We’ve previously noted Newsmax’s propensity for having “experts” weigh in on President Obama’s initiatives without bothering to inform readers about the uniform right-wing tilt of those “experts.”
It does so again in a Feb. 10 article by David Patten, in which “experts tell Newsmax” that a provision in the stimulus package “will set America on the road to socialized medicine, involve the government in your choice of a doctor, and inevitably trigger another funding crisis that will be used to justify still greater federal intervention in America’s healthcare industry.”
One slight problem: It’s not true.
Patten cites two “experts” to bolster his claim. One is Betsy McCaughey, whom Patten fluffs as “the former New York lieutenant governor who has made healthcare reform her life’s work” (a claim that appears to be lifted from McCaughey’s Wikipedia page). Patten regurgitates McCaughey’s claim that the provision “creates a new bureaucracy, the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, to ‘guide’ decisions your doctor makes about your healthcare. She writes ‘enforcing uniformity goes too far.'”
That’s false. As Media Matters details, the provision does not establish authority to monitor treatments or restrict what your doctor is doing with regard to patient care; rather, it addresses establishing an electronic records system such that doctors would have complete, accurate information about their patients “to help guide medical decisions at the time and place of care.”
If McCaughey can’t tell the truth about the subject to which she has purportedly dedicated her “life’s work,” she’s not much of an “expert,” is she?