Sunday, November 1, 2009

Mitch: The Public Option 'May Cost You Your Life'

Thanks to the folks at Think Progress for catching Mitch's latest attempt at shameless fearmongering:

For months now, conservatives have been scare-mongering about health care reform with outrageous claims that it would lead to “death panels” that could “pull the plug on grandma.” In Congress, some Republican backbenchers have claimed that Americans will die if health care reform passes Congress. “We’ve been battling this socialist health care, the nationalization of health care, that is going to absolutely kill senior citizens,” said Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ radio show. “They’ll put them on lists and force them to die early.”

Now, the scaremongering has been embraced by the congressional GOP’s leadership. In an interview on Dennis Miller’s radio show [last week], Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said that the public option “may cost you your life.”

...In his efforts to derail health care reform, McConnell has regularly fear-mongered about the British and Canadian health care systems, claiming that a public option would look just like them. Unsurprisingly, McConnell has gotten his facts wrong when he’s described other health care systems.