Politifact, the Pulitzer Prize-winning fact checker, gives a new ad by Americans for Prosperity the designation of "Pants on Fire" - meaning the ad isn't true and makes a ridiculous claim.
The ad features Tracy Walsh, a South Carolina woman and breast cancer survivor. Walsh says a recommendation by an advisory panel that women do not necessarily need to have regular mammograms before age 50 could mean that under Democratic health care proposals, Walsh could have died because she would not have been able to get a mammogram.
A version of the ad that encourages voters to call U.S. Rep. Bob Etheridge, a Lillington Democrat, is running in parts of the state.
Politifact found that three organizations - the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, a group representing U.S. health insurers and the American Cancer Society - say that mammograms for women between 40 and 50 would be covered under the new plan.
The Senate bill, which is the one under consideration in the House, specifically states that the new mammogram recommendations are meaningless.
"In short, this is a bogus issue," the Politifact Web site said. "If the bill passes, preventive services recommended by the task force would become the bare minimum insurance companies in the exchange would be required to cover. And with regard to mammograms, specifically, they would be covered for women over 40."
Politifact goes on to say that Walsh is practically a poster child for the kind of person who the task force believes ought to get a mammogram before 50. "Americans for Prosperity seized on an issue - free mammograms for women between 40 and 50 - that was specifically taken care of with not one, but two Senate amendments," Politifact said.
The nonpartisan Web site Factcheck.org also put the ad to the test. Likewise it found the ad was just wrong, going so far as to call some of its claims "absurd."
Dallas Woodhouse said Americans for Prosperity members believe the ad is accurate.
The bill, he said, "creates over 100 new federal entities overseeing nearly all aspects of the doctor/patient relationship, including systems for developing standardized treatment recommendations based on comparative effectiveness research and incentives to pressure doctors to follow those recommendations."
An idea Limbaugh likes
John Hood, president and chairman of the John Locke Foundation, got a shout out on Rush Limbaugh's radio show Wednesday.
The foundation quickly took to promoting the column that Limbaugh cited. In the column, Hood wrote that he "will not comply" with a health care reform bill that is passed without a vote.
Some Democrats have said that they could use a parliamentary maneuver that Republicans say would allow the Senate's version of the health care bill to pass without members voting on it directly in the House.
"I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm not planning to recognize such a result as legally binding," Hood wrote. "I will not comply. If the government tries to make me comply, I'll sue. And I'll win."
Etheridge's quandary
Thirty-seven percent of the voters in U.S. Rep. Bob Etheridge's district support the Democratic proposal for health care reform, according to Public Policy Polling.
Etheridge, a Lillington Democrat, has been the focus of pressure from both sides of the debate and has not yet said how he will vote.
PPP surveyed 601 voters in Etheridge's district and found that 53 percent oppose the bill while 37 percent support it. The remaining voters were unsure.
PPP also found that 47 percent of voters would be less likely to vote for Etheridge if he supported the bill, while 36 percent were more likely to vote for him.
The survey was done March 13-14 and had a margin of sampling error of 4 percentage points.
