Scoffing at claims his health care policy would “pull the plug on grandma,” President Barack Obama said he does not support so-called “death panels” to decide the fate of the elderly and disabled.
“Let’s disagree over things that are real, not these wild misrepresentations that bear no resemblance to anything that’s actually been proposed,” Obama told a town hall in Portsmouth, N.H.
With health care reform growing increasingly contentious, the White House is pushing back against critics and the news media, saying both are distorting the issues.
“No offense, but you guys cover a lot of process and you cover a lot of noise and heat and light, but I think what people in America want to know is how is this reform going to help them,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters aboard Air Force One.
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin stoked critics of Obama’s health care reform plans with her claim the president supports “death panels” empowered to withhold Medicare funds from patients such as her parents and son Trigg, who has Down syndrome.
Gibbs complained of the “constant struggle” to refute such reports against journalists’ enthusiasm for covering them.
Obama also took aim at coverage of his “reality check” Web site that solicits rumors about health care reform in order to debunk them.
“This is another example of how the media ends up just completely distorting what’s taken place,” Obama said. “Suddenly, on some of these news outlets, this is being portrayed as Obama collecting an enemies list.”
The push back marked a new tactic by the White House and an inherently tricky one, in part because proving a negative is rarely an easy political sound bite.
Blaming the media also has limited facility and particularly in the current health care debate, because much of the erroneous information is being exchanged outside of the traditional news media.
Death panels and a related euthanasia rumor grew out of a provision in one version of the health care bill that would provide Medicare coverage for seniors to seek help for making arrangements for end-of-life care every five years.
“The way politics works sometimes is that people who want to keep things the way they are will try to scare the heck out of folks, and they’ll create bogeymen out there that just aren’t real,” Obama said.
The president’s town hall was lacking the drama some lawmakers are encountering in their home districts at public discussions of health care reform.
Former Gov. John H. Sununu, chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party, said Obama is facing opposition on health care because people feel rushed and distrustful.
“I think what is happening around the country is a reflection of the intensity of emotion this issue in general brings out in people,” Sununu said. “And frankly it argues, in my opinion, against this rush to judgment and suggests to Democratic leaders in the House and Senate and to the president that they ought to be listening more.”
