FACT CHECK: Health overhaul myths taking root

Constituents of Congressman Tom Perriello, D-Va., holds signs as they listen to the congressman during a town hall meeting on Health Care at the Fluvanna Middle School in Fork Union, Va., Monday, Aug. 17, 2009. Perriello is one of three dozen Democratic Freshmen that have been thrown into the center of one of the most contentious policy debates in years. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)

WASHINGTON — The judgment is harsh in a new poll that finds Americans worried about the government taking over health insurance, cutting off treatment to the elderly and giving coverage to illegal immigrants. Harsh, but not based on facts.

President Barack Obama's lack of a detailed plan for overhauling health care is letting critics fill in the blanks in the public's mind. In reality, Washington is not working on "death panels" or nationalization of health care.

To be sure, presenting Congress and the country with the nuts and bolts of a revamped system of health insurance is no guarantee of success for a president – just ask Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Their famous flop was demonized, too. After all, the devil does lurk in details.

It can also lurk in generalities, it seems.

Obama is promoting his changes in something of a vacuum, laying out principles, goals and broad avenues, some of which he's open to amending. As lawmakers sweat the nitty gritty, he's doing a lot of listening, and he's getting an earful.

A new NBC News poll suggests some of the myths and partial truths about the plans under consideration are taking hold.

Most respondents said the effort is likely to lead to a "government takeover of the health care system" and to public insurance for illegal immigrants. Half said it will probably result in taxpayers paying for abortions and nearly that many expected the government will end up with the power to decide when treatment should stop for old people.

A look at each of those points:
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THE POLL: 45 percent said it's likely the government will decide when to stop care for the elderly; 50 percent said it's not likely.

THE FACTS: Nothing being debated in Washington would give the government such authority. Critics have twisted a provision in a House bill that would direct Medicare to pay for counseling sessions about end-of-life care, living wills, hospices and the like if a patient wants such consultations with a doctor. They have said, incorrectly, that the elderly would be required to have these sessions.

House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio said such counseling "may start us down a treacherous path toward government-encouraged euthanasia."

The bill would prohibit coverage of counseling that presents suicide or assisted suicide as an option.

Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson of Georgia, who has been a proponent of coverage for end-of-life counseling under Medicare, said such sessions are a voluntary benefit, strictly between doctor and patient, and it was "nuts" to think death panels are looming or euthanasia is part of the equation.

But as fellow conservatives stepped up criticism of the provision, he backed away from his defense of it.

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THE POLL: 55 percent expect the overhaul will give coverage to illegal immigrants; 34 percent don't.

THE FACTS: The proposals being negotiated do not provide coverage for illegal immigrants.

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THE POLL: 54 percent said the overhaul will lead to a government takeover of health care; 39 percent disagree.

THE FACTS: Obama is not proposing a single-payer system in which the government covers everyone, like in Canada or some European countries. He says that direction is not right for the U.S. The proposals being negotiated do not go there.

At issue is a proposed "exchange" or "marketplace" in which a new government plan would be one option for people who aren't covered at work or whose job coverage is too expensive. The exchange would offer some private plans as well as the public one, all of them required to offer certain basic benefits.

That's a long way from a government takeover. But when Obama tells people they can just continue with the plans they have now if they are happy with them, that can't be taken at face value, either. Tax provisions could end up making it cheaper for some employers to pay a fee to end their health coverage, nudging some patients into a public plan with different doctors and benefits. Over time, critics fear, the public plan could squeeze private insurers out of business because they would not be able to compete with the federal government.

It's unclear now whether Obama is committed to the public option. He described it recently as "just one sliver" of health reform, suggesting it was expendable if lawmakers could agree on another way to expand affordable coverage. Now the White House is emphasizing his strong support for it.

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THE POLL: 50 percent expect taxpayer dollars will be used to pay for abortions; 37 percent don't.

THE FACTS: The House version of legislation would allow coverage for abortion in the public plan. But the procedure would be paid for with dollars from beneficiary premiums, not from federal funds. Likewise, private plans in the new insurance exchange could opt to cover abortion, but no federal subsidies would be used to pay for the procedure.

Opponents say the prohibition on federal money for the procedure is merely a bookkeeping trick and what matters is that Washington would allow abortion to be covered under government-subsidized insurance.

Obama has stated that the U.S. should continue its tradition of "not financing abortions as part of government-funded health care." Current laws prohibiting public financing of abortion would stay on the books.

Yet abortion guidelines are not yet clear for the government-supervised insurance exchange. There is strong sentiment in Congress on both sides of the issue.

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The poll of 805 people was taken Aug. 15-17 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

Obamamania fails to impress most Muslim nations: Survey

WASHINGTON - Obamamania may still be sweeping the world, but not most Muslim nations, says a survey by the Pew Research Center here. Called Global Attitudes Project, the survey of 24 countries and the Palestinian territories shows that the Muslim world remains largely immune to Obamamania, said Richard Wike, associate director, Pew Global Attitudes Project, in an article for CBS News Friday.

Thanks to the new president, America’s image is on the rebound throughout much of the world, with more than nine-in-ten in France and Germany posing faith in Obama’s leadership, he said.

Because of Obama, ratings for the US itself are up dramatically, with sizeable increases in Latin America, Africa, and much of Asia, Wike wrote.

However when it comes to Muslim nations, Obama is viewed more positively there than George Bush, but America’s overall image remains unchanged, the survey says.

In Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey and the Palestinian territories, even less than 30 percent people have a positive view of America, according to the survey.

In Egypt and Jordan there has been a slight rise in favorable views about the US since 2008. But in Pakistan, Turkey and the Palestinian territories, America continues to be viewed as negatively as in the final years of the presidency of George Bush whose wars in Iraq and Afghanistan antagonized Muslim nations.

“Although a new team is now in the White House, much of the distrust persists. For example, the 2009 poll finds that in predominantly Muslim nations, there is generally little support for US-led anti-terrorism efforts,” said Wike.

According to the survey, the American disapproval ratings are as high as 64 percent in Pakistan and 77 percent in the Palestinian territories.

Majorities in six of the seven Muslim nations surveyed feel the US is a military threat to their country.

Though respondents in most countries thought Obama will take a multilateral approach to foreign policy and be fair in his dealings with the Israelis and Palestinians, Muslim nations thought otherwise.

In the Palestinian territories, Jordan, Egypt, and Lebanon, more than six-in-ten doubted whether Obama will be fair on the Middle East issues, according to the survey.

However, the US ratings are up to 61 percent among Muslims in Nigeria in Africa - the continent where Obama’s Kenyan Muslim father came from - and 63 percent in Indonesia where Obama spent many years as a child.

While Indonesia is the world’s biggest Muslim nation, Muslims constitute 50 percent of the Nigerian population.

But what was surprising was a 90 percent approval rating for the US among Lebanon’s Sunni Muslims as against juts 2 percent among Lebanese Shias who are aligned with Shiite Iran and Syria.

The survey said Obama’s election may not have brought about a sea change in Muslim attitudes towards the US, but he may be laying the groundwork for improvement.

The Tone of Washington

By Harry Shearer

Actor, author, director, satirist, musician, radio host, playwright, multi-media artist

Watching the wave of euphoria sweep over Washington, and the country, I'm reminded of the last time an emotion this deep and wide settled over all of us: it was war fever, and it happened as the Bush administration whipped up support for the invasion of Iraq. So maybe hope has trumped fear after all, or maybe mass emotions, like everything else, run in cycles.

But it was grandly amusing to see President-Reject Bush, on one of his many legacy-tour interviews, express sadness that he was unable to change the partisan tone in Washington. That was tantamount to Steven Seagal expressing regret that he was unable to raise the aesthetic level of Hollywood movies.

Yet, despite the best efforts of Karl Rove to channel Lee Atwaterism, I think there's a deeper explanation for the poisonous rancor that has gripped American politics for the past couple of decades, and it has a grand old name: illegitimacy. Republicans never thought Bill Clinton was a legitimate President, since he'd won only through the presence on the ballot of Ross Perot. Then Democrats clung to the belief that, thanks to the Supreme Court, the Bush Presidency was born in sin.

There is no belief more corrosive to democratic comity than the conviction that the occupant of the Oval Office arrived there illegitimately.

All through the angst of the LBJ and Nixon years, despite the loathing anti-war folks (like me) harbored for both Presidents, no one questioned the legitimacy of their election, although plenty of people questioned the legitimacy of the entire system. Yet the questions of legitimacy surrounding Clinton and Bush were profoundly personal, and the resulting politics was acidic in the extreme.

So, whatever you can say about the euphoria surrounding Barack Obama -- and, given the President's apparent commitment to an Afghanistan policy of more troops and more money, as if we can do over the truncated invasion of 2001 and avoid the fate of the British and Soviet empires in that land -- the magnitude of his popular and electoral-vote victory means that we have seen the end, for now, of the politics of illegitimacy. And that, more than any efforts George Bush may think he made, will change the tone in Washington.