Health Debate: Pants On Fire!

Sarah Palin's pants are on fire. So are Congressman Roy Blunt's.

PolitiFact.com, a Web site devoted to testing truthfulness of political statements, makes that assessment about the Republicans' health reform claims. Journalists at PolitiFact, a project of the St. Petersburg Times, run statements through a "truth-o-meter" to determine distortions.

Palin earned the "pants on fire!" tag - PolitiFact's most egregious fibbing label - for her infamous death panel statement on Facebook earlier this month.

Seniors and the disabled "will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care," Palin wrote.

PolitiFact called Palin's remarks a "sci-fi scenario not based in reality."

Missouri Rep. Blunt also earned a "pants on fire!" label for this statement: "I'm 59. In either Canada or Great Britain, if I broke my hip, I couldn’t get it replaced."

However, Blunt earned a "mostly true" designation for this comment: "Democrats have failed to answer the most basic question of how they want to pay for the more than $1 trillion of health care spending."

Of course, lying or fudging the truth is a bipartisan effort.

President Obama made a couple of false comments, according to PolitiFact. For instance: "I have not said that I was a single-payer supporter." While he may not support one government-run insurance plan now, he's made comments in past years that show he endorsed the concept, the Web site found.

The president also said health insurance companies are "making record profits, right now." They're not.

A pro-reform group called the Progressive Change Campaign Committee said 76 percent of Americans want a public health care option. That's a false statement, PolitiFact says. The number cited was from a June poll. Since that time, a number of other polls show Americans are increasingly becoming more skeptical of health care reform.

PolitiFact isn't the only one catching fibbers. FactCheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, provides a similar service (though it doesn't have anything as catchy as a truth-o-meter or "pants on fire!" designation).

FactCheck recently published "seven falsehoods about health care" attacking both sides of the debate. Government won't give grandma a hip replacement? False, FactCheck found. President Obama's claim the bill for reform is paid for? Also false. Illegal immigrants will be covered? Nope. Any truth to claims Obama wants to cut Medicare benefits? Nada.