More than three years after she coined the phrase “death panel,” Sarah Palin’s remark continues to inflame the debate over health care. Her claim was that President Obama’s plan would allow bureaucrats to determine whether seniors are “worthy of health care.”
Three researchers — Peter Ubel of Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, Brendan Nyhan of Dartmouth College and Jason Reifler of Georgia State University — set out to discover whether media fact-checking could debunk the myth of death panels. What they found is that while there is nothing in the plan resembling a death panel, the myth is unlikely to go away any time soon. [cont.]
Fuqua School of Business, Duke University