PolitiFact's Lie of the Year:
'Death panels'
By Angie Drobnic Holan
Published on Friday, December 18th, 2009 at 5:15 p.m.
Of all the falsehoods and distortions in the political discourse this year, one stood out from the rest.
"Death panels."
The claim set political debate afire when it was made in August, raising issues from the role of government in health care to the bounds of acceptable political discussion. In a nod to the way technology has transformed politics, the statement wasn't made in an interview or a television ad. Sarah Palin posted it on her Facebook page.
Her assertion that the government would set up boards to determine whether seniors and the disabled were worthy of care ÃÃ,Ã,Ã,¢ÃÃ,Ã,¢,Ã,Ã,Ã,¬" spread through newscasts, talk shows, blogs and town hall meetings. Opponents of health care legislation said it revealed the real goals of the Democratic proposals. Advocates for health reform said it showed the depths to which their opponents would sink. Still others scratched their heads and said, "Death panels? Really?"
The editors of PolitiFact.com, the fact-checking Web site of the St. Petersburg Times, have chosen it as our inaugural "Lie of the Year."
PolitiFact readers overwhelmingly supported the decision. Nearly 5,000 voted in a national poll to name the biggest lie, and 61 percent chose "death panels" from a field of eight finalists."
The former governor of Alaska had been out of the headlines since she announced her resignation on July 3; the Facebook message instantly brought her back to the political stage.
"As more Americans delve into the disturbing details of the nationalized health care plan that the current administration is rushing through Congress, our collective jaw is dropping, and we're saying not just no, but hell no!" Palin wrote.
"The Democrats promise that a government health care system will reduce the cost of health care, but as the economist Thomas Sowell has pointed out, government health care will not reduce the cost; it will simply refuse to pay the cost. And who will suffer the most when they ration care? The sick, the elderly, and the disabled, of course. 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 ââ,¬death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ââ,¬level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil."
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