Ed board hits Blunt for false health care claim

Rep. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) is spearheading the GOP effort on health care as he run for the Senate in 2010, but he got called out for using a bogus fact this weekend.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s editorial board on Sunday ran with an editorial fact-checking Blunt’s claim that under public health care plans in Canada or Great Britain, he as a 59-year old wouldn’t be able to have a hip replacement.

“I’m 59,” Blunt told Post-Dispatch reporters and editors last week. “In either Canada or Great Britain, if I broke my hip, I couldn’t get it replaced.”

Unfortunately for Blunt, the fact sounded fishy, and the paper did some checking. It found that hip replacements were predominantly performed on those 65 years old and older in both countries – 63 percent in Canada and two-thirds in England.

Blunt said he was relying on testimony from a House subcommittee, by “some people who are supposed to be experts on Canadian health care.”

“I didn’t just pull that number out of thin air,” Blunt told the paper after the fact was brought to his attention.

“I had been given that example; I was told that 59 is the cutoff,” he said. “I’m glad you pointed that out to me. I won’t use that example any more.”

Blunt is facing Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan (D) in the open-seat race to replace Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.).