1115.org

Here’s a little round-up of lies that made the news yesterday.

(1)
Little Lizzie lies again. This time, it was on Campbell Brown’s CNN show, during a “Great Debate” segment with Salon’s Joan Walsh:

WALSH: Liz, the top — the top military leaders of our country want Guantanamo closed. President Bush, in June 2009 [sic], gave a speech where he said he would close it, and he would bring people home and try them here.

CHENEY: No, I’m sorry.

WALSH: President Bush said that.

CHENEY: He did not say he would bring terrorists onto the homeland. Joan, no, he didn’t say that.

Between Joan Walsh and Little Lizzie, who would you put your money on? And you would be right, of course. This was Bush, during a June 2006 press conference:

I’d like to end Guantanamo (sic). I’d like it to be over with. One of the things we will do is we’ll send people back to their home countries. [...] There are some who need to be tried in U.S. courts. They’re cold-blooded killers. They will murder somebody if they’re let out on the street. And yet, we believe there’s a — there ought to be a way forward in a court of law.

(2)
Texas Senator John Cornyn, the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, on the federal budget deficit:

This was not an inherited situation. This was a matter entirely of this administration’s and this Democratic leadership’s making.

Let’s see, when George Bush swaggered into office on January 20, 2001, he inherited a national debt of $5.73 trillion. Thanks to what he still proudly describes as his prudent fiscal stewardship, the national debt he bequeathed to Obama by the time he fled with his tail between his legs on January 20, 2009 was $10.63 trillion.

Bush also ended with a bang in terms of the federal budget (even if he was whimpering all the way), taking it from the surplus he inherited to a deficit of $1.2 trillion. That figure of $1.2 trillion was all over the news in January after the Congressional Budget Office released estimates (pdf). Cornyn managed to miss it all, though, including headlines like this one:

Obama inherits $1.2 trillion deficit – even before new stimulus

(3)
Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn, known chiefly for being a millstone around the Senate’s neck, on the quality of healthcare provided by the VA to veterans:

If you look at VA even though VA is improving, it’s still not up to the level of health care in the rest of the country. The idea that a bureaucrat somewhere will make decisions about health care and coverage I think is untenable to most Americans. […] Why be critical of a government run plan, insurance plan? And I’m not alone on this, the fact is, is the government hasn’t proven itself responsible in any health care program that is run so far.

Another flat-out lie that takes determined ostrich-like behavior to believe in (except that ostriches stick their heads in the sand, and the honorable senators from Oklahoma and Texas have their heads firmly stuck someplace else). As everyone who has followed healthcare issues with even passing interest knows, the VA provides extremely high quality health care to its constituents:

Yet here’s a curious fact that few conservatives or liberals know. (This was published in 2005. By now, everybody knows.) Who do you think receives higher-quality health care. Medicare patients who are free to pick their own doctors and specialists? Or aging veterans stuck in those presumably filthy VA hospitals with their antiquated equipment, uncaring administrators, and incompetent staff? An answer came in 2003, when the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine published a study that compared veterans health facilities on 11 measures of quality with fee-for-service Medicare. On all 11 measures, the quality of care in veterans facilities proved to be “significantly better.”

Here’s another curious fact. The Annals of Internal Medicine recently published a study that compared veterans health facilities with commercial managed-care systems in their treatment of diabetes patients. In seven out of seven measures of quality, the VA provided better care.

It gets stranger. Pushed by large employers who are eager to know what they are buying when they purchase health care for their employees, an outfit called the National Committee for Quality Assurance today ranks health-care plans on 17 different performance measures. These include how well the plans manage high blood pressure or how precisely they adhere to standard protocols of evidence-based medicine such as prescribing beta blockers for patients recovering from a heart attack. Winning NCQA’s seal of approval is the gold standard in the health-care industry. And who do you suppose this year’s winner is: Johns Hopkins? Mayo Clinic? Massachusetts General? Nope. In every single category, the VHA system outperforms the highest rated non-VHA hospitals.

Not convinced? Consider what vets themselves think. Sure, it’s not hard to find vets who complain about difficulties in establishing eligibility. Many are outraged that the Bush administration has decided to deny previously promised health-care benefits to veterans who don’t have service-related illnesses or who can’t meet a strict means test. Yet these grievances are about access to the system, not about the quality of care received by those who get in. Veterans groups tenaciously defend the VHA and applaud its turnaround. “The quality of care is outstanding,” says Peter Gayton, deputy director for veterans affairs and rehabilitation at the American Legion. In the latest independent survey, 81 percent of VHA hospital patients express satisfaction with the care they receive, compared to 77 percent of Medicare and Medicaid patients.

Outside experts agree that the VHA has become an industry leader in its safety and quality measures. Dr. Donald M. Berwick, president of the Institute for Health Care Improvement and one of the nation’s top health-care quality experts, praises the VHA’s information technology as “spectacular.” The venerable Institute of Medicine notes that the VHA’s “integrated health information system, including its framework for using performance measures to improve quality, is considered one of the best in the nation.”

(4)
And now for something completely different (and unexpected). Charles Krauthammer came out with a truth:

What Fox did is not just create a venue for alternative opinion. It created an alternate reality.

(The sad, twisted man meant it as a compliment, in case you had any doubt.)