For the fourth time in five years, PolitiFact’s notorious ‘Lie of the Year’ involves President Obama’s signature healthcare law. This year, the President’s now infamous ‘If you like your plan, you can keep your plan' took top honors.
For all of these reasons, PolitiFact has named "If you like your health care plan, you can keep it," the Lie of the Year for 2013. Readers in a separate online poll overwhelmingly agreed with the choice. (PolitiFact first announced its selection on CNN's The Lead with Jake Tapper.)
For four of the past five years, PolitiFact’s Lie of the Year has revolved around the health care law, which has been subject to more erroneous attacks than any other piece of legislation PolitiFact has fact-checked.
Obama’s ideas on health care were first offered as general outlines then grew into specific legislation over the course of his presidency. Yet Obama never adjusted his rhetoric to give people a more accurate sense of the law’s real-world repercussions, even as fact-checkers flagged his statements as exaggerated at best.
Instead, he fought back against inaccurate attacks with his own oversimplifications, which he repeated even as it became clear his promise was too sweeping.
The debate about the health care law rages on, but friends and foes of Obamacare have found one slice of common ground: The president’s "you can keep it" claim has been a real hit to his credibility.
“The 'Lie of the Year' now is: If you have a doctor that you like, you can keep your doctor. That's the lie of the year,” Glenn said on radio this morning. “Help me out on this because if I'm not mistaken, originally it was true. Then ten months later, it was half-true. And now two years later, it's a lie.”
Glenn is referring to the fact that back in 2009, PolitiFact labeled the President’s claim as “half true”. Given the organization's flip-flopping on the issue, Glenn couldn't help but question the credibility of the PolitiFact. After all, a lie is lie, right?
“PolitiFact… you don't know what you're doing,” Glenn concluded. “It can't be true, half true, and then the ‘Lie of the Year’. It was a lie. It was always a lie, and you were wrong. Period.”
Ironically, just a few weeks ago, the Wonderful World of Stu 'fact checked' Politifact:
Front page image courtesy of the AP
Morningstar via Investopedia