45% Of Americans Believe, Falsely, That Obama Will Create Death Panels

by Conor Clarke

There is much to discuss in NBC's new health-care poll, but this part jumped out at me like an army of flesh-eating zombies:

Forty-five percent think the reform proposals would allow the government to make decisions about when to stop providing medical care for the elderly.

There is, of course, no reform proposal that will do any such thing, and the fact that 45% of Americans believe otherwise is really an ugly testament to the amount of misinformation polluting the health-care debate.

The health-care experts over at Conservatives 4 Palin, meanwhile, are proudly telegraphing the new 45% statistic: "What we see here is the ballgame." But because, strangely, the Palin people's ability to read seems to have short-circuited at the moment of maximum political convenience, I feel that I should do them a favor and reprint the relevant section in its entirety from the NBC article:

One of the reasons why [the environment for health-care reform] has become tougher is due to misperceptions about the president’s plans for reform.

[...] Forty-five percent think the reform proposals would allow the government to make decisions about when to stop providing medical care for the elderly.

That also is untrue: The provision in the House legislation that critics have seized on -- raising the specter of “death panels” or euthanasia -- would simply allow Medicare to pay doctors for end-of-life counseling, if the patient wishes.

I wouldn't want Sarah Palin or her defenders to continue spreading misinformation to the American public. I'm sure that's not what they want to do.