Romney adviser/Forbes contributor spreading Romney Medicare lies

How's this for a combination: "Forbes health policy blogger Avik Roy ' also an health care advisor to the Romney campaign." According to public health expert Harold Pollack, it's a dishonest combination. Roy has published a "flurry of blog posts" at Forbes about the negative impact Obamacare will have in'you guessed it'battleground states. And he's not been exactly truthful. It's also not just Pollack calling Roy out, it's his fellow Forbes writer, Rick Ungar, who writes about the example of a post Roy did focused on Wisconsin.

Avik's article argues that, as a result of Obamacare, the price of individual health insurance policies in Wisconsin will increase by an average of about 30 percent.
There is certainly truth in that statement for some Wisconsin residents.

However, like so much of what comes from the Romney campaign, a kernel of truth rarely tells anything close to the entire story.

It's a wonky, somewhat arcane story in which Roy cherrypicks from a report published last year by MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, who advised on both Romneycare and Obamacare, to argue that everyone in Wisconsin is going to have to pay more under Obamacare. Ungar debunks it, piece by piece, and if you're really interested in the inner workings of how a wonky argument turns into a blatant political lie, read the whole thing.

But for the moment, the larger political point is made by Pollack:

At the 11th hour, the Romney campaign is struggling to keep pace. So it is flooding the airwaves with dicey commercials about the auto industry rescue, a fact-checker-debunked and ethically-dubious welfare ad, and (not least) scare appeals to seniors over Medicare.

In keeping with this desperate rush, Roy offers wild generalizations without proper justification. He needlessly frightens millions of Medicare recipients and insurance consumers, and needlessly misleads millions of others. This is a cautionary example.

Needlessly frightening Americans is the name of the game in the closing days of the desperate Romney campaign, whether it's autoworkers who are being told their jobs will be shipped off to China or Medicare recipients being told they won't be able to find doctors. And it's all massive lies.

Keep the liar out of office. Please help President Obama finish strong.