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. 

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 counter-strike against an increasingly absurd campaign of misinformation. In fact,  one of the most difficult battles 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 website 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’s made its rounds in town halls and on viral emails 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 of 600 Americans about 19 medical myths, and the results showed that at least half of the country is misinformed. Find out why these myths endure after the jump.