Health Care vs. the Right's Health Scare

As the debate over health care reform progresses, it was inevitable we'd see some pretty deceptive advertising from the right. But what they've come up with so far tells us quite a bit -- some conservatives, left with no credible options, are just making up nonsense.

There's a project, for example, called "Patients United Now," organized by the same outfit that sponsored Sam "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher's anti-EFCA efforts. The group, Americans for Prosperity, has a new television ad featuring a Canadian woman who said she came to the United States to be treated for brain cancer, because in Canada, she would have had to wait six months to see a specialist, a delay that would have killed her.

To hear the woman tell it, Canada's system is a dystopian nightmare, in which the government forces taxpayers to "wait a year for vital surgeries," and bureaucrats restrict access to medicine and treatments. She concludes by telling the viewer, "Now Washington wants to bring Canadian-style healthcare to the U.S., but government should never come in between your family and your doctor." She encourages Americans, "Don't give up your rights."

Now, I can't speak to the woman's claims about her personal medical experiences; they may very well be true. But as Jonathan Cohn explained, the message of the ad is completely wrong: