From PolitiFact.com:

The health care law rations care and denies treatments.

This has been a favorite attack line by critics who suggest that a panel of bureaucrats are making life and death decisions. But the health care law rations care no more nor less than the current health care system does. For evidence, critics have pointed to the Independent Payment Advisory Board, something the law introduced as a means of controlling costs for the Medicare system. But the board's parameters are very narrow. It only applies to Medicare. It kicks in only when spending outpaces certain benchmarks. And it can only make system-wide recommendations to rein in future spending. Congress can overrule the board, and the law specifically states that the board may not "ration care" or increase costs for Medicare beneficiaries.

Death panels.

This falsehood, our 2009 Lie of the Year, started after an early draft of the bill sought to allow Medicare to pay for doctors' visits in which patients discussed end-of-life care, such as living wills. The critics labeled it suicide counseling. Conservative superstar Sarah Palin amped up the debate in August 2009 by declaring on her Facebook page, "The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome 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." But there was never any panel like that in the bill. Recently, Palin has defended her comments, pointing to the Independent Payment Advisory Board as a death panel. Either way, the claim is ridiculously false and earned a Pants on Fire.

So for some unfathomable reason, Howard Dean joins Sarah Palin and Songwronger in running toward the horizon with their asses on fire!

Don Firth