We fact-checked a couple of fake-news items involving Georgia politicians last week. One was a callous remark about cancer patients purportedly from Tom Price, the former Georgia congressman who’s now Secretary of Health and Human Services. Another related to a bill briefly proposed last year by State Rep. Jason Spencer to ban wearing burqas, niqabs and veils. We also examined another health care-related item, a Florida congressman’s comment about how bad Medicaid does at improving patients’ health. None of the three did well.
Abbreviated versions of our fact checks are below. Full versions can be found at www.politifact.com.
“Tom Price: ‘It’s better for our budget if cancer patients die more quickly.’”
A headline on a March 16 post on USPOLN.com
A fake news story pegged to a real forum with U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price falsely quotes him as saying it's better for cancer patients to die than to waste taxpayer money.
"Tom Price: 'It's better for our budget if cancer patients die more quickly,' " reads the headline on a March 16, 2017, post on USPOLN.com. The post was flagged by Facebook users as potentially being fake news, but it has been shared on the site more than 75,000 times.
USPOLN.com is a site we’ve written about in other fact-checks and identifies itself as “a US Political News and hybrid News/Satire platform on the web.”
Our ruling
There’s no indication the story is almost entirely fabricated. The domain is registered to an address in Kosovo. The site didn’t respond to our queries via email.
Price did not use the words attributed to him or say the budget would benefit more from cancer patients who gave up and died.
We rate the statement Pants On Fire!
“Georgia becomes first state to ban Muslim culture in historic move to restore Western values.”
Headline March 13 on a fake news website
A post that appears to have originated from fake news purveyors in Macedonia falsely said Georgia (our state, not the country) outlawed “Muslim culture.”
A March 13 post on USANewsPost.us carried the headline, "Georgia becomes first state to ban Muslim culture in historic move to restore Western values."
The web post cited an actual event: A lawmaker introduced a bill in November 2016 in the Georgia General Assembly to ban wearing burqas, niqabs and veils. The fake story trumpeted the bill as being "about keeping the American people safe."
But it did not note that the legislation never became law.
State Rep. Jason Spencer on Nov. 15 filed HB 3. The bill aimed to expand a 1951 state law that made wearing a mask a misdemeanor unless it was for celebrations, work, sports or emergencies. The original law aimed to prevent Ku Klux Klan members from wearing their hoods.
Spencer’s bill could have prevented Muslim women from wearing a head covering while driving, or possibly even while on public property. It also would have prevented people from wearing veils in photos for driver’s licenses and government-issued IDs, a rule the state already had.
Spencer withdrew the measure after just two days, “due to the visceral reaction it has created,” he said in a statement.
Our ruling
The post misrepresents the outcome of a months-old and short-lived legislative proposal from November 2016. that could have prevented Muslim women from hearing veils and headscarves. Muslim culture was not banned.
We rate the headline False.
“It’s been proven over and over again Medicaid has the worst outcomes in the industrialized world as far as the quality of health care.”
U.S. Rep. Ted Yoho, R-Fla., in a March 14 interview on PBS.
Rep. Ted Yoho, a Florida Republican and critic of the Affordable Care Act who opposed his party's health care plan, described Medicaid as a worldwide failure.
The ACA passed under President Barack Obama included the expansion of Medicaid, which provides health coverage for about 74 million poor Americans. (Yoho’s state of Florida rejected the expansion.)
“With the Affordable Care Act, what’s happened is, all these people have been running to Medicaid, and it’s been proven over and over again Medicaid has the worst outcomes in the industrialized world as far as the quality of health care,” Yoho said in a March 14 interview on PBS.
Yoho spokesman Brian Kaveney walked back the congressman’s statement somewhat when we asked for evidence that Medicaid has the worst outcomes in the industrialized world. “Hindsight being 20/20, the congressman didn’t mean to use the word ‘worst,’ ” Kaveney said. “The congressman was pointing out that since the implementation of ACA, health care trends have not improved.”
Yoho was referring to two articles in 2017 by Oren Cass, a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute and a policy director for Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign. Cass argued that Medicaid studies show the program doesn't improve public health. But there aren't studies comparing its health outcomes to other industrialized countries.
Our ruling
Yoho’s spokesman said he didn’t mean to say “worst” and intended to argue that Medicaid under the ACA hasn’t improved health outcomes.
His evidence focused on studies about Medicaid outcomes within the United States with no comparison to other countries.
We rate Yoho’s original statement False.
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