Betsy McCaughey – fighting for insurance company profits and against progress

Betsy McCaughey is the former Lieutenant Governor of the State of New York from 1995 to 1998.

February 7, 1994
No Exit
What the Clinton plan will do for you.
http://www.tnr.com/article/health-care/no-exit
Betsy’s false “No Exit” argument, in which she wrongly claimed that the Clinton plan would make it illegal to go outside the government plan for coverage or pay doctors on your own.

January 31, 1994
Response said McCaughey’s article contained “numerous factual inaccuracies and misleading statements”.
http://clinton6.nara.gov/1994/01/1994-01-31-analysis-of-new-republic-article-on-health-care-reform.html

And get this, her “No Exit” article won a National_Magazine_Award for excellence in the public interest.
What?
Yeah, lets all give praise to McCaughey for helping to bankrupt (by torpedoing healthcare reform) millions of Americans.

This year:

August 12
Former Lt. Gov. Betsy McCaughey leads ‘death panel’ charge writing up talking points
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2009/08/13/2009-08-13_former_lt_gov_mccaughey_leads_death_panel_charge_writing_up_talking_points_on_he.html

August 13
http://jamesfallows.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/08/i_was_wrong.php
Notes “In the early 1990s McCaughey single-handedly did a phenomenal amount to distort discussion of health-care policy and derail the Clinton health bill. She did so through an entirely fictitious argument about what the bill would do.”

August 20

The Evolution Of The Death Panel Meme
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/photofeatures/2009/08/the-evolution-of-the-death-panel-meme.php?img=2

October 5
No Exit
The never-ending lunacy of Betsy McCaughey.
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/no-exit?page=0
Notes “A constitutional scholar by training, McCaughey (pronounced “McCoy”) blazed to fame in 1994 as the person who drove a stake through the heart of Hillarycare, with a detailed (and, as it turned out, false) takedown of the plan published in this very magazine.”

October 9
http://mediamatters.org/columns/200910090050
Jamison Foser wraps up: If Foer and TNR really regret inflicting McCaughey on an unsuspecting world, and if Sullivan really takes responsibility for publishing her, they’ll do the only appropriate thing: clearly and forcefully apologize, and return the award.

October 6
On MSNBC with Dylan Ratigan and Anthony Weiner