by Kate Dailey and Sarah Kliff

Yesterday, Barney Frank's takedown of a young woman comparing health-care reform to Nazi policy was heralded by reform advocates as long-overdue counterstrike against an increasingly absurd campaign of misinformation. In fact, one of the most difficult battles President Obama has fought in the health-care debate is explaining what exactly his health-care plan entails—and then getting people to believe him. Myths about health-care legislation have run rampant to the point that the White House launched a Web site devoted to mythbusting.

It doesn’t seem to have done much good: Aaron Carroll of Indiana University’s Center for Health Policy and Professionalism Research has an interesting study out today looking at which myths have thus far taken hold in the health-care debate. Turns out, nearly every myth that has made its rounds in town halls and on viral e-mails has ginned up a serious following, with almost half of America believing myths about health-care reform.

"When it comes to health-care reform, all of these myths seem to be resonating," says Carroll, who writes extensively about medical myths. "I think people are so scared of the idea of reform in general that they're willing to believe anything."

Last week, Carroll and his research team polled 600 Americans about 19 medical myths, and the results showed that at least half of the country is misinformed. 

For instance: 

• 46 percent of Americans believe reform will result in health-care coverage for all illegal immigrants (it won’t—see Jeneen Interlandi’s excellent post from yesterday.
• Half of us think the federal government will become directly involved in making personal health-care decisions.
• 53 percent of Republicans believe “death panels” will exist in some form, that the government will require the elderly to make decisions about how and when they want to die.(The real meaning of "end-of-life consultation" is actually something that, in practice, gives most people comfort and hope. Check out this astounding interview with a leading expert on end-of-life issues.) The number does drop to 30 percent when you look at the entire population, which still means a third of America thinks Barack Obama wants to kill your grandmother.

Many of these myths sound realistic but are the result of misinformation: that a lack of public option will raise private premiums, for instance. But what's also taking hold are myths that sound completely unbelievable. Carroll, who has been doing several radio interviews to talk about health care, recalls a particularly disturbing myth he was asked about on a call-in station. "I had a caller that thought that if a woman found out she was going to have a baby with Down syndrome, she would be forced to have an abortion, and if she didn't, she and the baby would lose their health insurance," he says. "Really? I think when you confront people and make them think past the first line they’re screaming, they haven’t really thought it through."

But confrontation takes time, and time is of the essence as Obama tries to push through health-care reform before the end of the year. While the outlandish myths are less pervasive, they're often shouted the loudest and may do the most damage. Having to discredit them in town-hall meetings (à la Frank) takes time away from educating people who are more likely to be sidelined by a myth about cost or government intervention. "The people who believe the outlandish things, I’m not sure we can change their mind," says Carroll. Meanwhile, people who are misinformed about the cost of the program or the access they have to their doctors could come around. "They’re just not getting the information. That’s somebody you might be able to change their mind, but we’re spending all our time focusing on the crazies," he says.

Aside from fears about health care driving falsehoods, the facts may be too darned boring for us to comprehend, priming our brains for more dramatic narratives. As Sharon Begley adroitly explains, we’re suckers for political pitches that tug at our heartstrings regardless of their validity. Take the concept of death panels:

[It] works because Americans are deeply uncomfortable with death. We don't like to think about it or talk about it, says bioethicist Tom Murray, president of the Hastings Center. Only 29 percent of us have a living will. As a result of that discomfort, reminding people of death sends them off the deep end, into the part of the neuronal pool where reason cowers behind existential terror. And we're particularly vulnerable to scaremongering in the atmosphere of dread created by the economic meltdown. When people are already scared about losing their jobs and their homes and paying for health care, it doesn't take a lot to make them afraid of one more thing. We're living with "free-floating anxiety" every day, says psychiatrist Louann Brizendine of the University of California, San Francisco. "The brain is signaling 'danger' right now. Whenever that happens, the brain typically loses its logical reasoning power." Fear is also the most contagious emotion. If Chuck Grassley is worried about death panels, millions of people reason (check that: feel), how can I be sure they're a myth?