There are a number of lies about Obama that get stated here and are repeated over and over again as if they are well-known and proven facts. Not that the people here are lying; they are simply and unknowingly passing along lies from others on the Right. These lies are so entrenched that any attempt to dispel them through fact-checkers or other sources brings immediate and often heated responses not just defending the lies but attacking the messenger. It is an understandable response. In attempting to debunk one of these Lies, such as the Death Panel myth, the commonly accepted nature of it as truth plus being first heard and then repeated by people that are trusted and share the same ideology makes the debunking an assault on friends, family, and party...and one's own integrity. The person that would dare do such a thing must be...well you know all the insults and names.
Ginnyt nailed it with this line in one of her responses (Page 16 in the thread The differences between Democrats and Republicans, by Ve'hoe.):
The situation is exasperated when we find others who share similar biases. If the situation is left unchallenged for a prolonged time, our biases no longer appear in our mind as a collective notion or random facts that are tainted with half-truths and sometimes outright lies laced with enough historical truth to make it plausible, but become crystallized and are then viewed as undeniable truths.
Death Panels have become for many one of those undeniable truths. It is lie that was first uttered by Sarah Palin and immediately repeated by O' Reilly, Hannity, and Limbugh shortly there after and then by most every Republican thereafter. But here on the facts.
"Palin specified that she was referring to Section 1233 of bill HR 3200 which would have paid physicians for providing voluntary counseling to Medicare patients about living wills, advance directives, and end-of-life care options.
"Legislation providing for counseling patients on advance directives, living wills and end-of-life care had been on the books for years, however, the laws did not provide for physicians to be reimbursed for giving such counseling during routine physical exams of the elderly. The Patient Self-Determination Act (1991) requires health care providers, including hospitals, hospices and nursing homes to provide information about advance directives to admitted patients.[29][30] The Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act began providing reimbursements for end-of-life care discussions with terminally ill patients in 2003.[31]
"A bill to provide for reimbursement every five years for office visit discussions with Medicare patients on advance directives, living wills, and other end of life care issues was proposed by Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) in April 2009with Republican cosponsors Charles Boustany (R-LA), a cardiovascular surgeon, Patrick Tiberi (R-OH), and Geoff Davis (R-KY).[32][33][34] The counseling was to be voluntary and could be reimbursed more often if a grave illness occurred. The legislation had been encouraged by Gundersen Lutheran and a loose coalition of other hospitals in La Crosse, Wisconsin that had had positive experiences with the widespread use of advance directives.[32][33][35][36] Blumenauer's standalone bill was tabled and inserted into the large health care reform bill, HR 3200 as Section 1233 shortly afterward.[32][37][38] Supporters of the Section 1233 counseling provision included the American Medical Association (AMA), AARP, the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, and Consumers Union; the National Right to Life Committee opposed "the provision as written."[39] It was removed from the Senate version of the bill due to the death panel controversy[40] and was not included in the reconciled and final bill which became law in March 2010 and which is known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.[13]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_panel"The myth is also likely to persist because the law calls for the establishment of a 15 person committee the independent payment advisory board (or IPAB)which is given the job of recommending cost-saving measures to the Secretary of Health and Human Services if Medicare expenses rise too quickly. The IPAB will consist of independent healthcare experts who are forbidden, by law, from proposing changes that will affect Medicare coverage or quality. In other words, they are a far cry from a death panel, with the ACA specifically noting that this group is not allowed to do anything that would ration healthcare. The law also makes sure that the IPAB is not in a position to make policy, but instead to simply make recommendations to the Secretary of Health and Human Services, proposals that Congress is specifically empowered to override if it sees fit.
"Fact-checking backfires among people who have enough basic knowledge of politics to resist evidence that contradicts their beliefs! It is difficult for people to see the world clearly, when their vision is biased by their pre-existing attitudes. As I have shown in earlier research, we allliberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicanssee the world through partisan eyes."
http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterubel/2013/01/09/why-it-is-so-difficult-to-kill-the-death-panel-myth/You can read more here:
http://mediamatters.org/research/2013/08/13/conservative-media-death-panels-lie-returns-in/195381And for those of you who do not trust or use factcheckers, this is an interesting read:
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-death-panel-myth-backfire.html