Right wing website Newsmax suppresses embarrassing survey results about Medicare
Right wing website Newsmax held a survey in which they asked whether to cut Medicare. Respondents overwhelmingly responded, No, don’t cut Medicare. So Newsmax removed those results and replaced them with results of a question founded upon a lie.
Below are the original results (copied from here). First they asked a question about cutting the deficit; then they asked about cutting Medicare.
To close the federal deficit, Congress and the President should:
| Raise taxes | Â 85,099( 08%) |
| Cut spending | 274,206( 27%) |
| Cut taxes and cut spending | 593,479( 59%) |
| Raise taxes and increase spending | 38,066( 03%) |
Do you favor significant cuts to Medicare?
| Yes, cut Medicare significantly | 91,174( 09%) |
| No, don’t cut Medicare significantly | 894,105( 90%) |
What’s significant is that 86% of respondents wanted to lower the federal deficit by cutting taxes and/or spending and yet 90% of respondents (almost 900,000 people) opposed significant cuts to Medicare.
Also, 67% of respondents (965,774) said “No, don’t repeal it at all” in response to “Do you support the full repeal of President Obama’s healthcare plan Congress passed in 2010?”.
Americans love socialized medicine!
The results above were copied from Newsmax.com’s survey page: SurveyResults. I reported on them on Oct 24th here.
But if you visit the Newsmax SurveyResults page now, you’ll not see the question or results for “Do you favor significant cuts to Medicare?”.
This strongly suggests that Newmax removed the results because they didn’t like them. Instead, now they present the question “Should Congress restore $500 billion in Medicare benefits for seniors that the Obama plan cut?”, for which 68% of respondents (961,924) said “Yes, restore the Medicare benefits.” This question is, of course, based on a falsehood: that Obama cut $500 billion from Medicare.
See also Newsmax Uses Poll to Spread Lies.
I found other webpages which mentioned the same pro-Medicare results that I had noticed:Â here and here and here, for example.