asks for cash contributions to help Organizing for America fight back. "Stepping in when the media fails is a daunting challenge," Stewart writes, "But this community has already come together and accomplished feats no one thought possible. ... Please donate today to get the truth out." Lest we be accused of tooting our own horn here, we'll confine ourselves to a review of some of the other media coverage of the health reform battle. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 Factcheck.org has debunked many false claims, including an e-mail analysis of what's in a bill being considered in the House of Representatives, as well as a list of " seven big myths " about health reform. CNN's "Truth Squad" has looked at whether you have to go blind in one eye before getting eye care (wrong!) and many other false claims about health care. The Truth Squad cataloged all their fact-checks on their Political Ticker blog . There's also the Associated Press. They reported several fact-checking pieces, including looking at claims Obama has made , as well as claims about euthanasia and illegal immigrants . CQ Politics reported a story on whether health care would be rationed, whether employees could be automatically enrolled in a public plan, and whether the government would have real-time access to bank accounts, among other things. Nope, nope and nope. We could go on (and on), but you get the picture. There is no shortage of reporting on false claims about health care. We know, based on our own reader e-mail, that there is still a lot of confusion about health care reform and what it entails, including among those who are truly undecided. And we've also heard from readers who have negative, factually incorrect ideas about health care reform and don't want to be argued out of their beliefs. Mitch Stewart of Organizing for America might not like the fact that some Americans remain unconvinced. They also probably don't like it that town halls during August have been packed with people making erroneous claims, or that some pundits think Obama is losing the debate over health care. But for Organizing for America to say that the media isn't debunking false claims about health care is wrong -- demonstrably wrong. In fact, it's laughably delusional. We rate their statement Pants on Fire

Schoolchildren across the nation "will be forced to watch the president justify his plans for government-run health care, banks, and automobile companies, increasing taxes on those who create jobs, and racking up more debt than any other president. President Barack Obama plans to speak to the nation's schoolchildren on Sept. 8. According to the U.S. Department of Education, the speech will be about "the importance of persisting and succeeding in school," and the department is offering classroom materials to "engage students and stimulate discussion on the importance of education in their lives." You might think that would be a harmless topic, and that people across the political spectrum could agree on the importance of education. Not so for the Republican Party of Florida, which released a statement "condemning President Obama's use of taxpayer dollars to indoctrinate America’s children to his socialist agenda." "As the father of four children, I am absolutely appalled that taxpayer dollars are being used to spread President Obama's socialist ideology," said Jim Greer, party chairman, in a news release. "The idea that schoolchildren across our nation will be forced to watch the president justify his plans for government-run health care, banks, and automobile companies, increasing taxes on those who create jobs, and racking up more debt than any other president, is not only infuriating, but goes against beliefs of the majority of Americans, while bypassing American parents through an invasive abuse of power," he added. "The Democrats have clearly lost the battle to maintain control of the message this summer, so now that school is back in session, President Obama has turned to American’s children to spread his liberal lies, indoctrinating American’s youngest children before they have a chance to decide for themselves," he concluded. The release, which we received via e-mail, told us to click a link to learn more about Obama's speech. That took us to the U.S. Department of Education Web site, where Secretary Arne Duncan wrote that the speech was about "the importance of education." "The president will challenge students to work hard, set educational goals, and take responsibility for their learning," Duncan wrote. "He will also call for a shared responsibility and commitment on the part of students, parents and educators to ensure that every child in every school receives the best education possible so they can compete in the global economy for good jobs and live rewarding and productive lives as American citizens." We asked the Republican Party of Florida for evidence that Obama intended to discuss health care, banks, automobile companies or taxes with the nation's schoolchildren. They couldn't point us to anything. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 A spokesman said the party was particularly concerned about the study questions the department had provided. "The goal of these materials is to tell students why they should support President Obama in his overall agenda," said Katie Gordon. "If the former administration had done something like this, the media would be handling this a lot differently," she added. We reviewed the study materials but didn't see any mention of controversial issues, let alone any attempt to indoctrinate students in socialism. The pre-K through 6th grade materials said the main ideas of the speech would be "citizenship, personal responsibility, civic duty." The materials for high schoolers mention "personal responsibility, goals, persistence." We searched previous media reports to see if former President George W. Bush ever gave a nationwide address to schoolchildren, but based on our search, it appears he did not. He did, however, regularly visit individual schools and discuss the importance of education with students. We did learn, however, that President George H.W. Bush addressed the nation's students in a televised speech during school hours in 1991. ''I can't understand for the life of me what's so great about being stupid,'' Bush said, according to news reports from the time. He told students to ''block out the kids who think it's not cool to be smart'' and ''work harder, learn more.'' Democrats at the time criticized the speech. "The Department of Education should not be producing paid political advertising for the president, it should be helping us to produce smarter students," said Richard Gephardt, then the Democratic majority leader in the House of Representatives. Republican Newt Gingrich defended Bush's speech, though. "Why is it political for the president of the United States to discuss education?" Gingrich said at the time. "It was done at a nonpolitical site and was beamed to a nonpolitical audience. . . . They wanted to reach the maximum audience with the maximum effect to improve education." But we digress. In ruling on Greer's statement, we wondered whether we should give him latitude for legitimate commentary on Obama's speech. But he crossed a line when he said that Obama intended to discuss "plans for government-run health care, banks, and automobile companies" and other policy matters not germane to education. That is factually incorrect, and the party could not offer any support for the statement. For raising the specter of socialist ideology and indoctrination, the party takes its claim to an additional, absurd level. We rate the Republican Party of Florida's statement Pants on Fire! Update, Sept. 3 : Since we published this item, the Department of Education has modified a line in its classroom materials about the president's speech. A bullet point for activities after the speech used to say, "Write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president. These would be collected and redistributed at an appropriate later date by the teacher to make students accountable to their goals." Now it states, "Write letters to themselves about how they can achieve their short–term and long–term education goals. These would be collected and redistributed at an appropriate later date by the teacher to make students accountable to their goals." That change, however, does not alter our ruling. Based on the press release that the Republican Party of Florida used as a basis for this claim, there remains no evidence that Obama intends to discuss the controversial policy issues of health care, banking, the automotive industry, taxes or the national debt during his address to students. And so we still find the party's claim to be Pants on Fire

"Every survey shows strong satisfaction with private coverage. Opponents of President Barack Obama's health care reform plan say if ain't broke, don't fix it. They're referring to the current health care system in which most Americans get coverage from private insurers. They say most people are happy with private insurance and that it would be a mistake to mess with that. On CNN's Lou Dobbs Show on Aug. 27, 2009, Michael Tuffin, a spokesman for the insurance trade group America's Health Insurance Plans, cited public opinion in arguing that Congress should not approve a government-run insurance option. "What we need to do is to fix the insurance market so we get everybody covered," Tuffin said. "Make pre-existing conditions a thing of the past. Build on the system that works well for about 85 percent of Americans. Every survey shows strong satisfaction with private coverage. We need to build on that system rather than put it at risk with a government-run plan." We wondered if Tuffin was right that "every survey shows strong satisfaction." So we checked the poll results and called experts. We looked at a selection of recent polls in the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation's searchable database of health care survey data. At least two types of questions shed some light on Tuffin's assertion. The question that's most directly on point asks whether the respondent is satisfied with his or her current health plan. The exact wording varies from poll to poll and we'll leave out questions that ask broadly about health care (rather than health plans) because it includes many factors beyond just insurance. A second, related question asks people if they are satisfied with the cost of their health care. We'll start with some examples of the first question. A June 2009 poll by ABC News and the Washington Post found that 42 percent of respondents were "very satisfied" with their health plan and 39 percent were "somewhat satisfied." Just 11 percent were "somewhat dissatisfied" and 8 percent were "very dissatisfied." Meanwhile, a July 2009 poll by Abt SRBI for Time magazine found 53 percent very satisfied, 33 percent somewhat satisfied, 9 percent somewhat dissatisfied and 4 percent very dissatisfied. A Quinnipiac University poll found 49 percent very satisfied, 36 percent somewhat satisfied, 10 percent somewhat dissatisfied and 4 percent very dissatisfied. Even a survey by a Democratic polling firm — Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research for Democracy Corps — found the same general contours. In that June 2009 poll, 44 percent said they were very satisfied, 27 percent said they were somewhat satisfied, 11 percent said they were somewhat dissatisfied and 14 percent said they were very dissatisfied. Gallup asks the question somewhat differently in a survey conducted every November. Between 2001 and 2008, 20 to 28 percent of respondents rated their health care coverage "excellent" while between 39 and 51 percent rated their coverage "good." So, recent surveys generally indicate that Americans are satisfied with their current coverage, although it's not always the "strong satisfaction" that Tuffin claimed, especially in the Gallup data, in which "good" outpaces "excellent" by roughly 2-to-1. And the results for the other question undercut the notion of "strong satisfaction." When the June 2009 CBS- New York Times poll asked respondents what they felt about the cost of their premiums and the items not covered by their insurance, 23 percent said they were very satisfied, 27 percent said somewhat satisfied, 15 percent said not too satisfied and 33 percent — a plurality — said they were not at all satisfied. And when an ABC- Post poll from the same month asked the same question, the results were 23 percent very satisfied, 31 percent somewhat satisfied, 19 percent somewhat dissatisfied and 25 percent very dissatisfied. We asked three experts on health care polling — Robert Blendon of the Harvard School of Public Health, Eric Nielsen, the senior director for media strategies at Gallup and Karlyn Bowman of the conservative American Enterprise Institue — for their view on the data. All agreed that people have consistently said they were satisfied with their health coverage. But Blendon and Nielsen emphasized that these polls have a major complicating factor. Pollsters almost always ask the questions to people who actually have insurance. That means the millions of Americans who are uninsured — and presumably aren't very happy — aren't included in the results. Another significant complication is that most polls do not differentiate between respondents who have private insurance and those who have Medicare, Medicaid or other government-run plans. (Nor, for that matter, do they differentiate between satisfaction levels for, say, HMOs and fee-for-service plans.) Gallup typically finds that between 26 and 33 percent of its respondents to the health care poll — not a trivial fraction — are covered through Medicare or Medicaid. For this reason, it's harder to say whether private insurance is more popular with consumers than government-run programs are. An AHIP spokesman told PolitiFact that the combination of "very" and "somewhat" satisfied — which together account for a big majority in every poll — justifies Tuffin's use of the phrase "strong satisfaction." Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 But we think that to be "somewhat satisfied," as a big chunk of Americans are in every poll, falls short of "strong satisfaction." At the same time, many poll respondents expressed concerns about costs of the health care system. And since most independent polling data doesn't separate Americans' feelings about Medicare and Medicaid from private plans, it's an overreach to attribute Americans' warm feelings about their coverage simply to private insurance. On balance, then, we give Tuffin a Half True

"Since World War II, only Gerald Ford and Bill Clinton have had worse ratings after seven months than President Obama. The pundits and prognosticators are saying President Barack Obama is losing his mojo. And they have facts to back up their claim. "Since World War II, only Gerald Ford and Bill Clinton have had worse ratings after seven months than President Obama," said Republican Newt Gingrich, offering advice to Obama on the op-ed page of the Washington Post. Gingrich's comment was part of a roundup of advice solicited by the Post for the supposedly faltering president; Gingrich advised Obama to reject his left-leaning supporters and move to the center. Being but humble fact-checkers, we can't speak to the wisdom or folly of Gingrich's advice. But we certainly can check his factual statement about Obama's poll numbers, a claim we've seen repeated in other media. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 The Gallup poll actually has been tracking presidential approval ratings since World War II. We consulted Gallup's tracking polls and found that Gingrich is correct. At the seven-month mark, Obama's approval rating was 51 percent. The only two presidents doing worse than Obama were Gerald Ford and Bill Clinton. Interestingly, Ford and Clinton finished their presidencies with decidely different outcomes. Ford's public approval ratings dropped below 50 percent about three months into his presidency. Those numbers improved slightly and plateaued over the next few years. But Ford, who took office upon Richard Nixon's resignation in 1974, lost the 1976 election to Jimmy Carter. Clinton's approval ratings dropped below 50 percent four months into his presidency, falling even further during his first year in office to the high 30s. There were a few more ups and downs during his first term, but he won re-election in 1996 and finished his term in 2001 with approval ratings above 60 percent, despite being impeached by the House of Representatives after a sex scandal. Make of all this what you will. We've looked into Gingrich's statement and found that he is correct. We rate his statement True

"All the really great programs in American history, Social Security, was done without Republicans. Medicare was done without Republican support until the last vote where they realized they had to get on board. With virtually no Republican support for the health care reform bill, some Democrats believe they will have to go it alone. But Howard Dean, the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, isn't worried about the political repercussions. When asked about the risks of abandoning efforts for a bipartisan bill, Dean had this to say: "All the really great programs in American history, Social Security, was done without Republicans. Medicare was done without Republican support until the last vote where they realized they had to get on board," Dean said on the Aug. 25, 2009, episode of The Rachel Maddow Show . "So a lot of the things that have been done that have helped seniors in particular have been done without Republican support at all and there's not going to be any political penalty. The only political penalty will be suffered is if we don't pass a bill and the Republicans know that. And that's why they're not interested in helping pass the bill." Our recollection about the votes on Social Security and Medicare was a little rusty, and we wondered whether Dean was right that both bills passed with no Republican support. To find out, we had to turn back the clock to 1935 — the height of the Great Depression — when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act, an insurance program funded through taxpayer dollars meant to support retirees. The legislation was controversial for a number of reasons, including its perceived effects on the labor market and whether its benefits favored working white men. Nevertheless, on Aug. 8, 1935, the conference report — the final version of the bill that melds together changes made in the House and in the Senate — passed in the House 372-33, with 81 Republicans voting in support. The next day, the bill was passed in the Senate 77-6, with 16 Republicans supporting the legislation. So Social Security did pass with Republican support. Thirty years later, a significant number of Republicans voted in favor of the Medicare bill. The House adopted the conference report on July 27, 1965, 307-116, with 70 Republicans supporting it. And on July 28, the Senate adopted the final version of the bill by a vote of 70-24, with 13 Republicans in favor of the bill. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Medicare bill into law on July 30, 1965. But is Dean correct that the Republicans didn't support Medicare until the end? Donald Ritchie, the associate historian in the U.S. Senate, told us that the Republican support wasn't just a last-minute phenomenon. During the discussion of both bills, "There were always progressive Republicans and liberal Republicans, some of whom supported Roosevelt and Johnson," Ritchie said. Johnson had the political muscle to pass Medicare because the 1964 elections ushered in 42 new Democrats to the House of Representatives, giving the party a two-thirds majority overall and a larger majority on the Ways and Means Committee, where the legislation would originate. Up until then, many members of the committee, including its Democratic chairman, Wilbur D. Mills, opposed the idea of government-funded health care. In fact, Mills proved a tough sell in 1965 until some of his own pet proposals were added to the legislation. One of those — the addition of a voluntary, supplemental health care plan — had its roots in a Republican alternative bill. In the House, no Republicans voted for the bill until it reached the floor. It passed the Ways and Means Committee by a party-line vote of 17-8, although the panel's GOP members endorsed some of the bill's non-health care related provisions, according to the 1965 Congressional Quarterly Almanac . Likewise, all four Republicans on the House Rules Committee — the panel that sets the boundaries of debate on all bills that come to the House floor — voted against the bill. In the Senate, however, there was Republican support in the Finance Committee. When the panel cast its final vote, the bill passed 12-5, with four of the committee's eight Republicans supporting it. (President Barack Obama would probably love to get even that much GOP backing.) So we find Dean is glossing over the details and exaggerating the partisan split. Both Social Security and Medicare were indeed championed by Democrats, but passed with the help of Republican votes. And while some GOP members waited until the last minute to support Medicare, it was backed by half the Republicans on the Senate committee. So we find Dean's statement False. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022

"Under the plan, for the first five years your employer not only has to keep the coverage, but you can't migrate to the public plan. Rep. Anthony Weiner went on the Fox News Channel to offer a spirited defense of House Democrats' plans for health reform, taking questions on the show Fox & Friends . Brian Kilmeade, one of the Fox & Friends hosts, asked him, "What if your company who gives you health care insurance, which you know happens more often than not, says: 'You know what? I'm looking at my budget. I'm going to go the public option, because it's cheaper. The quality might not be as good, but when I come to balance my books, I'm still offering my people insurance. The quality is dropped and I save some money.'" "Prohibited under the plan," said Weiner, a Democrat from Brooklyn, N.Y. "Under the plan, for the first five years your employer not only has to keep the coverage, but you can't migrate to the public plan. The concern was we didn't want a giant movement." Weiner's point that employers can't immediately shift workers to the public option is right. But almost all the other details are wrong. We've read the 1,000-page House bill and there is no rule that employers have to keep coverage for five years, for example. We asked Weiner's office for an explanation and didn't hear back. To examine the rest of his comments, let's recap the basics of the House bill: Employer-provided insurance stays in place. Individuals and small businesses go to a new national health care exchange, where they can comparison shop for health insurance. Private insurers compete on the exchange, but one of the plans is a public option, a low-cost, basic insurance plan offered by the government. During year 1, small businesses with 10 or fewer employees can use the exchange. During the year 2, it's 20 or fewer employees. During year 3, a health choices commissioner has the authority to phase in businesses with more employees. The legislation doesn't say if or when every employer would be allowed on the exchange. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 The health bill would also set new standards for coverage, requiring insurers to cover basic procedures and adhere to new consumer protection rules. Employer-sponsored insurance will have to meet those same consumer protection rules, but they have a five-year grace period before they have to comply. (See Section 102 on page 17 of the House bill.) So employers can keep their current plans for up to five years before the plans have to conform to the new rules. But there's nothing in the bill that forces them to keep their current coverage. They can change insurance providers just as they do now. Only if they choose to drop coverage would they have to pay an additional tax. Weiner also says, "you can't migrate to the public plan." That's true only if you're talking about large employers having access to the exchange. Individuals are allowed to shop on the exchange right away, if they're willing to drop their employer-sponsored coverage. "You" might not want to, though: In most cases, employers pay part of their workers' insurance premiums. A worker with a large employer who drops coverage from their job to go to the exchange would lose that contribution. In fact, this point also undermines the premise of Kilmeade's question. He said that if he's an employer, he can "go the public option, because it's cheaper. The quality might not be as good, but when I come to balance my books, I'm still offering my people insurance." This is not an accurate description of how employers are allowed to use the exchange. The bill clearly states that employers cannot select a particular insurance plan for their employees on the exchange. (See Section 202, page 81.) The employers can contribute a set amount to help cover their employees, but they can't force their workers to pick the public option if the workers are willing to pay more to get private insurance. So the idea that employers can sign their workers up for the public option to save money is wrong. Getting back to Weiner's statement, he said that an employer has to keep coverage for the first five years. But there's nothing in the legislation that forces companies to keep coverage, although large employers would face a tax penalty if they dropped it altogether. He also says you can't migrate to the public plan. It's true that employers can't force their workers onto the public plan, but individuals can select it if they choose to. The only thing Weiner gets right is that employers can't dump their workers into the public option. Almost all the details are wrong. We rate his statement Barely True. Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly Fals

"It's costing every American who is insured $1,100 to pick up the cost of uncompensated care that goes on at the emergency room. In an effort to sell their health insurance overhaul, Democrats are focusing their pitch on how reform will help the average person. Their latest claim: Health care will actually be cheaper if everyone is insured. To illustrate their point, Democrats are contending that insurance policies are more expensive than they should be because they include a "hidden health tax" — an extra charge used to cover the millions of uninsured patients who are treated in the costly emergency room. Barbara Boxer, a Democratic senator from California, talked about that cost on the Rachel Maddow Show on Aug. 10, 2009. "They say we have the greatest health care in the world," Boxer said. "Well, the fact is, we pay twice as much and our outcomes aren't as good. We have 48 million people with no health care. As a result, they walk into emergency rooms. It's costing every American who is insured $1,100 to pick up the cost of uncompensated care that goes on at the emergency room." This is not a new claim. Back on the campaign trail, former candidate Hillary Clinton said each "family policy has a $900 hidden tax" because of the cost of the uninsured. We found that her estimate was right, but that was over a year ago. So we thought the claim was worth revisiting. And note the wording difference. Clinton said each "family policy" had the hidden cost. But Boxer said "every American who's insured" is paying it. We'll explain the significance of that in a minute. When we checked Clinton's claim, we relied on a report from consumer health care advocate Families USA that was published in June 2005. The group revisited the issue in May 2009 in a report called "Hidden Health Tax: Americans Pay a Premium." The group found that about 86.7 million people were uninsured for some period of time between 2007 and 2008, with about a fourth of those people uninsured for the entire year. The report notes that these estimates were before the recession caused many people to lose their jobs and their health coverage, so the actual numbers are likely to be higher. The report says doctors and hospitals still provide treatment to the uninsured and have to compensate by charging more to insurers. "In turn, the costs that are shifted to insurers are passed on in the form of higher premiums to consumers and businesses that purchase health coverage." The practice is otherwise known as cost-shifting. For the insured, that translates to an extra $1,017 for family health care coverage and about $368 per individual policy, according to Families USA. In 2006, the New America Foundation, a left-leaning think tank, looked at the cost of covering the uninsured in California and came up with similar estimates: "We conservatively estimate that about 10 percent of California health care premiums can be attributed to cost-shifting due to the uninsured," the report said. "This means that cost shifting inflates the average annual premium for a California family by $1,186. Individuals purchasing policies pay an additional $455 annual in higher premiums. But a 2008 Kaiser Family Foundation report puts the number much lower than the 10 percent in the California study. It predicted if all private funding for uncompensated care were paid with private insurance payments, it would only amount to 1.7 percent of private insurance premiums. The Kaiser report did not provide a comparable estimate to the $1,186. Kaiser singles out the Families USA study from 2005 and says it is flawed because it doesn't consider a full picture of how doctors and hospitals absorb the costs of the uninsured. And the Kaiser report questions whether cost-shifting is so strongly related to an increase in the number of uninsured. For example, the paper argues that hospitals and insurers would negotiate the same prices for care regardless of the number of uninsured patients. If uncompensated care was affecting these negotiations, its share of hospital costs would go up with the share of the population that is uninsured. But it has not, the report concludes. That brings us back to Boxer's claim. We find it is flawed in two ways. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 First, she says the cost for "every American who is insured" is $1,100. If she had said that was per family as Clinton did, she would be in the ballpark according to the Families USA and New America Foundation studies. But those studies say the cost per individual policy was $368 and $468. So she is way off on that count. Secondly, the Kaiser report has raised significant questions about the Families USA study and made a plausible case that much of the cost of the uninsured is absorbed by doctors and hospitals. So in our view that discounts the accuracy of the groups' studies. So we find Boxer's claim Barely True. Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly False.

"President Obama . . . wants to mandate circumcision. PARENTAL ADVISORY: We don't imagine there are a lot of kids reading PolitiFact, but this item contains explicit language you don't normally see here. Parental discretion is advised. A new rap song by the hip-hop artist Jay-Z takes a shot at Rush Limbaugh. But the radio talk show host — referring to the rapper as "Mr. Z" — said he was honored to be mentioned. "Does this, Snerdley, mark a new development in my career to be singled out in a rap song by the famous rapper Jay-Z?" he said to his call screener on his Aug. 25, 2009, show. "I guess it is. As far as I know I have never been mentioned in a rap song by anybody. I guess it means I've made it. I'm now in a rap tune by the famous rapper Jay-Z. (The song says) '[T]ell Bill O'Reilly to fall back. Tell Rush Limbaugh to get off my balls.' I would remind the rapper Jay-Z: Mr. Z, it is President Obama who wants to mandate circumcision. We had that story yesterday; and that means if we need to save our penises from anybody, it's Obama. I did not know I was on anybody's balls, either. I'm happy to know that they think I am, though! But I didn't actually know that I was." It's an issue Limbaugh explored on his Aug. 24 show as well, saying, "Not that I'm against circumcision, but it's a family's decision. Leave our penises alone, too, Obama!" He cited a Fox News story about an upcoming report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that may recommend circumcision for newborn boys as a way to prevent the spread of HIV/AIDS, because studies show that the procedure can reduce transmission of the disease from women to men. The CDC will be discussing what to include in the recommendations at the National HIV Prevention Conference, which is being held in Atlanta this week. The CDC is still mulling its decision, CDC spokesman Scott Bryan said in an e-mail. "It is important to note that the recommendations are still in development and the CDC has made no determination at this time about the final content," he wrote. "There is a deliberative process for our circumcision recommendations that allows for both external and internal CDC experts to weigh in, followed by a period of public comment after the draft recommendations are published. With respect to infant circumcision, it is important to recognize that many options are still being considered in this process, including simply educating parents about the potential benefits and risks in order to ensure they can make an informed decision." CDC is also considering whether to recommend circumcision for adult men who are at high risk for HIV infection, Bryan wrote. He emphasized that the recommendations "will be completely voluntary." We wondered whether Obama had been involved in the issue and specifically in the CDC's decision to write the guidance, as Limbaugh's claim indicates. We scoured his voting record on Congressional Quarterly , his position papers and speeches on Project Vote Smart , and even typed "circumcision" into the White House Web site , and came up with nothing. From what we found, Obama has not used the word "circumcision" in any public statement as a candidate or as president. We also found no evidence that he has recommended circumcusion to the CDC. The only link — and it's an indirect one — that we could find between Obama and the CDC's efforts was a press release on the White House Web site announcing a series of HIV/AIDS community discussions, the first one being held in conjunction with the National HIV Prevention Conference we mentioned earlier. But the release did not mention circumcision. It turns out that circumcision recommendations have been under discussion since 2007, when George W. Bush was president. Given the fact the CDC was pondering the idea back then, it is no more accurate to say Obama wants to mandate circumcision than to say Bush did. So, back to Limbaugh's claim. He says Obama "wants to mandate circumcision." But the CDC's eventual recommendations — if they even include circumcision — will be voluntary, not mandatory. In addition, we could we find no connection between Obama and the new guidance, and no evidence that Obama had even used the word in a public forum. In fact, the recommendations were under discussion long before Obama took office. This one is ridiculous enough to set the meter ablaze — Pants on Fire! Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022

"Medicare has at least $80 billion worth of fraud a year. That's a full 20 percent of every dollar that's spent on Medicare goes to fraud. On the Aug. 24 edition of Fox News Channel's On the Record With Greta Van Susteren , Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla. — an ob-gyn who has taken a leading position against Democratic health care reform efforts — took aim at Medicare fraud. The senator said, "If you look at Medicare and Medicaid, both vital programs today, they're highly inefficient. People claim that they're efficient. Medicare has at least $80 billion worth of fraud a year. That's a full 20 percent of every dollar that's spent on Medicare goes to fraud. And Medicaid is not much better. We don't actually have the numbers because half the states aren't reporting their Medicaid fraud. So when you have programs that are designed to be defrauded, even though they're well-intended and they are helping people, we ought to think about how do we get better value for that money and less money going out the door. " In this item, we'll focus on Coburn's estimate that there is $80 billion in Medicare fraud annually. After speaking to health care experts and searching on the Internet, we found that while Medicare fraud is a notable concern, statistics offered to document the scale of the problem are slippery at best. On May 6, 2009, Daniel Levinson, the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services, testified before the Senate Special Committee on Aging that "it is not possible to measure precisely the extent of fraud in Medicare and Medicaid." As a result, estimates of fraud in the system vary — widely. The number Levinson offered lawmakers is one from the National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association. Levinson said that the NHCAA — whose members include private insurance companies and government agencies — estimated that "at least 3 percent — or more than $60 billion each year — is lost to fraud." But as Levinson was careful to note, the $60 billion figure covers fraud in all U.S. health care expenditures — not just in Medicare, which would mean that Coburn is way off in his estimate. But before drawing any conclusions, we turned to the NHCAA for more background on that figure, which is, to be exact, $68 billion. Louis Saccoccio, the NHCAA's executive director, told PolitiFact that the 3 percent estimate is calculated from the experiences of the private insurers who belong to his group. But he emphasized that it is indeed an estimate, and a conservative one at that. "No one has a hard number," he said, "because you can't go out with a survey and ask, 'How much are you robbing from Medicare?'" Another prominent figure in the field, Malcolm Sparrow, argues that estimates in the range of 3 percent are low — "ridiculously low," he put it in an interview. Sparrow, a onetime fraud investigator and detective chief inspector with the British police service, is now a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. Sparrow agrees with Saccoccio that no one has put together an accurate accounting of Medicare fraud. But he argues that the kind of errors detected by current control systems are primarily technical glitches — not the products of criminal minds setting out to defraud the system. And given that Medicare offers a large pot of money, a high degree of automation in its claims-paying process and limited auditing capabilities, he argues, the program is a godsend for dedicated con artists. "Criminals, who are intent on stealing as much as they can and as fast as possible, and who are prepared to fabricate diagnoses, treatments, even entire medical episodes, have a relatively easy time breaking through all the industry's defenses," Sparrow testified before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime and Drugs on May 20, 2009. "The criminals' advantage is that they are willing to lie. And provided they learn to submit their bills correctly, they remain free to lie. The rule for criminals is simple: If you want to steal from Medicare, or Medicaid, or any other health care insurance program, learn to bill your lies correctly. Then, for the most part, your claims will be paid in full and on time, without a hiccup, by a computer, and with no human involvement at all." His evidence is anecdotal but suggestive. In a recent academic paper, Sparrow noted that then-FBI Director Louis Freeh testified in 1995 that cocaine traffickers in Florida and California were switching from drug dealing to health care fraud because they discovered that health care fraud was safer, easier and more lucrative than the drug trade, and that it carried a smaller risk of detection. In 1997, Sparrow added, the New York Times reported that organized crime families in New York City and New Jersey were abandoning extortion and bid-rigging in favor of new criminal enterprises such as health insurance fraud. Usually, he writes, major frauds are uncovered by whistleblowers rather than audit systems. One example is the case of Columbia HCA, a major hospital chain that in 2003 agreed to a $1.7 billion settlement with the Justice Department after 10 years of investigations initiated by whistleblower allegations. Sparrow also points to suits under the federal False Claims Act as evidence of a major fraud problem in the health care sector. The False Claims Act allows citizens to allege the existence of defrauding the government and then reap a share of the government's savings once the improprieties are rooted out. False Claims Act suits against HHS now account for a large majority of all such suits filed annually. "There is apparently no other area of federal spending so vulnerable to fraud, and so deeply infected," Sparrow writes. Sparrow testified that because HHS audit procedures do not dig very deep, "we now have no reliable indications of the overall fraud loss rates for the Medicare program." (A spokeswoman for the HHS Inspector General's Office declined to comment on Sparrow's analysis.) Now, back to Coburn's assertion. When we called his office, his staff told us that his source for the comment was an article in the National Review , a conservative magazine. The July 15, 2009, article said of Sparrow, "He thinks that as much as 20 percent of the federal health care budget is consumed by fraud, which would be $85 billion a year for Medicare." That's pretty close to what Coburn said on Van Susteren's show. But is the senator right? It depends on whether you trust NHCAA or Sparrow. Total Medicare outlays were $431 billion in 2007, or 19 percent of total national health care expenditures. If one assumes that fraud is equally prevalent in Medicare and other types of health care, that would make the Medicare share of the NHCAA's $68 billion fraud estimate $13 billion. And $13 billion in fraud divided by $431 billion in total Medicare outlays would be 3 percent of total Medicare expenditures — a far cry from Coburn's 20 percent. (A rate of 20 percent is "possible, but I don't think it's very plausible," Saccoccio said.) Skeptical that Medicare is only being defrauded at rates equal to the private sector? Let's triple that number to $39 billion in fraud. If you do that, it still comes out to 9 percent — less than half of what Coburn asserted it was. In the meantime, Coburn's dollar figure — $80 billion in fraud — would be no more accurate if the NHCAA is right. The group says there's $68 billion in fraud in all health care expenditures — but Coburn's figure for Medicare alone is bigger than that. However, by Sparrow's analysis, Coburn could indeed be in the ballpark. In an interview, Sparrow himself said the Coburn estimate is "perfectly plausible." He added that Coburn "doesn't know any more than you or I do." Because of the uncertainty about how much Medicare fraud actually exists, we think Coburn oversteps when he states definitively that "Medicare has at least $80 billion worth of fraud a year." Not only is there a statistical disagreement over how big the problem currently is, but all the key players also agree that there are simply no good data to rely on. Still, because Coburn's estimate is considered plausible by a leading academic in the field, we can't dismiss it as undeniably false. We rate Coburn's statement Half True. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022

"Any government-run 'public' plan ... forces more employers to drop employee coverage due to rising costs and pay an additional 8% payroll tax for each worker. Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite sent a mailing to constituents explaining her opposition to the Democrats' health care reform plan. "Unfortunately, I believe the legislation currently being considered in the House of Representatives could spark the government takeover of health care," she wrote. "The American people will have fewer choices, rationed care and higher costs. This is the last thing we need right now." Brown-Waite, a Florida Republican, lists bullet points for why she opposes reform. One of the points says, "Any Government-Run 'Public' Plan ... Forces more employers to drop employee coverage due to rising costs and pay an additional 8% payroll tax for each worker." Her phrasing is misleading. As we've noted before , the House health care reform bill leaves the employer-provided health insurance in place. It seeks to make it easier for individuals to buy health insurance on their own by creating a national health care exchange, a kind of one-stop shop for health insurance. One of the options on the exchange will be a government-run plan that provides basic coverage at a price likely to be lower than private insurers. So her description of the overall health bill as a "government-run 'public' plan" is a distortion of the plan. That is only one element, and a small one at that. In another item, we addressed claims from the mailer about how much the health bill would cost. Here, we'll address her claim that health reform "forces more employers to drop employee coverage due to rising costs and pay an additional 8% payroll tax for each worker." It's true that the overall plan imposes a penalty on employers who don't offer health insurance to their workers. Employers with payrolls over $400,000 pay an 8 percent penalty on their total payroll. That means it's not a tax for "each worker," but a tax on overall payroll. Small businesses are exempt from a penalty if their total payroll is less than $250,000 a year. We've read all 1,000 pages of the House bill, though, and it seems clear that the penalty is intended to be a disincentive to dropping health care insurance. The tax penalty is part of a section titled "Shared Responsibility" that includes a requirement that all individuals carry health insurance. Featured Fact-check Facebook posts stated on October 14, 2022 in an Instagram post Video footage showing Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi hiding on Jan. 6, 2021, shows the U.S. Capitol attack “was a setup.” By Madison Czopek • October 17, 2022 Brown-Waite writes that the plan forces more employers to drop coverage "due to rising costs." Some who oppose the reform believe that it will inevitably result in higher costs, forcing employers to drop coverage. But that would be an unintended consequence. The exchange is intended to foster competition and lower costs, not force people into a public plan. (For more details on this issue, read our story Health care reform: a simple explanation .) The mailer gives the impression that the bill forces employers to drop coverage and then taxes them to create a government plan. We turned to the Employee Benefit Research Institute, a nonpartisan research center that collects and analyzes data on employee benefit plans. The institute does not take positions on policy issues. We asked if it was likely that employers would drop coverage if the House bill passed. "I don't think anybody really knows what employers are going to do," said Paul Fronstein, a senior researcher. Employers offer benefits voluntarily right now, he said, and they do it for business reasons, because it helps them recruit and retain workers. Most workers prefer not to have to buy insurance on their own. "Employers offer coverage to be competitive in the labor market, and they offer coverage because their workers have no alternative due to the dysfunctional individual market," he said. If health reform makes the individual market more competitive, employers might not feel like they must offer health benefits to retain their workers. We should note that the tax penalty, sometimes called an employer mandate, remains controversial and may not be part of the final legislation. We find Brown-Waite's statement misrepresents the way the bill works. We asked her office for an explanation but got no response. It's worth noting that the mailing reads like campaign literature, but was actually paid for with tax dollars. Members of Congress get to mail their constituents without paying postage, a perk known as "franking," and Brown-Waite's mailer clearly states it was "prepared, published and mailed at taxpayer expense." We find Brown-Waite's mailer does not accurately describe the bill. She incorrectly describes the overall plan as a "government-run 'public' plan." She is right that there is an 8 percent tax, but she mischaracterizes it as a tax on all businesses, when it is a tax on employers who do not offer health insurance. We rate her statement Barely True. Editor's note: This statement was rated Barely True when it was published. On July 27, 2011, we changed the name for the rating to Mostly Fals