Someone has to do it, and the crack research team at MM drew the short straw. Here's the myths they debunk:
MYTH 1: There is no health care crisis
MYTH 2: Health care reform will impose rationing
MYTH 3: Health care reform provides for euthanasia, "death panel"
MYTH 4: Health care reform legislation will cover undocumented immigrants
MYTH 5: Health care reform will raise your taxes
MYTH 6: Health proposals would tax all small businesses
MYTH 7: Health care reform would add $1 trillion-plus to deficit
MYTH 8: House bill would ban private individual insurance
MYTH 9: Obama said he didn't read House bill
MYTH 10: Co-ops are an adequate substitute for a public option
MYTH 11: Obama is pushing a system like the U.K. and Canada
MYTH 12: Obama, Dems pushing "socialized medicine"
MYTH 13: Prominent opponents of health care reform are credible
MYTH 14: Government can't run a health care program
I'm going to use just one example, since it seems particularly useful today, Myth 10: Co-ops are an adequate substitute for a public option.
CLAIM: The co-op "compromise" eliminates the need for the public option.
REALITY: Progressive experts argue public plan is necessary for successful reform. Numerous media figures and outlets have characterized Sen. Kent Conrad's (D-ND) cooperative health insurance proposal as a "compromise," "hybrid," or bipartisan "alternative" to a public insurance option without noting the view by progressive experts that a public option is necessary for health care reform to be successful and that any departure from that will result in the failure of reform efforts. These experts dispute suggestions that Conrad's co-op proposal is a plausible midway point between competing methods of addressing health care reform, because, they say, it precludes a fundamental component of effective reform: bargaining power against the health care industry. For example, former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich described the co-op proposal as a "bamboozle" and said that "[n]onprofit health-care cooperatives won't have any real bargaining leverage to get lower prices because they'll be too small and too numerous. Pharma and Insurance know they can roll them. That's why the Conrad compromise is getting a good reception from across the aisle." And University of California-Berkeley professor Jacob Hacker argued that Conrad "has offered no reason to think that the cooperatives he envisions could do any of the crucial things that a competing public plan must do." Additionally, ABC's Charles Gibson reported that "several health care experts" have said, in Gibson's words, "[I]f you take out the public option in terms of insurance, there's going to be no restraints on the cost of insurance." [ABC's World News with Charles Gibson, 8/17/09]
Wow. Charlie Gibson, conservative myth debunker. Who knew?
Keep this link handy. You never know when it will help you convince a gullible friend or relative who has heard and maybe believed these myths that reform is necessary, and really not all that scary.