The “Lie of the Year” Perpetuated

Does fact-checking even matter in today’s throw-anything-at-the-wall political environment?

In 2011, the PolitiFact blog, which measures political assertions and advertising against reality, gave its “Lie of the Year” award, if you can call it an award, to the claim that reforming the Medicare program to enable seniors to choose from a menu of private health plans would “end Medicare.”  The TV ads cited by PolitiFact showed a politician pushing a grandmother in a wheelchair off a cliff.

PolitiFact called these accusations “a scare tactic that works.”

Unfortunately, even though this line of attack has been discredited, the early stages of the 2012 congressional campaigns are still finding granny staring over the edge of the abyss.  This weekend, the Capitol Hill publication The Hill cited campaigns that are targeting members of Congress who voted for the budget proposed by Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI), saying these votes are tantamount to ending Medicare.

That’s a particularly misleading claim given the fact that Congressman Ryan, working with Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), has modified his original Medicare reform proposal to allow beneficiaries to choose between conventional fee-for-service Medicare and a choice-and-competition system similar to the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program.

It’s also outrageous to scare seniors with these accusations when Medicare reform proposals wouldn’t affect current beneficiaries.

Even if they don’t want to admit it in the context of a heated 2012 election, every member of Congress, be they Democrat or Republican, knows that entitlement reform is inevitable.  Our demographic changes, specifically the 7,000 new Medicare beneficiaries joining the program daily, demand it.   Ideally, the 2012 elections would serve as a forum for a national discussion on how to create a Medicare program sustainable for future generations.

That won’t happen if politicians give the 2011 “Lie of the Year” an opportunity to become a repeat winner.