Overwrought, overrun by health care letters

I'd like to give you my view on a somewhat controversial topic: health care reform.

I don't know.

Seriously, I don't have a strong opinion on the right way to go. I do believe costs have spiraled out of control, and I'm doubtful the industry is going to fix itself. On the other hand, I'm skeptical that more government control and intervention is the cure-all.

That would seem to make me wildly different (maybe some would say stupid) than all that I see and hear around me. Imagine, a member of Congress calling the president a liar when he said his health care bill won't cover illegal immigrants, as many have claimed.

Locally, I come across this vitriolic debate every day, as I handle the letters to the editor that run in our DuPage County editions. I haven't gone back and counted, but it easily has been the most-written-about topic in the past two months or so. It's fair to say the majority of our DuPage Fence Post contributors on the topic are not shy about expressing their contempt for the president and his reform bill. But we get some letters in support of Obama's plan, which occasionally prompts a series of rebuttals. In fact, there's a great example of such a dialogue on today's Opinion page between two Fence Post contributors.

Their debate centers on what the House health bill (HB 3200) actually says. And they're not the first by any means. The health bill is more than 1,000 pages, and even members of Congress have decried its complexity, so I guess it should be no surprise that there are matters of interpretation.

And I'm more than fine with letting people vent. In fact, I often ask our copy desk to allow extra space on this page to allow as many letters as possible. The tricky part is when the letters get too personal. Often the solution is just to edit out a personal attack on anyone from the president to another letter writer. I'll readily acknowledge I allow people more latitude with Obama than another writer.

Even trickier, though, is when the letters cross the line and are blatantly false or are barely rewrites of some of the blogs that permeate the Web. We are occasionally accused of allowing too many such letters into the paper. Our critics often are referring to the anti-Obama health plan letters or, come to think of it, anything anti-Obama. The reality is it's tough to check every last fact and figure, but there are some tools to help us discern independent thought from regurgitation of canned Internet ideology.

I'm sure some might challenge those sources, too, but one such device is factcheck.org, run by the nonpartisan Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. What I like about it is that is isn't afraid to land on either side of the increasingly partisan debate - on any topic.

For instance, the lead item Thursday begins, "The Democratic National Committee says in a TV ad that 'Republicans voted to abolish Medicare.' Not true."

On the other side of the coin, the site's authors say their inbox has been "overrun" with queries to get at the truth amid all the claims about the health care bill.

It does so in a lengthy point-by-point analysis that concludes, "A notorious analysis of the House health care bill contains 48 claims. Twenty-six of them are false and the rest mostly misleading. Only four are true."

I'm not saying that we'll use factcheck.org to start a wholesale spiking of letters. Not at all. We truly believe the Fence Post is the place for everyone to air their views.

But I have to admit that a letter not bashing someone in a partisan way is almost a breath of fresh air these days.