Scare tactics are nothing new when it comes to health care reform

Via Kaiser Health News:

Just like in earlier attempts to overhaul the American healthsystem, opponents have turned to scare tactics, a strategy with asuccess rate in the history of blocking health reform, NPRreports. “It’s really a case of deja vu,” political scientist JonathanOberlander tells NPR. “You hear in today’s debate echoes of the pastthat extend all the way to the early part of the 20th century.”

Backin 1915, as the First World War loomed, opponents linked healthreformers to the German emperor, saying it was a plot to take over theUnited States, he said. In the 1940s, the American Medical Associationsaid reform efforts would pave the way for the communist Red Army. Whenthe Clinton administration attempted reform, insurance companiesbrought out the Harry and Louise ads to “sow seeds of doubt in thepublic” (Rovner, 8/28).

CQ Politics has a video fact-checking “some of the claims made by both sides in the health overhaul debate” (Wayne and Satter, 8/28). 

“AsCongress considers multiple versions of health reform, misunderstandingand falsehoods have crept into the national debate,” The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer reports.While President Obama has rejected the “phony claims” that illegalimmigrants would receive health coverage, that the federal governmentwould pay for abortions and that the overhaul was a governmenttakeover, more than half of people in a recent poll said they believedeach of those claims. A panel of experts (including NPR’s Rovner) rebutthe claims (Suarez, 8/28). 

More:  http://www.kaiserhealthnews.org/Daily-Reports/2009/August/28/Fears-Facts-and-Fiction.aspx