The Republicans' killer lies on health care

This week, the GOP-controlled House of Representatives voted for the 33rd time in 18 months to repeal the Affordable Care Act. But even if that act of political theater is over for now, Republicans will keep repeating their favorite parts of the right-wing script well past Election Day in November. That their tried and untrue lines about "the largest tax increase in history," Obamacare "adding to the debt," a "government takeover of health care" (Politifact's 2010 Lie of the Year) and, of course, "death panels" (Politifact's 2009 Lie of the Year) have been thoroughly debunked won't prevent conservatives from continuing to mouth them.

And that debate-distorting performance is literally sickening. Because while some of the GOP's best and brightest darkly warn that the Affordable Act may kill you, other Republicans insist the lives of some Americans aren't worth saving. Meanwhile, without the ACA fully in place, study after study after study show the status quo has a real body count, with up to 45,000 of the uninsured dying unnecessarily each year. Nevertheless, the party of Romney, Ryan, Boehner and McConnell would prevent 30 million people from gaining the health insurance they need and millions more the basic patient protections they deserve.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell gave the game away two weeks ago on Fox News when said of those 30 million uninsured, "That's not the issue." But a more telling episode came during the September 2011 tea party/GOP presidential debate. As ABC reported, the tea partiers who protested Democratic health care reform in 2009 by holding a "die-in" at Senate offices cheered Ron Paul on when he said churches, not government, should address the U.S. health care crisis:

CNN moderator Wolf Blitzer's hypothetical question about whether an uninsured 30-year-old working man in coma should be treated prompted one of the most boisterous moments of audience participation in the CNN/Tea Party Express.

"What he should do is whatever he wants to do and assume responsibility for himself," Paul responded, adding, "That's what freedom is all about, taking your own risk. This whole idea that you have to compare and take care of everybody..."

The audience erupted into cheers, cutting off the Congressman's sentence.

After a pause, Blitzer followed up by asking "Congressman, are you saying that society should just let him die?" to which a small number of audience members shouted "Yeah!"

Somewhere, California Congressman David Dreier (R-CA) was probably cheering. As he explained this week in calling for the repeal of the ACA and its prohibition on insurance companies banning patients with pre-existing conditions:

"I don't that think someone who is diagnosed with a massive tumor should the next day be able to have millions and millions and millions of dollars in health care provided, I do believe that there can be a structure to deal with the issue of pre-existing conditions."

Just not if Mitt Romney becomes president of the United States. As he put it in March, "We can't play the game like that."

Of course, since 2009 Republicans have been playing games with the truth when it comes to Americans' health care. On no point has this been more true than when early versions of the Democratic health care overhaul contained a provision requiring Medicare to cover end-of-life counseling for the elderly. In the hands of Betsy McCaughey, the woman whose mythology helped torpedo the Clinton health care initiative in 1994, that statute which could have helped millions of Americans instead became "death panels." Sarah Palin, who later claimed she was speaking metaphorically, famously framed the GOP slander this way:

The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's "death panel" so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their "level of productivity in society," whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.

That would be evil, if it was true. But Palin's fraud didn't stop some of the GOP's more senior, and theoretically, more sentient leaders from regurgitating the bogus death panel sound bite.

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