Truthdig - Ear to the Ground - Fact-Checking Obama’s Health Care Speech

			November 23, 2009 Log in / Register
			Text Size

Intelligentsia Against Intelligence

The Guantanamo Lawyers: Shipwrecked

Obama's Third Way in Afghanistan

Claire Wasserman on Europe's Islamic Immigrants

'Left, Right & Center': The Geithner-Summers Backlash; Is Palin Dangerous?

Obama’s Third Way in Afghanistan
By E.J. Dionne

Battlefield in the War of Ideas
By Eugene Robinson

Intelligentsia Against Intelligence
By David Sirota

Despite Subsidies, Class Sizes Rise in California Schools
By Louis Freedberg and Hugo Cabrera, California Watch

Let the Debate Begin

U.S. Weighs a Greenhouse Gas Target

Hamas Stills the Rockets

Iran to Test Its Readiness

Obama’s Job Approval Slips Below 50 Percent

Brit Warns Against Leaving Afghanistan

‘Left, Right & Center’: The Geithner-Summers Backlash; Is Palin Dangerous?

Throw the Money Changers Out of the Temple

Yuletide Weirdness With Your Host, Bob Dylan

Hedges and Friends Debate Illusion, Conservatism and 9/11

The Guantanamo Lawyers: Shipwrecked
By Baher Azmy

Freedom’s Fight: Part II
By Gary Phillips

Claire Wasserman on Europe’s Islamic Immigrants
By Claire Wasserman

Oprah Sets Her Show’s Expiration Date

Financial Meltdown 101

A Dig compiled by the editors of Truthdig

Vetting Sarah Palin

A Dig compiled by the editors of Truthdig

The Protest Singer: An Intimate Portrait of Pete Seeger

By Alec Wilkinson
$15.61

Fact-Checking Obama’s Health Care Speech

YouTube / BarackObamadotcom

When emotions run high about certain hot-button issues, good judgment can fall by the wayside, and facts can get lost in the shuffle. Luckily, the helpful researchers at FactCheck.org are around to round them up again, as they’ve done here with President Obama’s health care speech. —KA

FactCheck.org:

Some of the president’s factual claims, while accurate, were notable for his careful wording.

Obama: There are now more than 30 million American citizens who cannot get coverage.

“Citizens” is the operative word here. And even so, the 30 million figure is an understatement. The official Census figure for 2007 was actually 45.7 million persons in the U.S., but that figure includes an estimated 10 million who are not U.S. citizens, including 5.6 million who are here illegally, according to the National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation. That still leaves about 35.7 million U.S. citizens without health coverage in 2007, well above the president’s figure. And hours after the president spoke, Census released new figures for 2008, showing the total number of uninsured went up slightly, to 46.3 million.

Read more

More Below the Ad

Advertisement

TAGS: abortion barack obama factcheck.org gop health care illegal immigrants insurance president speech

Related Entries

November 20, 2009 Lou Dobbs for President?
November 19, 2009 Enough G-2 Talk Already
November 19, 2009 The Afghanistan Speech Obama Should Give (but Won’t)
November 19, 2009 Throw the Money Changers Out of the Temple
November 19, 2009 Blair Bows Out of EU Race

Email to a friend

Get truth delivered to
your inbox every week.

Previous item: Anti-Abortion Protester Shot Dead Near Michigan School

Next item: A Dose of Direct Diplomacy

Elsewhere: .

Comments

Are you a Truthdig member yet? Login now, or register with Truthdig.

By Joe, September 12 at 11:11 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

Let’s put aside all of the bickering & get on with establishing a healthcare system for all! I am sick of the foolishness constantly hitting the front lines. Let’s wake up & work togwether to get the job done!!!

Report this

By Blackspeare, September 12 at 10:30 am #

Whatever the number is for the uninsured it pales in comparison to the under-insured.

Report this

By STICKSHIFT, September 12 at 10:22 am #
(Unregistered commenter)

The whole health care debate has turned into a political football.

The basic premise for health insurance reform is that everyone should be able to get affordable care.

1. Separate the health care insurance from the jobs.
Everyone who makes, let’s say, ten times as much as the premiums for the best health care plan available, pays for their own.

2. The rest of us are eligible for single payer, government run health care.

Simple. Way too simple for our elected idiots in Congress.

Report this

By I.G. Noble, September 12 at 9:01 am #

Everyone seems to agree the US Census Bureau figure for the amount of uninsured people in America is the gold standard. Call me crazy, isn’t this the same US Census Bureau whose decennial effort is regularly criticized for its inaccuracy? Truthdig will probably run stories attesting to this very idea for the 2010 census.

Then why, oh why, does everyone seem to accept the US Census Bureau number for Americans without health insurance? I’m only asking because the number seems to me to be low, and has always seemed thus. I’ll bet the health insurance companies know from their own polls, and with better accuracy and with a figure that is up to date (better than 2008 at any rate), how many people in the US really do not have health insurance.

Just asking.

Report this

By dihey, September 12 at 8:53 am #

There is a real danger that the incessant health-care debate will completely mask what else is afoot in Washington such as a the introduction of a law that will allow “preventive detention”.

Report this

By Blackspeare, September 11 at 10:45 pm #

Go to this link and see how far the USA has come to achieving blatant class distinction:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G44NCvNDLfc&feature=player_embedded

Report this