Snopes: Betsy McCaughey's a Liar

For those of you who may have received the VERY scary email insisting that the healthcare reform bill mandates euthanasia counseling for seniors every five years... sigh... such a horrible idea is obviously FALSE, according to snopes.com.

Snopes calls "euthanasia counceling" false,

(Snopes)

"She describes this term as 'code' for 'limiting care based on a patient’s age.'

In fact the term for that is 'age rating,' a practice used by insurance companies to discriminate against older Americans against which AARP is vigorously fighting, and we look forward to her next column to help the cause.

"Comparative effectiveness research, on the other hand, is a technical term that just means giving doctors and patients the ability to compare different kinds of treatments to find out which one works best for which patient."

— AARP

Read more from Snopes.com.

What this Betsy McCaughey lady describes as forced euthanasia on Fred Thomson's radio show is really nothing more unusual than Medicare paying for a senior's consultation with their doctor about the usual stuff related to your end of life care, your DNR, medical power of attorney. This measure ensures that Medicare pays for consultations your family may have with your doctor when you're unable to do so.

AARP responds to McCaughey' healthcare reform scare tactics, calling her comments "rife with gross, cruel distortions".

"Betsy McCaughey’s recent commentary on health care reform in various media outlets is rife with gross—and even cruel—distortions."

The FOX-Limbaugh-Drudge set is trying to cast Obama as a character as bad as George Bush... a murderer... but they have no actual bodies to dig up, like the million or so that Bush killed, so they have to invent some instead. Some of them crave the comparison so strongly, because they know, deep down, that Bush's political supporters are certainly complicit in his most diabolical mortal sins, his war crimes.

To mischaracterize Obama is to mischaracterize those of us who support him, and that's what they really want. They want us to lower our moral estimation of ourselves, so that we have no higher standards to use in our judgment of them. None of this is conscious. Their sense of guilt has made lunatics of them.

Would you Rapture-ready birth certificate conspiracy nuts please Rapture already, and leave the rest of us the hell alone, so we can get on with building a civil, livable society once you're gone?

Read more from AARP.