politics & health — #
The never-ending lunacy of Betsy McCaughey.
But this mid-September afternoon holds no ordinary encounter, and the object of Aaron’s broadside is no ordinary adversary. A few feet from his maroon-flocked podium sits Betsy McCaughey, former lieutenant governor of New York, former fellow with the conservative Hudson Institute, and longtime scourge of health care reform. A constitutional scholar by training, McCaughey (pronounced “McCoy”) blazed to fame in 1994 as the person who drove a stake through the heart of Hillarycare, with a detailed (and, as it turned out, false) takedown of the plan published in this very magazine. Fifteen years later, she has reemerged for an encore, penning op-eds and making the TV and radio rounds to issue apocalyptic warnings about the horrors lurking in the fine print of Obamacare. Pick an inflammatory, misleading rumor that has sprung up in this debate, and chances are McCaughey had a hand in springing it.