by Conor Clarke
There is much to discuss in NBC's new health-care poll, but this part jumped out at me like an army of flesh-eating zombies:
There is, of course, no reform proposal that will do any such thing, and the fact that 45% of Americans believe otherwise is really an ugly testament to the amount of misinformation polluting the health-care debate.
The health-care experts over at Conservatives 4 Palin, meanwhile, are proudly telegraphing the new 45% statistic: "What we see here is the ballgame." But because, strangely, the Palin people's ability to read seems to have short-circuited at the moment of maximum political convenience, I feel that I should do them a favor and reprint the relevant section in its entirety from the NBC article:
One of the reasons why [the environment for health-care reform] has become tougher is due to misperceptions about the president’s plans for reform.
[…] Forty-five percent think the reform proposals would allow the government to make decisions about when to stop providing medical care for the elderly.
That also is untrue: The provision in the House legislation that critics have seized on — raising the specter of “death panels” or euthanasia — would simply allow Medicare to pay doctors for end-of-life counseling, if the patient wishes.
I wouldn't want Sarah Palin or her defenders to continue spreading misinformation to the American public. I'm sure that's not what they want to do.
The Dish 