Separating Fact from Fiction in Health Reform Debate

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• JEFFREY BROWN:

  Health care reform continued to be a hot topic at congressional town meetings this week. An exchange between Senator John McCain and a constituent in Sun City, Arizona, help explains why.

• TOWN HALL ATTENDEE:

  I came here for a reason, and that's to learn, and I support this. I've got a couple questions. When I was in school, Jack and Jill ran up the hill. I could understand that.

  This stuff that comes out of Washington now that's in legislation bills, they don't even know what's in it. How can we expect to know what's in it?

  Why can't we just have a simple — first, simple statement saying, "This is this, this is this." No, they got in the there, it will be in there, and not right now, but it will be, we hope to get in the there, yes, it's in there, no, it isn't in there. We don't understand nothing.

• SEN. JOHN MCCAIN, R-Ariz.:

  Wait a minute. Sir, sir, come here a second, would you? Would you come back? Here's the bill. Six hundred pages, and it doesn't have a major portion of the reform that they're contemplating. The one in the House was 1,000 pages.

• JEFFREY BROWN:

  Well, there are actually five different versions of health reform bills in Congress right now. Ray Suarez tries to separate fact from fiction about their contents.

• RAY SUAREZ:

  As the health care debate rages on across the country, much of the back-and-forth has centered on controversial provisions that may or may not actually be in any of the proposals currently working their way through Congress.

  In his weekly address on Saturday, President Obama sought to debunk what he called "some of the more outrageous myths circulating on the Internet, on cable TV, and repeated at town halls across the country."

• U.S. PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA:

  Let's start with the false claim that illegal immigrants will get health insurance under reform. That's not true. Illegal immigrants would not be covered. That idea has never even been on the table.

  Some are also saying that coverage for abortions would be mandated under reform. Also false. When it comes to the current ban on using tax dollars for abortions, nothing will change under reform.

  And as every credible person who has looked into it has said, there are no so-called death panels, an offensive notion to me and to the American people.

  These are phony claims meant to divide us. And we've all heard the charge that reform will somehow bring about a government takeover of health care. I know that sounds scary to many folks; it sounds scary to me, too. But here's the thing: It's not true.

• RAY SUAREZ:

  But despite the efforts of the president and other supporters of the Democratic proposals, a recent NBC News poll found that many Americans believe just the opposite when it comes to such claims.

  On whether the plans put forward by congressional Democrats would give coverage to illegal immigrants, 55 percent said they believed that was likely to happen.

  Meanwhile, 54 percent said they thought the plans would lead to a government takeover of the health care system. Half of the respondents said they believed taxpayer money would be used to pay for women to have abortions. And 45 percent said that Democratic reforms would allow the government to make some decisions about when to stop providing medical care to the elderly.

  To help us sort out fact from fiction, we sat down with two individuals who've been monitoring the health care debate closely. One is Bill Adair, editor of the nonpartisan fact-checking Web site "PolitiFact" and Washington bureau chief of the St. Petersburg Times.

  The other is Julie Rovner, health policy correspondent for National Public Radio.

• Fact or fiction:

  The Democratic plans will give health insurance coverage to illegal immigrants.

  Julie, is there anything in these proposals that would allow someone who's working in the country, living in the country illegally to get health care coverage?