Betsy McCaughey's Ideas Called "Hyperbolic... Dangerous" By Jon Stewart (VIDEO)

Betsy McCaughey is a famous liar who famously lied about the Clinton health care bill back in the 1990s, who has returned to lie just as famously in the aughts about the Obama health care bill. Last night, she made an appearance on The Daily Show in a two(plus)-part interview with host Jon Stewart, which centered on her latest, greatest distortion: that the current health care reform package wending its way through the House contains provisions that would enforce draconian consultations imposing conditions upon both patients in end-of-life circumstances and the doctors treating said patients. This falsehood, first promulgated by McCaughey, later came to be colloquially referred to as "death panels." Not a jot of it was true.

McCaughey brought to the interview tactics old and new in an attempt to snow the viewers. As James Fallows points out in his sobering essay on McCaughey (linked to above), "Her unvarying pose is that of the objective researcher who has, selflessly, pored through the pages of a bill and emerged to warn us about what she has found."

Keeping to this shtick, McCaughey came to the stage carrying a binder, which she said was the first half of the House health care reform bill. In addition, she came prepared to do whatever she could to ingratiate herself with the audience and with Stewart, plying him with saccharine compliments. Watching these tactics unfold, one couldn't help but recall the last great ingratiator who'd made an appearance on The Daily Show hoping that buttering up Jon Stewart would pay off on easy treatment: CNBC buffoon Jim Cramer.

If there was anything disappointing about the way the Daily Show approached this McCaughey interview, it was that Stewart's pushback lacked the "spare no expense, leave no stone unturned" research job that had been done for the Cramer interview.

Stewart, who was quick to point out that McCaughey was not the person who coined the phrase "death panel," conceded little else during the interview. That said, the interview went basically like this: McCaughey would say the bill said something, only it would turn out that different words were used, or that it actually wouldn't say that at all, and Jon Stewart would gently point this out, and she'd insist otherwise, and then start flipping through the bill, not really finding the proof or the documentation she was talking about. Stewart, at one point, contended that McCaughey's take on the matter was "hyperbolic" and "dangerous."

I don't want to get too deep in the weeds, because the interview is the thing, but the concept that McCaughey seems to be unable to get her head around -- or that she believes she can manipulate voter opinion over -- is the idea of adherence in end-of-life planning. She seemed to clearly indicate that she thought "adhering" to a living will means that the patient can't change his/her mind at any time during the course of his/her life; that once it's written, you've had your one crack and there are no "backsies." This is, in a word, crazy, because:

a) A living will only goes into effect once a patient is permanently incapacitated to the extent that no amount of medical care will bring the patient back into a state where they can proffer consent to attempt further life-saving procedures.

b) When the bill talks about adherence, this refers to the medical professionals adhering to the instructions in the living will, including, as Stewart points out again and again, adhering to any calls for "life sustaining medical procedures."

McCaughey insists at one point during this interview that the proof of her claims can be seen in the fact that the section in question was stripped from the bill. They took it out! THIS HAS TO HAVE BEEN A DASTARDLY PLOT, FOILED BY BETSY MCCAUGHEY. Yes. That must have been it.

Also: she believes that the government has a grand plan to literally end the lives of senior citizens. SURELY, THIS PLAN IS FOOLPROOF.

The interview ran long, and The Daily Show decided to run it as is until they were out of time. The entire interview was placed online to watch, with Stewart cautioning that one should only view it in the company of someone capable of navigating you through a "bad trip."

PART ONE:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Betsy McCaughey Pt. 1
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Healthcare Protests

PART TWO

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive - Betsy McCaughey Extended Interview Pt. 1
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Healthcare Protests

PART THREE

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Exclusive - Betsy McCaughey Extended Interview Pt. 2
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Healthcare Protests

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Comments

[papa02]

12:35 AM on 08/30/2009

Health Care debabte remind me of John Q, the movie.The movie tells a true story that no one seems to incorporat­e in the Health care debate.The entire congress is made of SENIORS, seniors that might be unemployme­nt in a few years,why will they want to pass a bill that affects them.

[Faxus]

05:01 PM on 08/26/2009

Like so many "guests" before her, she didn't understand that she was going to be eviscerate­d alive. She put up a game struggle but in the end she deservedly lost her innerds.

[CTJack]

12:32 PM on 08/27/2009

It’s interestin­g that many of the points McCaughey made during her Daily Show appearance were illustrate­d in an article the next week, “Calm, but Moved to be Heard on Health Care,” in the August 25 The New York Times. In the article, Bob Collier, a 62-year old native of Montezuma, Ga., attended a health care forum in Albany Ga., where he urged his congressma­n to oppose health care legislatio­n being written in Washington­. His major fear was that his wife's cancer care would be rationed if the disease returned. "She'd be on a waiting list," he said. Mr. Collier continued: "I know we need some reform, I've just got questions about how we're
going to do it."
In conclusion he said: "We've got to do something about those people who can't
get insurance. There has to be a safety net there..."
That sounds a bit like what McCaughey said: “I have long supported providing health insurance for everybody who can't afford it. But you know how the president is paying for it in this bill, by cutting $500 billion from Medicare. That's a 10% cut over the next decade when 30% more people are going to be in the program and that's cruel because it's going to mean too little money to take care of seniors. It's going to mean seniors can't get treatments­.”
It seems to me that Mr. Collier's fears are well founded.

[fairplaystacy]

01:57 PM on 08/29/2009

MEDIC!!!

[AJLester]

03:17 PM on 08/26/2009

Isn't it ironic that Big Insurance has for years employed a huge number of so-called "patient advocates" who sureptitio­usly direct patient care in alignment with the profit motives of the managed care companies, rather than in alignment with the true medical interests of the patients?

Of course, no one is talking about Blue Cross, United, Aetna, or Cigna "death panels" because who'd ever admit they exist? Yet every day, at every managed care company, medical decisions are being made or, at very least, are being influenced by people who are not the patient's doctor. Patient advocates who work for the managed care companies, in the process of fulfilling their noble profession­, are nonetheles­s feeding informatio­n back-and-f­orth to the managed care companies. Informatio­n that influences length of hospital stay, treatment options, and other medical considerat­ions that, over time and in many cases, can influence whether a person lives or dies. Yet no one talks about this, nor ever mentions the deep-seate­d motives that underlie "patient advocacy" as sponsored by commercial managed care entities.

Death panels are a great way to scare people. Maybe if supporters of healthcare reform were willing to stoop as low its opponents, someone could build quite a case that such systems have been firmly in place all along in the profit-dri­ven managed care business model of healthcare in the U.S.

[JoshieB]

05:45 PM on 08/29/2009

Nicely done.

[sleepymonkey]

02:47 AM on 09/04/2009

exactly.

[TimKathyShmily]

10:21 AM on 08/26/2009

I wish we didn't have Democrat or Republican parties. I think the hate between each other takes our minds away from really looking at ideas that could pull us together for the real good of our country. People have the right to think as they wish, but hate causes one not to really listen to other opinions. All I wish is for the great people of this land to be all they can be with their families and have a great time doing. I think the country haters don't want us to pull together as Americans and not some party. If we lay down what party we might lean toward and just pull for our country and all its people, we trully would have the best and greatest nation on earth.

[JoshieB]

10:00 PM on 08/25/2009

The bill doesn't judge doctors based on whether or not patients change their minds. It judges doctors based on whether or not they do what the patient wants. McC is willfully making a semantic mistake. And thanks be for Jon Stewart for pointing it out.

[WonderingNThinking]

04:55 AM on 08/25/2009

Honestly, I think she was trying to make the point that pushing people to decide their final fate in advance and incentiviz­ing doctors to do this is a problem. If this was her point, she didn't have much of a chance to make it because Jon interrupte­d her too much.

Personally­, I can agree with her point, if it is how I interprete­d it. If I don't want to make a life or death decision now, I wouldn't want to be pushed by my doctor to make it. I don't agree that this alone makes the bill "dangerous­", yet if it is just one of many examples in the bill then it could be a problem.

[WonderingNThinking]

04:58 AM on 08/25/2009

I think Jon came in with a preconceiv­ed notion of her point and didn't really listen.

[WonderingNThinking]

05:12 AM on 08/25/2009

By the way, on the rest of the stuff she said, I disagree with her and find she had flawed logic, e.g. when she talked about the % spent by families on healthcare lumped in with other spending. I think Jon did a great job of pointing this out.

[swimbiker]

09:15 AM on 08/25/2009

Well, Jon happened to be right and she was wrong. He kept trying to point out the fallacy of her argument, but she was not talking to him but playing to the audience. It backfired on her.

[AspenSyzygy]

09:09 AM on 08/25/2009

WonderingN­Thinking - BINGO - I COMPLETELY AGREE - I think that was her point, and I think it has merit.

I agree with you.

[Phillip Berns]

04:41 AM on 08/25/2009

I LOVED this interview, loved it. She was trying so hard to provide evidence for her (as Stewart put it) hyperbolic fears when all she could come up with were a few sections that were saying exactly the same thing as Stewart was. She cornered herself a few times and only got herself out of it by making an even more ridiculous claim than her last.

It's fun to see Stewart get physically upset over something that his guest is saying, it hasn't happened in a while, and I think that if he wasn't about to go on vacation for three weeks, he would have snapped.

[AspenSyzygy]

09:11 AM on 08/25/2009

Phillip Berns - Stewart didn't echo the legislatio­n, he essentiall­y acknowledg­ed that he didn't know what it said, hadn't read it through, and she pointed him to it - and he clearly didn't understand it.

The trouble is that it takes more than a soundbite to understand a thousand pages of legalese. I know everyone wants to laugh when they flip on the b00b t00b to watch Stewart, but the former Lt. Governor of New York made some good points and - for once - had a substantia­l amount of the legislatio­n in hand, and quoted directly from it.

If you study and reflect on what it said, you'll realize she has a great point.

There's a REASON thousands of seniors are protesting this thing.

[swimbiker]

09:18 AM on 08/25/2009

No, Jon understood it and pointed that out. She was the one obfuscatin­g and making things up out of whole cloth. She has no point other than to try and make stuff up to scare old folks.

In my opinion, the reason some seniors are protesting is because they have been scared that "their Medicare" will be taken away. The Republican­s did that, and they should be ashamed.

[Carolab]

12:47 AM on 08/25/2009

This woman was trying to get hospitals to get rid of MRSA and I was behind her until I realized she was only doing it because it costs the insurance companies more to treat the vic-tims.

She is also Wilbur Ross's ex-wife.

Enough said.

[AspenSyzygy]

09:23 AM on 08/25/2009

Now that's the most interestin­g post I've read so far. Betsy Ross, eh?

[empiricalWeb]

10:49 AM on 09/07/2009

Well now that it costs nothing to insurance companies when someone contracts MRSA or another DRO, because the hospital is stuck fitting the bill for nosocomial­s, she should keep her trap shut.

[guyfrombrooklyn]

10:51 PM on 08/24/2009

Why didn't she stand through the ENTIRE interview?

From the seat, me and Gov Pataki had trouble recognizin­g her.

[Poorsarah]

08:41 PM on 08/24/2009

To make it crystal clear to all; McCaughey is a liar and she was called out on her lies by Jon Stewart. These supposed experts are devious and shameless to throw lies and fearmonger­ing misinforma­tion to a gullible audience who do not have enough critical thinking skills and factual informatio­n to make an honest assessment about healthcare reform. Then, angry mobs (some with loaded firearms) protest against the very reform that they need for affordable healthcare­. The issues that she, and other GOP loonies, claimed were in the healthcare bill are not in the healthcare bill. One obsevation of interest; when the GOPers are caught in their lies, then they lie again by making stupid statements along the lines of...WELL, THIS IS WHAT IT COULD MEAN. America, do not trust these liars.

[johnbohl]

07:05 PM on 08/24/2009

It pretty much boils to common sense. Ask yourself two questions: First, who stands to gain from a public health option? Secondly, who stands to lose from a public health option? Now, which one of those questions can be answered with "Insurance Company Shareholde­rs"?

[MissMisk]

08:48 PM on 08/24/2009

That's it in a nutshell. Obama warned us during the campaign that the power brokers would not give up what they have without a fight. The insurance industry has a strangleho­ld on the medical industry and on us, right now. That is not how it is supposed to be. Scrape the insurance companies out of their insinuated position as middle man, and the whole she-bang would be a lot cheaper, for all of us.

[pixiepotpie]

07:02 PM on 08/24/2009

This woman should stick to annoying people at the laundrymat­.

[believethelie]

10:46 PM on 08/24/2009

Hey, I've already got enough trouble with my laundry!

[salkoc]

05:31 PM on 08/24/2009

let me get this straight ..........­democrats fought tooth and nail for MIDICARE ....MEDICA­ID....SOCI­AL SECURITY ......but now want to enact legislatio­n that kills old people , throws away the poor and takes money from every retiree? i would like to know what planet this woman is on . watching her i got the weird feeling it was michelle bachmann..­..man its scary .

its a shame she doesnt recall her hand on many pharma boards ...some of which have been corrupt . she should be familiar with a company called genta out of nj .

this just exposes the outer lunatic fringe which walks among us ....they are just angry at the world .

[ZoeyMO]

07:21 PM on 08/24/2009

Amen! People obviously haven't been paying the slightest bit of REAL attention to the progressiv­e agenda. It DOES NOT INVOLVE killing people, it involves ensuring that they can get adequate care without having to sacrifice eating. Duh, people!

[swimbiker]

09:19 AM on 08/25/2009

I think it shows their "I've got mine and you can just get screwed!" attitude of the GOP reactionar­ies. Because they aren't true conservati­ves....

[Miss Education]

05:21 PM on 08/24/2009

I really enjoyed this interview. and I have to say that I was pleased with how "composed" Jon Stewart was during it. He could have easily gotten much more agitated but what would that have proven?

"I like you but I don't understand how your brain works."

[SarahJayne]

08:43 AM on 08/25/2009

i agree! did you see his hands tidying his notes? he was clearly agitated but held it together. much better than i would/coul­d have done... i probably would have punched her after her first lunatic statement.

[basenji]

04:12 PM on 08/24/2009

I watched this show last night. Good for Jon for showing how idiotic this woman was and for exposing her lies.

[swimbiker]

09:20 AM on 08/25/2009

Especially when she kept turning to the audience as if for adulation.