Following up on this week’s reports about Rudy Giuliani’s patently false healthcare claims, the Giuliani campaign has responded to the criticism. Sort of.
If you’re just joining us, Giuliani, in his latest radio ad, tells voters, “I had prostate cancer, five, six years ago. My chance of surviving prostate cancer, and thank God I was cured of it, in the United States, 82%. My chances of surviving prostate cancer in England, only 44% under socialized medicine.”
The claim is demonstrably false. Neutral fact-checkers have blasted Giuliani’s dishonest ad — the WaPo awarded the ad “four Pinocchios” — and the Annenberg Public Policy Center tore it apart.
We tracked down the source of that number, which turns out to be the result of bad math by a Giuliani campaign adviser, who admits to us that his figure isn’t “technically” a survival rate at all. Furthermore, the co-author of the study on which Giuliani’s man based his calculations tells us his work is being misused, and that the 44 percent figure is both wrong and “misleading.” A spokesperson for the lead author also calls the figures “incorrect survival statistics.”
It’s true that official survival rates for prostate cancer are higher in the U.S. than in England, but the difference is not nearly as high as Giuliani claims. And even so, the higher survival rates in the U.S. may simply reflect more aggressive diagnosing of non-lethal cancers, according to the American Cancer Society.
Actually, men with prostate cancer are more likely to die sooner if they don’t have health insurance, according to a recent study published in one of the American Medical Association’s journals. Giuliani doesn’t mention that.
Everything about the ad is bogus. The mortality rates from prostate cancer are almost the same in America and Britain. Dems aren’t proposing a socialized system. As Ezra noted, Giuliani’s cancer was treated through taxpayer-financed healthcare, using a surgery developed under a socialized system.
The good news is, Giuliani’s campaign has heard the criticism. The bad news is, they couldn’t care less about whether they’re lying or not.
The NYT, which also did a little fact-checking today, reported:
Asked if Mr. Giuliani would continue to repeat the statistic, and if the advertisement would continue to run, [Maria Comella, a spokeswoman for Giuliani] responded by e-mail: “Yes. We will.”
Of course they will.
One likes to think there are certain political norms. If a campaign is going to run an ad, first they make sure that it’s at least close to the truth. If a candidate and his or her team try and get away with a lie, and get caught, they pull the ad and replace it with something else. The campaign takes some heat for trying to sucker the public, but the story eventually fades.
Except those norms aren’t real at all. Giuliani and his campaign lied. They know they lied. They know they got caught lying. Are they going to backpedal? Not even a little.
Why? Because the Giuliani gang assumes they’ll get away with it. Paul Krugman challenged political reporters covering the campaigns to take this as seriously as, say, haircuts and cackles. But therein lies the point: Giuliani and his team are pretty confident that’ll never happen.
Greg Sargent hammered this point home.
Memo to media: Rudy and his campaign think you’re a bunch of chumps. They have nothing but complete contempt for the truth and for everything that purportedly led you all to become journalists. Maybe it’s time to get serious about what this guy is up to.
Now, it’s fair to say that several news outlets — ABC, WaPo, NYT, among others — have published reports noting that Giuliani’s claim is wrong. And that’s good — as a first step. But now that the campaign has pledged to keep running a bogus claim anyway, the obvious thing for the media to do is start following up. That might include, say, asking Giuliani about it while he’s campaigning. Maybe mentioning it on shows like Hardball. Perhaps noting that this seems to be part of a pattern with Giuliani, who has trouble with the truth.
In other words, make the fact that Giuliani got caught lying a campaign issue, like Edwards’ hair or Clinton’s laugh, only with substance this time.
I know, I know, it’s unlikely. But a guy can dream….