I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
There is widespread misconception about what the health care proposals being developed in Congress will do — and how much they’ll cost, according to the “Seven Falsehoods About Healthcare,” a new report by FactCheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
Among the falsehoods: “the bill is paid for” and “the House bill requires suicide counseling.”President Obama’s claim that “the bill is paid for,” is false, FactCheck says:
President Obama has repeatedly said that a health care overhaul “will be paid for” and that he won’t sign a bill that isn’t deficit-neutral. But neither the House bill nor the Senate HELP Committee bill meets that criteria. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and Joint Committee on Taxation, the House bill as introduced would add a net $239 billion over 10 years to the deficit, while the HELP Committee bill racks up more, $597 billion over 10 years.
About the claim, put forth by former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and others, that one of the bills will institute “death panels” that impose mandatory suicide counseling or even euthanasia, FactCheck says:
This claim is nonsense… What the bill actually provides for is voluntary Medicare-funded end-of-life counseling. In other words, if seniors choose to make advance decisions about the type of care and treatments they wish to receive at the end of their lives, Medicare will pay for them to sit down with their doctor and discuss their preferences. There is no requirement to attend regular sessions, and there is absolutely no provision encouraging euthanasia.
FactCheck has a fuller debunking of the euthanasia myth here. See all seven falsehoods here.
