Washington's cynical misinformation game

Commentary: distortion now a standard part of political discourse on health care

By Wendell Potter, 5:00 am, August 18, 2014, Updated: 11:37 am, August 19, 2014

In most of our country’s major institutions, we have little tolerance for cheating and lying. Whether it’s the court system, schools, businesses, even our sports teams, we impose stiff sanctions against those who deceive us to gain some advantage.

If convicted of lying on the witness stand, you’ll pay a fine and possibly wind up in jail. If caught cheating on a test, you’ll probably fail the course or worse. At the University of Virginia, a breach of the school’s honor code “has but a single penalty: immediate expulsion from the university.”