Jul 01, 2012
FACT CHECK: Speaker Boehner Falsely Claims Affordable Care Act Is Government Takeover of Health Care
On CBS Face the Nation today, House Speaker John Boehner falsely claimed that the Affordable Care Act would put “government in charge of everyone’s healthcare.”
This falsehood was dubbed Politifact’s “Lie of the Year” in 2010 and FactCheck.org called it one of the “Biggest Falsehoods” of the health care debate. In reality, the Affordable Care Act uses market-based incentives to expand coverage to uninsured Americans, reduces health care costs for the middle class, and provides critical consumer protections for children and families.
FACT CHECK
PolitiFact's Lie of the Year: ‘A Government Takeover of Health Care.’ “PolitiFact editors and reporters have chosen ‘government takeover of health care’ as the 2010 Lie of the Year. Uttered by dozens of politicians and pundits, it played an important role in shaping public opinion about the health care plan […] By selecting ‘government takeover' as Lie of the Year, PolitiFact is not making a judgment on whether the health care law is good policy. The phrase is simply not true.” [PolitiFact.com, 12/16/10]
FactCheck.org Called the Claim a One of the “Biggest Falsehoods” of the Health Care Debate. On March 19, 2010, FactCheck.org included “It's government-run health care” among the “biggest falsehoods” of the health care debate, writing: “Despite the fact that the federal health insurance plan (a.k.a. the ‘public option’) is now gone from the bill, Republicans and conservative groups have continued to claim that the bill institutes a system like the one in the United Kingdom, or Canada, or otherwise amounts to a government takeover. It doesn’t. A pure government-run system was never among the leading Democratic proposals, much to the chagrin of single-payer advocates.” [FactCheck.org, 3/19/10]
Republican’s “Government-Run” Mantra is False. “The claim that the House bill would amount to ‘government-run health care’ suffered a blow […]But that hasn’t stopped Republicans from repeating the claim. […] For several months, we’ve been debunking assertions that Democratic health care bills call for a Canadian or British-type system in which everyone is insured, or insured and cared for, through the government. None of the bills being debated in Congress call for such a single-payer system. [..] But Republicans are still recycling ‘government-run’ claims.” [FactCheck.org, 11/9/09]
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