Hilarious health reform mis-information

Ok. I’m not exactly what one would call a ‘fan’ of the health reform bill – too much coverage, not near enough cost control. There are plenty of issues with the current bill, more than enough to make serious students/wonks concerned without having to resort to outright lies.
Yet that is precisely what some are doing. Here, collected for your reading pleasure by the good folks at FactCheck.com, are the top nine falsehoods perpetrated by those not smart enough to focus on the real issues.
* Requires patients to be implanted with microchips. (No, it doesn’t.)
* Cuts benefits for military families and retirees. (No. The TRICARE program isn’t affected.)
* Exempts Muslims from the requirement to obtain coverage. (Not specifically. It does have a religious exemption, but that is intended for Old Order Amish.)
* Allows insurance companies to continue denying coverage to children with preexisting conditions. (Insurance companies have agreed not to exploit a loophole that might have allowed this.)
* Will require 16,500 armed IRS agents to enforce. (No. Criminal penalties are waived.)
* Gives President Obama a Nazi-like “private army.” (No. It provides a reserve corps of doctors and other health workers for emergencies.)
* “Exempts” House and Senate members. (No. Their coverage may not be as good as before, in fact.)
* Covers erectile-dysfunction drugs for sex offenders. (Just as it was before the new law, those no longer in jail can buy any insurance plan they choose.)
* Provides federal funding for abortions. (Not directly. But neither side in the abortion debate is happy with the law.)
Here’s the detail on a couple of the more ludicrous issues (quoting FactCheck.
Does the law provide for armed IRS agents to enforce penalties?
No. This is a fantasy. GOP lawmakers claim the law might require “as many as 16,500” new jobs in the IRS, a figure inflated by dubious assumptions. But the agency’s role will be mainly to hand out tax credits, not to enforce penalties. And the IRS won’t be sending armed agents to enforce the health care mandate, as falsely claimed by Texas GOP Rep. Ron Paul. The law specifically waives any criminal penalties for those who both decline to obtain insurance coverage and refuse to pay the tax enacted to penalize lack of coverage.

And here’s this whopper, which was ‘reported by a number of wingnut sites, including ‘last days’ crazies. and from this firearms advocacy site.
Will the law require all patients to be implanted with microchips?
No. Nothing like this appears in the new law, or in any of the bills that Congress considered. This claim stems from a wild misinterpretation of a provision in the original House leadership’s bill (H.R. 3200) that did not require implantation of anything, and that was, in any case, not part of the final legislation. The part of the original House leadership’s bill that’s usually referenced to support this rather paranoid claim actually would have set up a registry for class III medical devices and class II devices that are “implantable, life-supporting, or life-sustaining.”
jeez, would someone buy these people a clue…