Another Right-Wing Conspiracy About Obama and Health Care

When President Obama fielded a question about end-of-life care at yesterday's AARP-sponsored town-hall meeting, he appeared not to comprehend that he was confronting the latest conspiracy theory being floated by members of the far right: that his health care plan is a nefarious scheme to euthanize the nation's elderly.

A caller named Mary told the president that she was hearing rumors that, under his plan, Medicare would be sending out workers to ask each and every old person how they wished to die. Apparently not grocking the subtext of the question, the president first clenched his lips, perhaps suppress a smile, and then unwisely began his answer by saying that the federal workforce simply wasn't large enough to make a visit to everybody.

What the president apparently failed to anticipate was that the notion of health care as a euthanasia scheme would be advanced that very day on the floor of the House of Representatives by none other than Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., who first gained notoriety for saying that the hate-crime nature of the murder of Matthew Shepard was "a hoax".

Speaking from the House floor on yesterday -- just minutes after Obama concluded his town hall -- Foxx spoke against the Democratic health care plan, and in favor of a mysterious Republican plan that no one has seen, saying, the GOP plan would "make sure we bring down the cost of health care for all Americans and that ensures affordable access for all Americans and is pro-life because it will not put seniors in a position of being put to death by their government." (Emhasis added.)

Here's the video: