The Shocking Truth: Newt & Co. Lie About Health Care Reform

[Omaha Steve]

http://blog.aflcio.org/2010/04/08/the-shocking-truth-newt-co-lie-about-health-care-reform/

by Mike Hall, Apr 8, 2010

Pop quiz time. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich is making claims about the new health care reform law that are:

1. Wildly inaccurate.
2. Stemming from a partisan analysis based on false assumptions.
3. An outright misrepresentation.
4. All of the above.

The answer to the question about Gingrich’s claims, like those of so many radio blabbers, tea pot stirrers and even “mainstream” (if any are still around) Republicans, is ”all of the above.”

The scary part is that some of these outlandish pronouncements and outright lies can gain traction. The good folks at Media Matters for America pull the pins out from under some of the more recent fibs about health care reform. (We’ve got facts and fliers on health care reform at the AFL-CIO health care resources page here as well. Check it out).

Let’s start with Newt and his oft-repeated claim that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) will hire 16,000 new “agents” to act as “health police.” Media Matters notes that both FactCheck.org and PolitiFact.com debunk Gingrich’s dire warning about IRS agents in the exam room with you.

The basics are (click here for the details) he is using a figure from a Republican House Ways and Means Committee report that looked at a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis. The report examined how many new employees, clerks, accountant, telephone operators and the like, not the dreaded auditing IRS agents, the IRS might need to hire to inform small business and workers about tax credits and subsidies they are entitled to under the new law. But then, with pretzel logic, the House Republican report twists the numbers and the facts and then Gingrich added his own twists and turns.

And that’s how we got to D, all of the above.

FULL story at link.