We all have one: a dotty but well-meaning grandma, the Lyndon LaRuche fanatic at your gym who spouts nonsense, but also happens to have killer abs, the paranoid, anti-government boss who is otherwise a pretty nice guy. Since a new survey shows that fifty percent of Americans believe misinformation about healthcare, there's a good chance you've run into someone spouting off crazy nonsense about death panels or drawing little Hitler moustaches on posters of Obama.
Of course, most of the myths people believe are more like misinformation: facts that were twisted or misread or reinterpreted. But some, of course, are just plain crazy. Like, hut-in-the-woods, handwritten-manifesto nuts. Aaron Carroll, who ran the aforementioned study about the pervasivness of these health care myths, shared one he heard as a guest on a call-in radio show. "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."
That's crazy, right? Crazy in thinking that the government would mandate abortions, crazy in that an American citizen would think, "Yes, that sounds factual," crazy that she then decided to spread this information over AM talk radio. (Ok, that part is less crazy). There are two options when faced with a barrage of outlandish accusations like these: you can cry at how divisive and delusional public discourse over health reform has become... or you can collect a bunch of incredibly unbelievable health reform myths and laugh at them.
We're going with option B. Along with the ladies of The Gaggle, I'll be collecting the best of the worst. For instance, here are some of the other loopy myths we've heard at NEWSWEEK:
- Doctors will be imprisoned if they provide life saving treatments not sanctioned by the government;
- Private insurance will be outlawed;
- Obama wants to revive a Nazi program of killing incurably or mentally ill people;
- Medicare will be ended;
- The bill allows the government to access your bank account.
Can you top these? What crazy myths are ending up in
your inbox? Have you heard anything nutty from your relatives or
friends? Let us know in the comments, and we'll post the wildest ones tomorrow.
