outrageous factual distortions on Medicare for All from @factcheckdotorg @GlennKesslerWP @PolitiFact @AP @jaketapper theweek.com/articles/79123… 
@factcheckdotorg @GlennKesslerWP @PolitiFact @AP @jaketapper let's run through the distortion carefully. Mercatus does a score of the Sanders Medicare 4 All bill. it *clearly* says that national health spending decreases by $2tn over 10 years. compare these two rows:
@factcheckdotorg @GlennKesslerWP @PolitiFact @AP @jaketapper then in an appendix, Mercatus puts together *their own* M4A plan in which provider rates are higher than in the Sanders bill. naturally that is more expensive
.@SenSanders naturally quotes the score of his own bill. but the fact check brigade accuses him of deception for not quoting the score of a *completely different plan*
it's as if I wrote up a score of a defense bill, then invented an alternative bill in which the cost of every plane, ship, and vehicle was increased by 25%, then yelled at people for not considering my own invented policy "in context." ludicrous
by the way Mercatus appears to have pulled their original paper, but it can be found here web.archive.org/web/2018080101…
but it gets worse. as part of his first anti-M4A "fact check," @GlennKesslerWP wrote that the Mercatus paper showed it would cut provider payments by 40 percent. original article: web.archive.org/web/2018080710…
@GlennKesslerWP this is *absolutely false.* M4A would pay 40 percent less *than private insurance,* but more than Medicaid and uninsured rates. Kessler had to issue a correction: washingtonpost.com/news/fact-chec…
@GlennKesslerWP Mercatus didn't spell out their actual provider cuts number, but if you reverse-engineer their tables as @MattBruenig did, it has to be about 11 percent: peoplespolicyproject.org/2018/08/15/pro…
@GlennKesslerWP indeed the 40 percent figure is facially absurd. it cannot possibly be true as a matter of simple arithmetic
@GlennKesslerWP but unbelievably, a couple days later @GlennKesslerWP publishes the EXACT SAME falsehood he has ALREADY CORRECTED ONCE in another anti-M4A article. this is still live on the @washingtonpost site: washingtonpost.com/news/fact-chec…
@GlennKesslerWP @washingtonpost this abject falsehood is also featured in a @washingtonpost video which is still live washingtonpost.com/video/politics…
@GlennKesslerWP @washingtonpost if the @washingtonpost wants to maintain its brand as a source of reliable information, at a minimum *howling* factual errors like this should be corrected immediately
