Physicians pushing for changes in tort law and one Republican congressman accusing a fellow GOP lawmaker of helping fund Obamacare.
And President Barack Obama, himself, got an award he might want to give back: PolitiFact’s Lie of the Year for 2013.
It was all courtesy of PolitiFact, PolitiFact Georgia and the AJC Truth-O-Meter.
Abbreviated versions of our fact checks are below.
Full versions, including full coverage of Lie of the Year, can be found at: www.politifact.com/georgia/.
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President Barack Obama: “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it.”
It was a catchy political pitch and a chance to calm nerves about his dramatic and complicated plan to bring historic change to America’s health insurance system.
“If you like your health care plan, you can keep it,” Obama said — many times — of his landmark new law.
But the promise was impossible to keep.
So this fall, as cancellation letters were going out to about 4 million Americans, the public realized Obama’s breezy assurances were wrong.
Boiling down the complicated health care law to a sound bite proved treacherous, even for its promoter-in-chief.
Obama and his team made matters worse, suggesting they had been misunderstood all along. The stunning political uproar led to this: a rare presidential apology.
For all these reasons, PolitiFact has named “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it” the Lie of the Year for 2013. Readers in a separate online poll overwhelmingly agreed with the choice.
Obama’s ideas on health care were first offered as general outlines, then grew into specific legislation over the course of his presidency. Yet Obama never adjusted his rhetoric to give people a more accurate sense of the law’s real-world repercussions, even as fact-checkers flagged his statements as exaggerated at best.
Instead, he fought back against inaccurate attacks with his own oversimplifications, which he repeated even as it became clear his promise was too sweeping.
Our rating: Lie of the Year for 2013.
U.S. Rep. Paul Brown: “(U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston) voted to fund (Obamacare).”
Kingston, a Republican from Savannah, was recently on the Fox News Channel to talk about his approach to make the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, work better for Americans.
Broun, a fellow Georgia congressman, apparently, wasn’t impressed.
“Jack Kingston wants to keep Obamacare,” Broun said in a YouTube video. “He voted to fund it, and now he wants to fix it.”
The two Republicans are in a crowded field of candidates vying to win the GOP’s U.S. Senate nomination in 2014 for the Georgia seat being left open by U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss’ retirement.
Kingston has voted for federal legislation to keep the government running. Broun is using that to underpin his argument since the legislation includes spending for the health care law. But that funding was a piece of a much larger package that includes defense spending and disaster recovery.
Broun’s claim contains an element of accuracy. But it gives people a misleading perception of Kingston’s position on Obamacare.
We rate it Mostly False.
Doctors for a Healthy Georgia on its website: “Defensive medicine costs Georgia up to $14 billion a year.”
Some Georgians are finding glossy fliers in their mailboxes discussing an effort to drastically change how patients can get compensated in medical malpractice cases.
Proponents want state lawmakers to pass a bill that would create an 11-member board to review alleged malpractice cases and award settlements. Too many doctors are charging for unnecessary medical tests, procedures or consultations in order to defend themselves in case they face lawsuits, say supporters of the bill.
Defensive medicine, it’s called.
“In Georgia alone, the practice of defensive medicine costs up to $14 billion annually,” Wayne Oliver, executive director of Patients for Fair Compensation, said on the group’s website.
The estimate is on target if you rely on some studies. Other reports would suggest the impact to Georgia is far less. Everyone agrees the economic impact estimates are wide-ranging.
To score a True on this one, you would have to acknowledge that there are wide-ranging estimates of the costs of defensive medicine.
This statement is at least partially accurate, but you would need a lot of context to fully understand its full implications.
Our rating: Half True.
