Health Care Debate Dominates the Biggest Whoppers of 2009 List

The health care debate produced a trove of falsehoods from politicians on each side of the issue this year making it what Factcheck.org called the "most heavily misrepresented subject" that it followed this year.

The non-partisan organization, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, broke the falsehoods it found down to those that came from conservatives or liberals.

Among the items on the conservative side, Factcheck singled out the assertion that the legislation provided for "death panels" or "pulling the plug on grandma." While former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin put this in the national spotlight, Factcheck said it started with former New York Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaughey who it said misrepresented a provision (that was later dropped) under which Medicare would pay for voluntary sessions to help seniors make end-of-life decisions. Factcheck said that "McCaughey twisted that into 'a required counseling session' that would 'tell them how to end their life sooner.'"

As for liberals, Factcheck listed a series of what it said were misstatements by President Obama, including a false claim that an insurance company was responsible for the death of an Illinois cancer patient whose insurance it had cancelled because he hadn't reported gallstones. In fact, the coverage had been reinstated, his cancer treatments continued and he lived another four years. (Politics Daily's Lynn Sweet tracked this one down for the Chicago Sun-Times). Factcheck labelled as false, among other things, an Obama claim that health care "causes a bankruptcy in America every 30 seconds" and that the average family could save $2,500 a year under health care overhaul legislation.