Revenge Of The Son Of Zombie Health Care Lies

Zachary Roth at TPM documents the latest health care zombie lie: Obamacare is coming for your bank account.

No, really. I heard it on the internets.

The hot new conservative health-care lie is that the bill will give the government direct access to Americans' bank accounts at any time, which, in some variations of the lie, will then be raided to finance the legislation.

The bank accounts lie has been proliferating in recent days. A questioner at Sen. Arlen Specter's townhall this morning asked about it. Rush Limbaugh, of course, has talked it up several times over the last week on his show. Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ), speaking last week to a local right-wing radio station, called the provision "pretty Orwellian."

Where does it come from? It appears to have its roots in an email "analysis" of health-care reform that includes various lies and distortions about the bill. (Politifact, the fact-checking site run by the St. Petersburg Times, has called the email a "clearinghouse of bad information.") One charge made in the email is that "the federal government will have direct, real-time access to all individual bank accounts for electronic funds transfer."

What's the truth? The section of the legislation on which this claim is based states that the bill will "enable electronic funds transfers, in order to allow automated reconciliation with the related health care payment and remittance advice."

As Politifact points out, the bill's legislative summary makes clear that the intent of this section is to "adopt standards for typical transactions" between insurance companies and health-care providers, and continues: "The legislation generically describes typical electronic banking transactions and does not outline any special access privileges." In what seems like an excess of even-handedness, Politifact calls the claim made in the email "barely true."

Media Matters adds that this is no different from setting up an automatic online bill-pay in order to pay back a student loan, calling it "completely uncontroversial, and totally not scary."

Let's get this straight here, folks. There are parts of the anti-health care reform movement that have legitimate concerns. But there are also plenty more folks in this coalition of chaos that are driven by destroying the plan at all costs, and if that means blanketing the talk radio airwaves and Grandma's email with "Obamacare is coming for your _______" then so be it.

Our debate has devolved into shouting matches where one side screams "Tyranny! Oppression! We will be heard!" when they actually don't have anything useful to say, and the other side is collectively rubbing the bridge of their noses and going "But that's just stupid..." and not getting anywhere. Nothing about actual health care, just insane lies and yelling, and frustrated, annoyed people on the other end.

But drowning out the debate and burying it under layers of bullshit is the most effective way to kill health care reform. It worked in 1994 and redefined the Clinton years. They are counting on it to work again, to convince millions of Americans that the Obama administration is full of James Bond bad guys waiting to throw Grandma in the volcano to fuel their ACORN orgies.

What civil discourse? The other side wants no such thing. There's no change to reform the system if you destroy any and all debate about the subject. That's where we are now.