| Conservative activists gathered in Washington yesterday to protest Democratic-backed health care reform proposals. As usual, right-wingers are completely wrong about the substance of the bills, crying "socialism" when the real problem is not enough government-backed competition for private insurers. Former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, a key figure in the "tea party" movement, claims to believe that "The largest empirical problem we have in health care today is too many people are too overinsured."
Anyway, when ill-informed right-wingers are causing a spectacle inside the beltway, you can count on finding Representative Steve King (IA-05) nearby. Hey, it's been almost three weeks since national media last paid attention to his unfounded allegations.
So King gets on MSNBC yesterday and falsely claims that the House Democrats' bill would cancel every private insurance contract in America. You can watch the clip on the Iowa Democratic Party's site.
Not only do the Democratic bills not void private insurance contracts, they prevent Americans covered by private insurance from choosing a public health insurance option.
Politifact should add this gem to their fact-checking page on King. I noticed that Representative Michele Bachmann (MN-06) is way ahead of him in terms of the number of "false" and "pants on fire" claims subjected to Politifact's Truth-o-meter, but it shouldn't take long for King to catch up.
By the way, I recommend watching the video of Mike Stark's brief interview with King outside the Capitol, recorded a few days ago. King doesn't know how many uninsured people live in his district (approximately 83,000), and he doesn't know how many bankruptcies in his district are related to medical costs (about 700 last year), but he does know that "my people want freedom" from health care reform. |
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