TASK DEFINITION: Given a paragraph, generate a claim that is supported by the given paragraph. 1) The claim must contain information from within the paragraph. 2) A sentence within the paragraph can be used as a claim. 3) The claim should not have contradictions within the paragraph. 4) The claim should be at most one sentence long.
PROBLEM: "In his address to a joint session of Congress, President Barack Obama brought up the most explosive charge to emerge in the health care debate: the specter of ""death panels."" ""Some of people's concerns (about the health care legislation) have grown out of bogus claims spread by those whose only agenda is to kill reform at any cost,"" Obama told lawmakers and a national television audience on Sept. 9, 2009. ""The best example is the claim, made not just by radio and cable talk show hosts, but by prominent politicians, that we plan to set up panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens. Now, such a charge would be laughable if it weren't so cynical and irresponsible. It is a lie, plain and simple."" The president was referring to a notion most prominently raised by former Alaska Republican Gov. Sarah Palin in a note posted on her Facebook page on Aug. 7, 2009. ""And who will suffer the most when they ration care?"" Palin wrote. ""The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil."" We have read all 1,000-plus pages of the Democratic bill and examined versions in various committees. There is no panel in any version of the health care bills in Congress that judges a person's ""level of productivity in society"" to determine whether someone is ""worthy"" of health care. When we first assessed Palin's claim on Aug. 7, 2009, we gave it our lowest rating . Palin may have jumped to a conclusion about the Obama administration's efforts to promote comparative effectiveness research. Such research has nothing to do with evaluating patients for ""worthiness."" Rather, comparative effectiveness research finds out which treatments work better than others. The health reform bill being considered in the House of Representatives says that a Comparative Effectiveness Research Center shall ""conduct, support, and synthesize research"" that looks at ""outcomes, effectiveness, and appropriateness of health care services and procedures in order to identify the manner in which diseases, disorders, and other health conditions can most effectively and appropriately be prevented, diagnosed, treated, and managed clinically."" The idea here, which Obama and his budget director Peter Orszag have discussed many times, is to make it easier for doctors, health care workers, insurance companies and patients to find out which treatments are the most effective, as determined by clinical studies and other research. The House bill states in the section creating the Comparative Effectiveness Research Center and an oversight commission that ""nothing in this section shall be consd to permit the Commission or the Center to mandate coverage, reimbursement, or other policies for any public or private payer."" In other words, comparative effectiveness research will tell you whether treatment A is better than treatment B. But the bill as written won't mandate which treatment doctors and patients have to select. Nothing has emerged to suggest to us that the death panels claim is any more today than it was when Palin first floated it. We still rate it as today. In our book, that counts as a ""lie, plain and simple."" So we find Obama's claim ."

SOLUTION: The claim ... that we plan to set up panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens ... is a lie, plain and simple.

PROBLEM: The company said the trial will continue unchanged as per the recommendation of a data monitoring committee. The trial was testing Bristol-Myers' drugs Opdivo and Yervoy, against Opdivo alone, in patients with advanced melanoma. The combination failed to show a statistically significant benefit in patients whose tumors had 1% or lower levels of the PD-L1 protein being targeted, the company said. The American Cancer Society estimates that about 96,480 melanoma cases will be diagnosed in the United States this year. Bristol-Myers shares were trading at $55.99 before the bell.

SOLUTION: Bristol-Myers misses main goal of late-stage skin cancer trial.

PROBLEM: "Along with Doritos and Bud Lite commercials on Super Bowl Sunday, viewers in the Washington area saw a political ad against taxes on food and soft drinks. We wondered if the ad was correct that politicians are seeking to tax sodas and food, so we decided to put the claim to the Truth-O-Meter. The ad features a woman talking to the camera as she shops in a grocery store. It has been airing for several weeks in selected markets on cable channels such as CNN. ""Feeding a family is difficult enough in today's economy,"" the woman says. ""Now, some politicians want the government telling me how I should do it. They want to put new taxes on a lot of groceries I buy, like soft drinks, juice drinks, sports drinks, even flavored waters, trying to control what we eat and drink with taxes. Give me a break. I can decide what to buy without government help. The government is just getting too involved in our personal lives."" At that point, a narrator says, ""Government needs to trim its budget fat and leave our grocery budgets alone."" First, some background on the group airing the ad, Americans Against Food Taxes. The group is spearheaded by the American Beverage Association, which represents the makers of sodas and other drinks. According to Advertising Age, the American Beverage Association decided to form the coalition in June 2009, when the idea of taxing sodas and other sweet beverages was being considered as a way to fund the Democratic health care bill. The coalition includes dozens of members, including 7-Eleven, Inc., Burger King Corp., Domino's Pizza, the Grocery Manufacturers Association, McDonalds, the National Association of Convenience Stores, Snack Food Association, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Wendy's/Arby's Group, Inc. Although the food and beverage tax was not included in the health care law, the group has continued to run advertising to forestall any effort to revive such taxes. People watching the ad might think Congress is still considering such a proposal at the federal level. But if you listen closely, the ad played during the Super Bowl is careful to refer to ""politicians"" and ""government"" rather than ""Washington"" or ""Congress."" (By contrast, other ads the group has run have mentioned Washington.) The ad is correct that politicians in some cash-strapped states are considering food and drink taxes. In the last two years, many states and cities considered such taxes. According to the Campaign for Healthy Kids, an advocacy group that generally favors such efforts, taxes on soda were enacted in Washington state and proposed -- but not passed -- in Mississippi, New Mexico and the city of Philadelphia. In New York, Assemblyman Felix Ortiz, a New York City Democrat, has proposed a tax on foods high in calories, fat or carbohydrates, for the past several legislative sessions. Most state lawmakers were sworn in only a few weeks ago, so we can't predict how many states will consider soda-tax proposals this year. But already, legislators have introduced bills to impose or raise the tax on sodas and/or snack foods in Arizona, Connecticut, Hawaii, Mississippi, New Mexico, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Vermont and West Virginia, according to separate legislative tracking by the Center for Consumer Freedom, a pro-business advocacy group, and Yale University's Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. So while Congress has not been active on this proposal since it was dropped from the health care law, it's been proposed in many states. The ad is correct that ""some politicians want to put new taxes on a lot of groceries."" We find the statement ."

SOLUTION:
Some politicians want to put new taxes on a lot of groceries.