Of course you already knew that. But now the media, well, NPR, are getting into the act to try to expose these lies. This morning on Morning Edition, NPR did a story on the origin of some of these outright lies. And yes, they called it right. Here is Steve Inskeep: "So much of the political debate was completely fact free."
Professor Timothy Jost of Washington & Lea University Law School, who is somewhat of an expert on health care, spent some quality time this summer tracing the origins of some of the more pernicious rumors and outright lies about the Health Care Reform Law.
Microchipping
Jost reported that this rumor comes from the Implantable Device Registry that passed in the House version of the Bill. The purpose was so that things like Dick Cheney's left ventricular assist device and hip implants would be tracked to determine the effectiveness/failure rate of the devices. A couple of years ago, the FDA approved the first implantable chip containing medical information for use in humans.
People combing the web found these microchips and saw this planned medical device registry as an attempt to implant microchips in people.
Talk about jumping to conclusions. The teabaggers blew this totally out of anything remotely resembling proportion to include manditory microchipping of anyone on the public plan. Of course, there is no public plan, and the device registry wasn't even in the final bill. Lies!
Obama's Private Army
Another of the baseless rumors pimped by Fox was "Obama's private army" of public health officers. Besides sounding like something out of Harry Potter, this part of the law arose out of 9-11 when it became clear that the health providers were not prepared to respond to an emergency of that magnitude. If 9-11 wasn't enough, then Katrina drove the point home. The whole point is to make a ready reserve that can deploy to assist local public health officials in times of national emergency. There is no Obamarmy. Lies!
IRS Thugs
Thanks to Ron Paul, people are afraid that jack-booted, armed IRS thugs will barge into their home and haul them off to jail for not having insurance. Said Dr. Paul on Fox Business News:
Just think about it. 16,500 armed bureaucrats coming to make this program work. If it is a good program and everyone liked it, you wouldn't need 16,500 thugs coming with their guns and putting you in jail if you didn't follow all the rules.
Now, we know that there are no criminal penalties for not "following all the rules." And when was the last time you saw an IRS agent armed with anything but a pencil and a slide rule. But where did this come from? Well, the IRS will need extra resources to enforce the law (duh!), and if you divide the estimated amount of additional money the IRS will need by the average IRS agent's salary, you get roughly 16,500 agents It is the height of hyperbole to morph that into Dr. Paul's 16,500 bureaucratic thugs.
Professor Jost again:
None of that is true ... There are no criminal penalties, they can't levy against your property, they can't impose leins.
Lies!
And the conclusion of the story? Republicans are using these rumors and lies, even knowing they are false, to score political points in their effort to get elected. We all knew that, but it was nice to hear a national news organization say it out loud. Fear and falsehood. That's the GOP playbook.