PolitiFact, a unit of the St. Petersburg Times in Florida that assesses the veracity of claims from a range of public officials, has identified a key Republican Party talking point in the federal health-care debate as its 2010 "Lie of the Year." The offending phrase is calling the legislation that President Barack Obama signed in March a "government takeover" of the American health-care system.
The buzz phrase is attributed to Frank Luntz, a GOP strategist and pollster who appears frequently on national cable news outlets. A reader poll by the Times also identified the "government takeover" language as the top political lie of the year.
Louisiana Republicans were among the elected officials who used that label to deride the package that ultimately reached the president's desk without a single Republican vote. U.S. Sen. David Vitter employed the phrase in his campaign ads against Democrat Charlie Melancon, who actually voted against the bills in the House. Rep. Steve Scalise, R-Jefferson, employed the phrase in his re-election victory speech last month. Gov. Bobby Jindal blasted the Obama plan as "government-run health care" in a July 2009 column for Politico.com. "The plan the House Democrats are developing is a radical restructuring of health care in America," Jindal wrote. "You may like it, you may not, but it is just that; there is no denying or sugarcoating it."
The Times noted in explaining its choice notes that a government health-care takeover connotes a European-style system in which the government owns all provider properties and employs the doctors, nurses and everyone else who works in the health-care system, while also acting as the nation's primary insurer or "single payer." The new American plan is largely a regulatory restructuring of the existing public Medicaid insurance system and the private, employer-based insurance system. While it does involve new government involvement in a market that already is heavily regulated, the plan does not involve the government taking any ownership role of existing private enterprises, either providers or insurers.
Nonetheless, PolitiFact wrote, that after hearing the "government takeover" framing for months, a Bloomberg poll found that 53 percent of respondents said they agreed that "the current proposal to overhaul health care amounts to a government takeover."
Bill Barrow can be reached at email@example.com or 504.826.3452.