Health Care FAQ: Separating Fact From Fiction

by Benjo

If you've been following the debate on health care reform, you know that a lot of half-truths, rumors, and flat-out lies are going around. Today, the White House published an FAQ to sort out what's true from what's not. Since they couldn't get to all the questions, I answered a few below.

Is Obama's health care plan socialism?
No. People throw the word socialism around a lot these days. What they tend to forget, though, is that our highways, fire departments, and postal service have been government-run for decades. To suggest that the existence of a public health care option will suddenly turn the United States into a socialist nation is preposterous: we're already there. The word for where this health care plan will leave us is Communism.

Is it true that the health care plan would kill our babies, or establish “death panels,” as former Alaska governor Sarah Palin has suggested?
Absolutely not. The government's confiscation of all first-borns will eliminate the need for any such death panels.

Is it true that Obama's health care plan would result in the euthanization of many elderly citizens?
This one is patently false. Euthanasia is the choice to actively put a person to death. Obama's plan would deny treatment to a person, so that the person withers away passively—i.e., on their own time. This is not euthanasia, and it is completely unfair to the president to suggest otherwise. Any pro-lifer would surely tell you that, just as abortion is a sin because it interferes with God's will, Obama's plan is ethically sound because it allows God's will to be followed.

Is Obama Hitler?
Since he has not released his birth certificate, there is no way to know for sure. But the Obama-Hitler comparisons made in recent days by Rush Limbaugh and others do have major factual problems. For instance, Hitler killed 6 million Jews, Polish Christians, gypsies, homosexuals, and handicapped individuals. Obama's plan, on the other hand, would allow all elderly persons to perish equitably, without regard to color or creed.