Michigan Advance Fact Check: Tom Barrett’s voting record and Will Lawrence’s goals for healthcare

Filed 1h ago · Via Michigan Advance · The Buffoon Desk

THIS STORY IS SCORED

Merry Go Slower

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Public Record Office of Northern Ireland · No restrictions · via Wikimedia Commons

In a debate between Rep. Tom Barrett and Democratic challenger Will Lawrence, Barrett blamed gas prices on the Iran war, but AAA data shows Michigan gas was already climbing well before the war started in late February, undercutting a clean cause-and-effect story. Barrett also claimed he split from Trump on the war, and the voting record is more complicated: he opposed one resolution to end it in March but voted for a similar one in June, while separately introducing the only Republican-authored war authorization bill, which has sat untouched in committee.

Barrett pegged Lawrence's single-payer healthcare plan at $40 trillion; CMS projections and various partisan and university studies offer a wide range of estimates, some suggesting savings rather than added cost, with the fact-check noting none of the favorable studies were peer reviewed.

Barrett's claim of never taking health insurance PAC money was rated half true, since he accepted contributions before returning some of it.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

A congressman bragging about rejecting insurance money he actually took and returned is the kind of fine print that used to embarrass people before it became a debate strategy. Pinning the entire cost of healthcare reform on one scary number works fine until somebody points out five other institutions ran the same math and got five different answers. That's not deception exactly, it's just picking the number that sounds worst and hoping nobody opens a second report.

Source: Read the original at Michigan Advance → Scored: Merry Go Slower · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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