Who Is Behind Right-Wing’s Health Care Hysteria?
Who Is Behind Right-Wing’s Health Care Hysteria?
While Rush Limbaugh has taken credit for spreading the health IT falsehood, the real mastermind behind the story may be Betsy McCaughey, Gov. George Pataki’s (R-NY) Lieutenant Governor during his first term and an Adjunct Fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute.
McCaughey wrote the Bloomberg editorial that sparked the Fox News coverage and as the Atlantic’s James Fallows notes in his article about why President Clinton’s health reform efforts failed, she’s quite the trouble maker:
Much of the problem for the plan seemed, at least in Washington, to come not even from mandatory alliances but from an article by Elizabeth McCaughey, then of the Manhattan Institute, published in The New Republic last February. The article’s working premise was that McCaughey, with no ax to grind and no preconceptions about health care, sat down for a careful reading of the whole Clinton bill. Appalled at the hidden provisions she found, she felt it her duty to warn people about what the bill might mean. The title of her article was “No Exit,” and the message was that Bill and Hillary Clinton had proposed a system that would lock people in to government-run care. “The law will prevent you from going outside the system to buy basic health coverage you think is better,” McCaughey wrote in the first paragraph. “The doctor can be paid only by the plan, not by you.”
Fallows goes on to explain that “these claims…were simply false”:
Her shocked claim that coverage would be available only for “necessary” and “appropriate” treatment suggested that she had not looked at any of today’s insurance policies. In claiming that the bill would make it impossible to go outside the health plan or pay doctors on one’s own, she had apparently skipped past practically the first provision of the bill (Sec. 1003), which said, “Nothing in this Act shall be construed as prohibiting the following: (1) An individual from purchasing any health care services.”
You get the picture. By cherry picking certain words in the bill that neatly conform to a conservative narrative about comprehensive health reform, McCaughey sparks outrage and instantly becoming the darling of the right. In a throw back to her earlier work, Fox News packaged her editorial — which they described as an article — as an archeological discovery for the ages.
Then and now, facts don’t matter. And this time around, McCaughey has Fox News to broadcast her findings far and wide.
4 Responses to “Who Is Behind Right-Wing’s Health Care Hysteria?”
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I say “good for Betsy McCaughey”! I think she did an excellent review and commentary on the ….uhm ..Stimulus Bull S–T. Miss McCaughey took quotes from Tom Dashal’s book and tied it directly to the language in the bill. This bill is a farce and reeks of Socialized Medicine which has no place in the United States. Thank you Betsy! Keep up the good work!!
February 11th, 2009 at 7:30 pmAdam
The right wing is absolutely scared stiff of the Health IT provisions? Why? Because it will be an incredible boost to the quality of healthcare, patients will come to wonder how we ever lived without it, as will physicians. Medical practice is backward and needs to be modernized. And above all – Democrats will get the credit for creating this, and THAT is what the right wing is so paranoid about.
That’s the issue here. This program has almost universal support. The only details that has any controversy are the privacy provisions, with pressure from the ACLU. These will be worked out and the Bill addresses it.
When the extreme right and the ACLU agree, and the vast middle is on the other side, you know the extremes have gone crazy.
February 12th, 2009 at 11:31 amOnce again, Betsy McCaughey is using selective quotes and faulty reasoning to scare Americans away from real solutions to the health care mess.
Looking more and more like a Fox News bimbo, Ms McCaughey is doing her damnedest to distort the Obama administration’s health care policies. CNN and MSNBC both aired reports that analyzed how she was manipulating the truth.
This is the same woman who lied about the Clinton health care initiative and helped to sink any hope for universal health care in America in the 1990s. You’d would think she would be wearing sack cloth and ashes in repentance, but apparently she’s still ready to work on behalf of the health insurance and drug industries — and against ordinary Americans.
As someone who pays $20 a pill for one of my prescriptions, all I can say is “Heck of a job Betsy!”
February 17th, 2009 at 9:58 amMy chiropractor mailed all her patients a copy of Betsy McCaughey’s Bloomberg article with a cover letter stating that she would have to close her chiropractic practicebecause it would be illegal to pay her as private individuals.
February 17th, 2009 at 1:41 pmShe believes this & is telling her patients this!!
Who is going out there to counter Betsy’s lies (and the lies of those who are paying her?) We need a spokesperson now!