Is it me or has the concept of fact-checking gone completely out the window in today’s mainstream media? Here’s a recent excerpt from an article in the Investor’s Business Daily on health care reform:

The U.K.’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) basically figures out who deserves treatment by using a cost-utility analysis based on the “quality adjusted life year.” One year in perfect health gets you one point. Deductions are taken for blindness, for being in a wheelchair and so on. The more points you have, the more your life is considered worth saving, and the likelier you are to get care. People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.

Only one teeny-tiny, eensy-weensy problem with that logic, points out Steve Benen: