Jon Stewart went head to head with an insurance industry insider that is attempting to kill President Barack Obama’s efforts at health care reform.

Betsy McCaughey is the former Lt. Governor of New York and is partly responsible for the downfall of President Bill Clinton’s health care reform. Her 1994 feature in The New Republic, “No Exit,” blew the first big hole in Clinton’s health plan. McCaughey is currently listed as a board member of the Cantel Medical Corporation.

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In 2009, McCaughey took a shot at Obama’s health care reform in a New York Post op-ed where she claimed that the health care bill would require end-of-life consultations. PolitiFact.com gave McCaughey’s claim a “pants on fire” rating and called it “a ridiculous falsehood.”

Jon Stewart invited McCaughey to provide the exact passage in the bill that states end-of-life consultations would be “mandatory.” McCaughey admitted that the word “mandatory” never appears in the legislation but insisted that doctors would be penalized for not providing consultations.

Stewart quickly corrected her. “That is not in in any way what this said.”

“You and I disagree about the reading of this bill,” said McCaughey. “Because under the new Medicare pay performance system, doctors who don’t adhere to the protocols delivered by the federal government on what is cost effective and appropriate care get dinged in their payments. They get paid less. There’s actual financial pressure,” she said.

Stewart disagreed. “That’s not the interpretation of the bill. The interpretation of the bill is to get empirical evidence complied on things that work. It’s following science for medicine,” he explained.

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Part 1 of Jon Stewart’s complete and unedited interview with McCaughey can be viewed here. Part 2 is here.

This video is from Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, broadcast Aug. 20, 2009.





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