Almost evey day now, I get some Facebook friend posting the latest zombie lie (you know, you can't kill them, they just keep coming) about health care reform. Euthanasia for Seniors! The Public Option is the Same as Single Payer! The Government will Take Over Your Computer! (Oops, that one was about the Cash for Clunkers program, but still.)
So these things are posted, and I usually can find a complete debunking of them within in 24 hours, and I try to point out the evidence on why this is totally false... but as far as I can tell it's not doing much good. The zombies keep marching.
The White House is now taking one of these head-on; they've posted a response to a video that cherry-picks a 2007 Obama interview to make it sound like he's talking about phasing out private health plans. The words are edited in such a way that I have no idea what he's really talking about, but the video-makers splice that with some very old footage of him expressing support of single-payer to claim that his "real" goal is to phase out private plans.
The White House responds with some very explicit statements from Obama that clearly state that his current plan will not phase out private insurance. I'm not sure it will have much effect. And I would've liked them to explain what the context of the 2007 clip was. But regardless, the same problem is still there: what Obama says versus what the right-wingers think he "really" means.
These folks are determined (for whatever reason) to not trust what Obama is actually saying. It's hard to see how any meaningful debate can take place under such circumstances.
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