Heritage tomatoes

2010 Vancouver Tomato Festival.

Heritage Foundation boldly steps forward to correct some PolitiFiction:

• PolitiFact’s objections to the characterization of Obamacare as government-centered medicine ignore conclusions from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office that a mandate for all Americans to purchase health insurance, like that in Obamacare, is “an unprecedented form of federal action,” or analysis from the non-partisan Congressional Research Service that “the precise number of new entities that will ultimately be created” by Obamacare is “currently unknowable.”

Heritage is correct on this one: PolitiFact should have described the phrase "government-centered medicine" as inherently meaningless.  What, if it referred to anything, would it refer to? The terms "doctor-centered" and "patient-centered" refer to categories from the analysis of videoed consultations showing the behavior of doctors and patients respectively (in the context of research on Britain's National Health Service!). You might as well complain about referee-centered soccer (one can and must complain about the conduct of the referee but we don't expect the officials to bow out and allow the market to decide who fouled). Anyone who has studied logic knows that a nonsensical statement is neither false nor true, an option the Truth-O-Meter fails to provide for.

• PolitiFact’s objections to the characterization of Obamacare putting bureaucrats before doctors and patients ignore Obamacare’s expansion of pay-for-performance programs—which will reduce Medicare payments to doctors who do not follow guidelines defined by federal bureaucrats—as well as the board of 15 unelected officials created by Obamacare who will make rulings reducing Medicare spending.

Only seconds ago government was in the middle, now it's in first place! But there's a mixed-metaphor hazard just ahead... Really, the point seems to be that it's wrong to ask physicians to be accountable. That's only for working-class folk like teachers.

• PolitiFact’s objections to talk that Obamacare relies on reduced Medicare spending to fund its coverage expansions ignore comments from Nancy Pelosi—that firebrand conservative—who admitted that Democrats “took half a trillion dollars out of Medicare in [Obamacare], the health care bill, already.”

Yes, when Pelosi shows up on CNBC it's like the Pope speaking ex cathedra: it makes her infallible. Then again maybe you could have looked at—sorry—Politifact.