Hillary Clinton's Attack on Bernie Sanders fails Truth-Meter

The Clintons have been well known for their political dirty tricks for many years. Now that recent polls show Bernie Sanders leading Hillary Clinton in both New Hampshire and Iowa — not to mention an endorsement by MoveOn and Vice President Joe Biden — Hillary and her campaign are resorting to the Clintons' old school method of political expediency: just lie like Hell. They are ruthless, and will do and say anything to get back into the White House.

When Hillary Clinton was campaigning in Ames, Iowa yesterday, she was particularly scathing in her assessment of Bernie Sanders' single-payer health care proposal — aka Medicare for All.

"Bernie, give him credit, has a different idea, and he’s introduced legislation — I think nine times in the Congress and the Senate — about what he thinks should be done. He wants to roll Medicare, Medicaid, the children’s health insurance program, the Affordable Care Act program and private health insurance into a national system — and then turn it over to the states to administer. If that's the kind of revolution he's talking about, I am worried."

Do we want a President who would so easily lie to our face? In her own words...

That was a total and absolute lie; and was just further proof of why Hillary can't be trusted.

(January 12, 2016) The Week, regarding Hillary's remarks:

This is absolutely false. She is referencing Sanders' single-payer bill he introduced in 2013. It would require each state to set up its own single-payer plan, and fold all existing federal health care programs, except for Veterans Affairs, into that system. While one might criticize that structure (more on this below), it is emphatically not optional. Under his plan, a federal board will oversee the system as a whole and take direct control of any state program that doesn't meet its requirements.

But what makes Clinton's remarks so infuriating is that Sanders' partially-decentralized plan is a result of trying to strike a balance between ideal policy and the many milquetoast compromises centrist Democrats like Clinton herself have written into the health care system. ObamaCare grew from the policy debates of the 1993 reform failure, which Clinton oversaw, and the 2008 campaign, in which Clinton played a leading role. Its greatest failure — the refusal of conservative states to expand Medicaid — is a partial result of its state-centered structure. Sanders wouldn't be bothering with state-by-state single-payer if Clinton, President Obama, and the rest of the party hadn't handed so many federal healthcare programs to the states in the first place.

Naturally, Clinton wants to preserve ObamaCare: "I don't want to rip it up and start over," she said at the same event. But she is talking out of both sides of her mouth. On the one hand she doesn't want to dismantle the program whose signature weakness is a result of decentralization; on the other, she attacks Sanders' proposal for being insufficiently centralized. It's doubly hypocritical given her support for her husband's welfare reform, which granted the program en masse to the states, most of which destroyed it.

In any case, it's obvious what's happening here. Clinton has been flagging in the polls of late, and as usual she's turned to fighting dirty.

Chelsea Clinton is now on the campaign trail to parrot Hillary's lies, and told voters in New Hampshire Tuesday:

"Senator Sanders wants to dismantle Obamacare, dismantle CHIP (Children's Health Insurance Program), dismantle Medicare and dismantle private insurance. I worry if we give Republicans Democratic permission to do that, we'll go back to an era — before we had the Affordable Care Act — that would strip millions and millions and millions of people off their health insurance."

During an interview on CNN, Democratic strategist David Axelrod criticized the Clinton campaign for having Chelsea Clinton take a shot at Bernie Sanders saying: "It wasn’t an honest attack."

And while speaking to CNN's Dana Bash, Bernie Sanders said: "As much as I admire Chelsea, she didn't read the plan. And where she is absolutely wrong — this is a plan that works in 50 states in this country, whether you have conservative Republicans or progressive Democrats. It's a national program."

On “Good Morning America” (video below) Hillary Clinton doubled down on her and her campaign’s attacks on Bernie — and defended her daughter’s attacks against Bernie's single-payer health care plan, despite criticism the remark was inaccurate.

Can any Clinton be trusted? Would any Clinton say anything to get themselves or a family member elected? It appears so. These low-life scare tactics are beyond the pale. The Sanders campaign is pushing back against these despicable Clinton lies. Sanders has previously argued that under a single-payer approach, the typical family would save thousands of dollars a year because they would no longer have deductibles or co-payments — or insurance premiums or fines to pay if someone neglects to purchase a plan under Obamacare.

Bernie proposes a 2.2% across-the-board tax increase in payroll taxes, and it pays for "Medicare for All" — and upper income earners will pay proportionately higher taxes, because they earn more. But Hillary Clinton said she won't raise taxes on the middle-class to pay for such a federal program. That's because, to her, "middle-class" means anyone making up to $250,000 a year. She is so out out touch with "normal" people, she doesn't realize that $250,000 a year is the top 1% of wage earners.

Sanders spokeswoman Arianna Jones said in a statement Tuesday. "A Medicare-for-all plan will save the average middle-class family $5,000 a year. Further, the Clinton campaign is wrong. Our plan will be implemented in every state in the Union regardless of who is governor."

A recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that 58% of the public favored making Medicare available to all Americans. What's more, Gallup data shows that patients covered by Medicare or the Veterans Affairs department (which Sanders' bill would preserve) are more satisfied with their coverage than Americans covered by private health insurance plans. And 81% of Democrats support single payer.

• Hillary Clinton health care ad in 2008: "Obama's plan will cost taxpayers $1,700 more to cover each new person [and] leaves 15-million people with no coverage." Politifact: Mostly False

• Hillary Clinton in Philadelphia 2007: "All of the records, as far as I know, about what we did with health care, those are already available." — Politifact: Mostly False

• Hillary Clinton in San Juan 2007: "We are winning the popular vote." — Politifact: Mostly False

• Hillary Clinton interview on ABC 2014: "We came out of the White House not only dead broke, but in debt." — Politifact: Mostly False

• Hillary Clinton CBS 2008: "I remember landing under sniper fire." — Politifact: Hillary Clinton's pants are on Fire!