Betsy McCaughey Ross
Encyclopedia
Betsy McCaughey formerly known as Betsy McCaughey Ross, was the Republican
Lieutenant Governor of New York
from 1995 to 1998, during the first term of Governor George Pataki
. She unsuccessfully sought the Democratic Party
nomination for Governor after Pataki dropped her from his 1998 ticket.
An historian by training, with a Ph.D.
from Columbia University
, she has, over the years, provided commentary on healthcare policy. Her 1993 attack on the Clinton healthcare plan was considered to be a major factor in the defeat of the bill, and brought her to the attention of Pataki, who then chose her as his Lieutenant Governor running mate. In 2009, her criticisms of the healthcare plan then being debated in the 111th Congress inspired the slogans "death panel
" and "pulling the plug on Grandma", which nearly defeated the legislation.
She has been a fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute
and Hudson Institute
think tanks, and has written numerous articles and op-ed
s. She was a member of the boards of directors of Genta
, a medical supply corporation that focuses on products for cancer treatment from 2001 to 2007, and Cantel Medical Corporation
, a company that produces and sells medical equipment—until she resigned in August 2009 to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest during the national debate over healthcare reform legislation.
for six years before settling down in Westport, Connecticut
, where McCaughey's father did maintenance, and later engineering work at a nail clipper factory. McCaughey recalled her parents' difficulty in affording medical treatment, "my brother was a serious asthmatic as a child. I remember my parents sitting at the kitchen table wondering if they could afford to take [him] to the hospital."
McCaughey attended public schools in Westport through the 10th grade, spending much of her free time at the library. After receiving a scholarship, she transferred to a private Massachusetts boarding school, the Mary A. Burnham School, for her last two years of high school, rarely visiting home, either then or during her college years.
She received a scholarship to attend Vassar College
where she majored in history. She wrote her senior thesis on Karl Marx
and Alexis de Tocqueville
, won several fellowships, and received her B.A.
, with distinction, in 1970. McCaughey went on to graduate school at Columbia University
in New York City
, earning her M.A. in 1972 and her Ph.D. in constitutional history
in 1976. She won Columbia's Bancroft Dissertation Award in American History in 1976 and her dissertation was published by the prestigious Columbia University Press
in 1980 under the title, From Loyalist to Founding Father: The Political Odyssey of William Samuel Johnson. She also contributed a chapter about William Samuel Johnson
to the 1979 book, The American Revolution: Changing Perspectives by William Fowler
and Wallace Coyle.
While completing her Ph.D., McCaughey trained in the corporate banking department at Chase Manhattan Bank
, and served as a loan officer
in the Food, Beverage, and Tobacco Division. She also took courses in accounting at Columbia's School of Business.
In 1971, McCaughey's mother, an alcoholic, died of liver disease at the age of 42; her father had died one year earlier at the age of 60. In 1972, she married Thomas K. McCaughey, a Yale
graduate she had met in college and who was then moving up as an investment banker
. The McCaugheys separated in 1992 and divorced in 1994 with McCaughey and her ex-spouse sharing joint custody of their three daughters. In January 1993 she filed an affidavit in her divorce proceeding in which she said she had no annual earnings from employment during most of the 18 years of her marriage to Thomas, and had never earned more than $20,000 per year, except in 1990, when she "sold an idea to Fox television for a windfall once-in-a-lifetime sum of $75,000". She married wealthy investment banker and prominent Democratic Party fundraiser Wilbur Ross, Jr. in December 1995; he filed for divorce in November 1998.
post-doctoral fellowship. From 1986 to 1988, she served as a guest curator
at the New-York Historical Society
and was responsible for the museum's exhibit commemorating the bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution. She also authored a book, "Government by Choice: Inventing the United States Constitution" that cataloged the exhibit.
, serving from 1989 to 1992. There, she wrote an article, book reviews, and a guest editorial for its journal, Presidential Studies Quarterly (PSQ), and an op-ed
in USA Today advocating reform of the Electoral College method of electing the U.S. President. She testified at a July 22, 1992 hearing before the United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, and helped produce a report suggesting constitutional amendments to fix flaws in the Electoral College.
McCaughey also wrote op-ed columns that appeared in The Wall Street Journal
, The New York Times
, and USA Today
, in which she opposed plans involving local and state redistricting
to comply with the Voting Rights Act
, and criticized court ordered desegregation
of schools in Connecticut and New Jersey. She also supported the nomination of Clarence Thomas
to the United States Supreme Court, arguing that he would not bend the law to match his conservative beliefs; supported a tobacco company in litigation before the Supreme Court; and praised the 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey
U.S. Supreme Court decision restricting abortion
.
In February 1993, the John M. Olin Foundation
funded a fellowship at the Manhattan Institute
, a conservative think tank
, for McCaughey to write a book on race and the legal system to be titled: "Beyond Pluralism: Overcoming the Narcissism of Minor Differences". McCaughey wrote op-eds over the next six months in The Wall Street Journal and USA Today in which she supported the 1993 selection of a jury
from predominately white Republican white rural counties for the Memphis retrial of African American Democratic U.S. Representative, Harold Ford, Sr.
, and praised the 1993 Shaw v. Reno
U.S. Supreme Court decision in favor of five white voters who said their rights had been infringed by redistricting that had been done to comply with the Voting Rights Act
.
delivered a nationally televised speech about his healthcare reform plan to a joint session of Congress. From September 28–30, 1993, First Lady Hillary Clinton
, the architect of the universal health care
plan, testified about its details before five U.S. congressional committees
. The cost of providing insurance for the estimated 37 million people who were then uninsured was to be covered in part, by new taxes on tobacco
. On the last day of Hillary Clinton's testimony, The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by McCaughey, who wrote that the 239-page draft legislation differed markedly from the White House's public statements and would have "devastating consequences". Citing words and phrases from the draft, she argued that the 77 percent of Americans then covered by insurance would see a downgrade in their policies—most would not be able to keep their own physicians and would be forced into price-controlled Health maintenance organizations (HMOs), which would provide only the most basic of care. According to McCaughey, the HMO plans would not pay for visits to specialists or for second opinions, and most physicians would be driven out of private practice.
In late November, 1993, the Clinton health care plan of 1993 bill was introduced in the U.S. Congress as a 1,342-page document, (in large print and double-spaced), and was also distributed to the press and made available to the public. The Wall Street Journal then published an op-ed by McCaughey in which said she had pored over the entire bill and concluded that it had price controls
that would cause rationing
, and that in her opinion, the bill was dangerous.
McCaughey expanded her op-eds into a five-page article titled "No Exit", that appeared as the cover story in The New Republic
(TNR) and was published a few days before President Clinton's 1994 State of the Union address
. An internal memo by tobacco company Philip Morris
, dated March 1994, indicated that representatives of Philip Morris had collaborated with McCaughey when she was writing "No Exit", stating: "Worked off-the-record with Manhattan and writer Betsy McCaughey as part of the input to the three-part exposé in The New Republic on what the Clinton plan means to you. The first part detailed specifics of the plan." (When the memo was discussed in a 2009 story in the Rolling Stone, McCaughey declined to comment.)
McCaughey's "No Exit" article was quickly used by conservative officials and commentators seeking to discredit the Clinton plan. Senator Bob Dole
, in the Republican Party response to the President's State of the Union, used some of McCaughey's arguments of fewer choices, lower quality and more government control. Bill Kristol's Project for the Republican Future quickly launched television advertisements featuring quotes from McCaughey's two Wall Street Journal op-ed columns and herTNR article. Newsweek
columnist George Will
used McCaughey's writings as a basis for predicting the Clinton health plan would kill patients and make it illegal for patients to pay doctors directly for care—with 15-year jail terms for patients who tried to do so.
The Clinton White House press office issued a response to McCaughey's "No Exit" article, arguing that it contained "numerous factual inaccuracies and misleading statements." McCaughey responded that her claims were accurate and factual because they came "straight from the text of the bill". Supporters of the Clinton plan questioned McCaughey's claims, including her statements that "the law will prevent you from going outside the system to buy basic health coverage you think is better," and that "doctor[s] can be paid only by the plan, not by you", by pointing to the text of the legislation such as Section 1003 that said: "Nothing in this Act shall be construed as prohibiting ... An individual from purchasing any health care services." — House Bill 3600. February 4, 1994.
According to The Washington Post, the "No Exit" article, the White House response, and the ensuing television and radio interviews with McCaughey made her a star, and, "Her toothy good looks, body-conscious suits, Vassar BA and Columbia PhD reduced right-wingers to mush". The bill stalled and died in Congress in 1994, and the next year Clinton was reduced to asking Congress for a series of small, incremental reforms to the healthcare system. The "No Exit" article won the National Magazine Award
for excellence in the public interest. Andrew Sullivan, then the editor of The New Republic later acknowledged he was aware of flaws in McCaughey's article, but said he ran it "as a provocation to debate." In 2006 a new editor recanted the story as part of an effort by the magazine to return to "its liberal roots."
, a one term state senator who was running for governor of New York, chose her as his lieutenant governor running mate. Though she was political novice whom he did not know, he perceived she was popular among conservatives, and was a candidate who could appeal to independents and women. Regarding her status as a political rookie, McCaughey said, "Many New Yorkers see that as a plus."
She said she accepted the nomination believing she would be Pataki's "point person on health policy". After winning the election, Pataki told The New York Times, would have "very real and significant responsibilities" as lieutenant governor. McCaughey was initially tasked by Pataki to work on education policy and on reducing the Medicaid
budget. By January 1995 she had produced a set of recommendations that required cost cutting by hospitals and nursing homes, so that the poor did not have to bear the entire burden of balancing the Medicaid budget. However, her recommendations were mainly ignored. After Pataki refused to give her permission to conduct a study into child abuse, she did one anyway, and announced the results. She was publicly critical of the governor's proposed cuts to Medicaid, and gave a pro-choice
speech without getting his permission. In March 1996 The New York Times reported that she was locked out of the governor's inner circle because she had violated the unwritten rules of the lieutenant governor's job—which required staying in the governor's shadow, following his orders, and setting personal ambitions aside. In the spring of 1997, Pataki announced that McCaughey would not be his running mate in 1998, later selecting State Supreme Court Justice Mary Donohue
to replace her.
Though she had always voted Republican in presidential elections, McCaughy then switched her party affiliation, officially becoming a Democrat, and soon announced her plans to run for governor against Pataki. McCaughey was the early frontrunner for her new party's nomination in part because of her statewide name recognition and financial support from her wealthy husband. During her campaign, she was criticized for firing a succession of aides and political advisers, and for possibly changing her core political beliefs. As her poll numbers sank, her husband withdrew more than half of the campaign funds he had provided. She was defeated in the nomination race by Democratic New York City councilman Peter Vallone, who lost the general election to Pataki 54 percent to 33 percent. McCaughey had earlier received the nomination of the Liberal Party
for governor and stayed on the Liberal ticket. The party attracted little support and McCaughey received only 1.65 percent of the vote in the general election.
beginning in 1999, then an adjunct senior fellow beginning in 2002. She was a member of the board of directors of Genta
, a company focused on the delivery of innovative products for cancer treatment from 2001 until she resigned in October 2007. She was also a member of the board of directors of the Cantel Medical Corporation
, a medical device manufacturer, from 2005 until she resigned in August 2009 to avoid the appearance a conflict of interest while she was engaged in advocacy on healthcare reform legislation.
In 2004, she founded the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths (RID) in reaction to the alarming rise in anti-biotic resistant staphylococcus aureus and other hospital-borne infections. The non-profit RID is "devoted solely to providing safer, cleaner, hospital care". As the chairperson and representative of the organization, McCaughey has made the prevention of hospital infections through the use of hygiene protocols and products a prominent public issue, while pointing out to hospitals that they can increase profitability and avoid lawsuits by reducing the number of infections. She has appeared on Fox News, CNN and many radio shows to discuss her research and how to prevent infection deaths. Her organization's efforts have led to legislation in more than 25 states requiring hospitals to report infections.
dedicated $15 million to a public awareness campaign on inadequate access to healthcare for the 47 million Americans not covered by insurance. The ACS claimed that there would be a greater decline in cancer deaths if more cases of cancer were diagnosed in the early stages. The society noted that studies had shown that patients without insurance were more than twice as likely to have their cancer diagnosed in the late stages of the disease. One of the cancer society's commercials stated, "We’re making progress, but it’s not enough if people don’t have access to the care that could save their lives."
McCaughey criticized the ad campaign, saying the ACS should drop it and re-focus on educating people about cancer prevention and detection. She argued that evidence had shown that the U.S. had higher rates of cancer survival than countries with universal healthcare coverage due to shorter wait times for treatment, better availability of new drugs for therapy and more frequent cancer screenings. She expanded her argument into a "Brief Analysis" published the following month by the National Center for Policy Analysis
, in which she maintained that the U.S. was number one in the world in cancer care. Sources for her analysis included a paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research
, a non profit, non partisan research organization, and an article in the British medical journal, Lancet Oncology
, that analyzed 2000-2002 cancer survival figures from Europe. The ACS responded by citing a study of nearly 600,000 cancer cases that concluded that compared to people with private insurance, uninsured patients in the U.S. were 1.6 times more likely to die within five years of their diagnosis.
Critics claimed McCaughey's claims were distorted, pointing out that the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology was not new but had been created five years earlier by George W. Bush
, and that the 2009 legislation was not about limiting doctors' ability to prescribe treatments, but instead was about establishing a system of electronic records to give physicians complete and accurate information their patients. FactCheck
noted that comparative effectiveness research had been funded by the U.S. government for years, but agreed with McCaughey that there would be penalties for health providers that did not use the electronic records system. The effectiveness research council was a new initiative, as McCaughey had said. However, supporters of the stimulus bill provision said the research that would be funded would provide additional evidence to guide treatment decisions, and would save lives and money by avoiding unnecessary, ineffective or risky treatments. Critic James Fallows
remarked that McCaughey's arguments against the stimulus legislation were similar to the false claims she advanced years ago against the Clinton healthcare bill.
McCaughey's viewpoint was soon echoed and extended by conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh
, and multiple Fox News Channel
broadcasters. Republican U.S. Representative Charles Boustany Jr.
of Louisiana, a heart surgeon, added that he feared that comparative effectiveness research would be misused by federal bureaucrats to "ration care, to deny life-saving treatment to seniors and disabled people." Other conservatives agreed that the legislation could put the federal government in the middle of the doctor-patient relationship. The stimulus bill was passed with the healthcare related provisions still included and McCaughey urged their repeal, so that their potential impact could be studied further.
debated in Congress in 2009 and enacted in 2010. She made allegations about certain provisions of the bills that provided for Medicare payments to physicians for end-of-life and living will counseling, and about a particular physician, Ezekiel Emanuel, who was then an adviser to the Obama administration's budget director and chairman of the bioethics department at the National Institutes of Health. McCaughey's claims led to Sarah Palin
's death panel
controversy. The provisions in the legislation that McCaughey advocated against were removed from the bill before it became law.
In July 2009, McCaughey claimed that a section in the pending healthcare legislation titled "Advance Care Planning Consultation" actually prescribed "euthanasia for the elderly" because it included provisions that "would make it mandatory … that people [on] Medicare [be told] how to end their lives sooner". McCaughey's choice of words and analysis were described by The Atlantic's James Fallows
as inaccurate and sensationalistic. The fact-checking site, PolitiFact.com
, responded that the end-of-life counseling was voluntary, and gave McCaughey a "pants on fire", (least true) rating. In August 2009, WNYC
's On the Media
also addressed McCaughey's claims, concluding that the provision actually mandated that the federal government compensate "counseling sessions" on elder law, such as estate planning, "will writing and hospice care."
McCaughey described healthcare advisor Ezekiel Emanuel in a New York Post
opinion article as a "Deadly Doctor" who advocated healthcare rationing by age and disability. PolitiFact called this claim a "ridiculous falsehood." FactCheck.org said, "Emanuel's meaning is being twisted ... he was talking about a philosophical trend, and ... writing about how to make the most ethical choices when forced to choose which patients get organ transplants or vaccines when supplies are limited." An article in Time magazine said that Emanuel "was only addressing extreme cases like organ donation, where there is an absolute scarcity of resources", and quoted Emanuel as saying, "'My quotes were just being taken out of context.'" The New York Times noted that Emanuel had, in fact, opposed the legalization of euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide when such proposal were being debated in the late 1990s.
McCaughey resigned from the Board of Cantel Medical Corporation on August 20, 2009, "to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest during the national debate over healthcare reform," according to a press release by the company. Other reports opined that she resigned after negative reactions to her performance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, one day earlier. After McCaughey's Daily Show appearance, James Fallows of the Atlantic Monthly criticized McCaughey's contributions to healthcare debate over the years as destructive and full of misinformation.
In an appearance on MSNBC
's Morning Meeting on October 6, 2009, McCaughey advocated gradually extending the minimum age for Medicare coverage upward from 65 years of age to 70 in order to keep the Medicare system solvent.
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
Lieutenant Governor of New York
Lieutenant Governor of New York
The Lieutenant Governor of New York is a constitutional office in the executive branch of the government of New York State. It is the second highest ranking official in state government. The lieutenant governor is elected on a ticket with the governor for a four year term...
from 1995 to 1998, during the first term of Governor George Pataki
George Pataki
George Elmer Pataki is an American politician who was the 53rd Governor of New York. A member of the Republican Party, Pataki served three consecutive four-year terms from January 1, 1995 until December 31, 2006.- Early life :...
. She unsuccessfully sought the Democratic Party
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...
nomination for Governor after Pataki dropped her from his 1998 ticket.
An historian by training, with a Ph.D.
Ph.D.
A Ph.D. is a Doctor of Philosophy, an academic degree.Ph.D. may also refer to:* Ph.D. , a 1980s British group*Piled Higher and Deeper, a web comic strip*PhD: Phantasy Degree, a Korean comic series* PhD Docbook renderer, an XML renderer...
from Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
, she has, over the years, provided commentary on healthcare policy. Her 1993 attack on the Clinton healthcare plan was considered to be a major factor in the defeat of the bill, and brought her to the attention of Pataki, who then chose her as his Lieutenant Governor running mate. In 2009, her criticisms of the healthcare plan then being debated in the 111th Congress inspired the slogans "death panel
Death panel
"Death panel", , is a term that originated during a 2009 political debate regarding health care reform in the United States. The death panel claim portrayed the health care bills then pending before the U.S. Congress as encouraging euthanasia for the elderly and as rationing health care for the...
" and "pulling the plug on Grandma", which nearly defeated the legislation.
She has been a fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute
Manhattan Institute
The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research is a conservative, market-oriented think tank established in New York City in 1978 by Antony Fisher and William J...
and Hudson Institute
Hudson Institute
The Hudson Institute is an American think tank founded in 1961, in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, by futurist, military strategist, and systems theorist Herman Kahn and his colleagues at the RAND Corporation...
think tanks, and has written numerous articles and op-ed
Op-ed
An op-ed, abbreviated from opposite the editorial page , is a newspaper article that expresses the opinions of a named writer who is usually unaffiliated with the newspaper's editorial board...
s. She was a member of the boards of directors of Genta
Genta (company)
Genta Inc. is a biopharmaceutical company based in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, United States, which develops products for the treatment of patients with cancer.Its products include:*Genasense...
, a medical supply corporation that focuses on products for cancer treatment from 2001 to 2007, and Cantel Medical Corporation
Cantel Medical Corporation
Cantel Medical Corporation is a company which produces and sells medical equipment. The company is based in Litte Falls, NJ. The company has four subsidiaries:...
, a company that produces and sells medical equipment—until she resigned in August 2009 to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest during the national debate over healthcare reform legislation.
Early life, education, and family
McCaughey and her twin brother William were born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Albert Peterken, a factory janitor, and his wife, Ramona. The family moved around the Northeastern United StatesNortheastern United States
The Northeastern United States is a region of the United States as defined by the United States Census Bureau.-Composition:The region comprises nine states: the New England states of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont; and the Mid-Atlantic states of New...
for six years before settling down in Westport, Connecticut
Westport, Connecticut
-Neighborhoods:* Saugatuck – around the Westport railroad station near the southwestern corner of the town – a built-up area with some restaurants, stores and offices....
, where McCaughey's father did maintenance, and later engineering work at a nail clipper factory. McCaughey recalled her parents' difficulty in affording medical treatment, "my brother was a serious asthmatic as a child. I remember my parents sitting at the kitchen table wondering if they could afford to take [him] to the hospital."
McCaughey attended public schools in Westport through the 10th grade, spending much of her free time at the library. After receiving a scholarship, she transferred to a private Massachusetts boarding school, the Mary A. Burnham School, for her last two years of high school, rarely visiting home, either then or during her college years.
She received a scholarship to attend Vassar College
Vassar College
Vassar College is a private, coeducational liberal arts college in the town of Poughkeepsie, New York, in the United States. The Vassar campus comprises over and more than 100 buildings, including four National Historic Landmarks, ranging in style from Collegiate Gothic to International,...
where she majored in history. She wrote her senior thesis on Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
and Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville was a French political thinker and historian best known for his Democracy in America and The Old Regime and the Revolution . In both of these works, he explored the effects of the rising equality of social conditions on the individual and the state in...
, won several fellowships, and received her B.A.
Bachelor of Arts
A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
, with distinction, in 1970. McCaughey went on to graduate school at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, earning her M.A. in 1972 and her Ph.D. in constitutional history
History of the United States Constitution
The United States Constitution was written in 1787, but it did not take effect until after it was ratified in 1789, when it replaced the Articles of Confederation. It remains the basic law of the United States...
in 1976. She won Columbia's Bancroft Dissertation Award in American History in 1976 and her dissertation was published by the prestigious Columbia University Press
Columbia University Press
Columbia University Press is a university press based in New York City, and affiliated with Columbia University. It is currently directed by James D. Jordan and publishes titles in the humanities and sciences, including the fields of literary and cultural studies, history, social work, sociology,...
in 1980 under the title, From Loyalist to Founding Father: The Political Odyssey of William Samuel Johnson. She also contributed a chapter about William Samuel Johnson
William Samuel Johnson
William Samuel Johnson was an early American statesman who was notable for signing the United States Constitution, for representing Connecticut in the United States Senate, and for serving as president of Columbia University.-Early career:...
to the 1979 book, The American Revolution: Changing Perspectives by William Fowler
William M. Fowler
William Morgan Fowler, Jr. is a professor of history at Northeastern University, Boston and an author. He served as Director of the Massachusetts Historical Society from 1998 through 2005.-Early life and education:...
and Wallace Coyle.
While completing her Ph.D., McCaughey trained in the corporate banking department at Chase Manhattan Bank
Chase (bank)
JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., doing business as Chase, is a national bank that constitutes the consumer and commercial banking subsidiary of financial services firm JPMorgan Chase. The bank was known as Chase Manhattan Bank until it merged with J.P. Morgan & Co. in 2000...
, and served as a loan officer
Loan officer
A loan officer is a person who serves as an intermediary between lending institutions and borrowers. They solicit loans, represent creditors to borrowers, and represent borrowers to creditors....
in the Food, Beverage, and Tobacco Division. She also took courses in accounting at Columbia's School of Business.
In 1971, McCaughey's mother, an alcoholic, died of liver disease at the age of 42; her father had died one year earlier at the age of 60. In 1972, she married Thomas K. McCaughey, a Yale
Yale College
Yale College was the official name of Yale University from 1718 to 1887. The name now refers to the undergraduate part of the university. Each undergraduate student is assigned to one of 12 residential colleges.-Residential colleges:...
graduate she had met in college and who was then moving up as an investment banker
Investment banking
An investment bank is a financial institution that assists individuals, corporations and governments in raising capital by underwriting and/or acting as the client's agent in the issuance of securities...
. The McCaugheys separated in 1992 and divorced in 1994 with McCaughey and her ex-spouse sharing joint custody of their three daughters. In January 1993 she filed an affidavit in her divorce proceeding in which she said she had no annual earnings from employment during most of the 18 years of her marriage to Thomas, and had never earned more than $20,000 per year, except in 1990, when she "sold an idea to Fox television for a windfall once-in-a-lifetime sum of $75,000". She married wealthy investment banker and prominent Democratic Party fundraiser Wilbur Ross, Jr. in December 1995; he filed for divorce in November 1998.
Academic work
McCaughey taught history as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Vassar College in 1977–1978, was a Lecturer at Columbia University in 1979–1980, and an Assistant Professor at Columbia University between 1981 and 1983, teaching two classes per year. Between 1983 and 1984 she had a National Endowment for the HumanitiesNational Endowment for the Humanities
The National Endowment for the Humanities is an independent federal agency of the United States established by the National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965 dedicated to supporting research, education, preservation, and public programs in the humanities. The NEH is located at...
post-doctoral fellowship. From 1986 to 1988, she served as a guest curator
Curator
A curator is a manager or overseer. Traditionally, a curator or keeper of a cultural heritage institution is a content specialist responsible for an institution's collections and involved with the interpretation of heritage material...
at the New-York Historical Society
New-York Historical Society
The New-York Historical Society is an American history museum and library located in New York City at the corner of 77th Street and Central Park West in Manhattan. Founded in 1804 as New York's first museum, the New-York Historical Society presents exhibitions, public programs and research that...
and was responsible for the museum's exhibit commemorating the bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution. She also authored a book, "Government by Choice: Inventing the United States Constitution" that cataloged the exhibit.
Think tank scholar
In the late 1980s McCaughey briefly considered a career in television journalism, but opted instead for a position as a senior scholar at the Center for the Study of the PresidencyCenter for the Study of the Presidency
The Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress is a non-profit, non-partisan policy and education organization located in Washington, D.C...
, serving from 1989 to 1992. There, she wrote an article, book reviews, and a guest editorial for its journal, Presidential Studies Quarterly (PSQ), and an op-ed
Op-ed
An op-ed, abbreviated from opposite the editorial page , is a newspaper article that expresses the opinions of a named writer who is usually unaffiliated with the newspaper's editorial board...
in USA Today advocating reform of the Electoral College method of electing the U.S. President. She testified at a July 22, 1992 hearing before the United States Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, and helped produce a report suggesting constitutional amendments to fix flaws in the Electoral College.
McCaughey also wrote op-ed columns that appeared in The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal
The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....
, The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, and USA Today
USA Today
USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...
, in which she opposed plans involving local and state redistricting
Redistricting
Redistricting is the process of drawing United States electoral district boundaries, often in response to population changes determined by the results of the decennial census. In 36 states, the state legislature has primary responsibility for creating a redistricting plan, in many cases subject to...
to comply with the Voting Rights Act
Voting Rights Act
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of national legislation in the United States that outlawed discriminatory voting practices that had been responsible for the widespread disenfranchisement of African Americans in the U.S....
, and criticized court ordered desegregation
Desegregation
Desegregation is the process of ending the separation of two groups usually referring to races. This is most commonly used in reference to the United States. Desegregation was long a focus of the American Civil Rights Movement, both before and after the United States Supreme Court's decision in...
of schools in Connecticut and New Jersey. She also supported the nomination of Clarence Thomas
Clarence Thomas
Clarence Thomas is an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. Succeeding Thurgood Marshall, Thomas is the second African American to serve on the Court....
to the United States Supreme Court, arguing that he would not bend the law to match his conservative beliefs; supported a tobacco company in litigation before the Supreme Court; and praised the 1992 Planned Parenthood v. Casey
Planned Parenthood v. Casey
Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 was a case decided by the Supreme Court of the United States in which the constitutionality of several Pennsylvania state regulations regarding abortion were challenged...
U.S. Supreme Court decision restricting abortion
Abortion
Abortion is defined as the termination of pregnancy by the removal or expulsion from the uterus of a fetus or embryo prior to viability. An abortion can occur spontaneously, in which case it is usually called a miscarriage, or it can be purposely induced...
.
In February 1993, the John M. Olin Foundation
John M. Olin Foundation
John M. Olin Foundation was a grant-making foundation established in 1953 by John M. Olin, president of the Olin Industries chemical and munitions manufacturing businesses. Unlike most non-profit foundations, the John M. Olin Foundation was charged to spend all of its assets within a generation of...
funded a fellowship at the Manhattan Institute
Manhattan Institute
The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research is a conservative, market-oriented think tank established in New York City in 1978 by Antony Fisher and William J...
, a conservative think tank
Think tank
A think tank is an organization that conducts research and engages in advocacy in areas such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, and technology issues. Most think tanks are non-profit organizations, which some countries such as the United States and Canada provide with tax...
, for McCaughey to write a book on race and the legal system to be titled: "Beyond Pluralism: Overcoming the Narcissism of Minor Differences". McCaughey wrote op-eds over the next six months in The Wall Street Journal and USA Today in which she supported the 1993 selection of a jury
Jury selection
Jury selection are many methods used to choose the people who will serve on a trial jury. The jury pool is first selected from among the community using a reasonably random method. The prospective jurors are then questioned in court by the judge and/or attorneys...
from predominately white Republican white rural counties for the Memphis retrial of African American Democratic U.S. Representative, Harold Ford, Sr.
Harold Ford, Sr.
Harold Eugene Ford, Sr. was a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives representing the Memphis, Tennessee area for ten terms—from 1975 until his retirement in 1997. He was the first African-American to represent Tennessee in the U.S...
, and praised the 1993 Shaw v. Reno
Shaw v. Reno
Shaw v. Reno, 509 U.S. 630 , was a United States Supreme Court case argued on April 20, 1993. The ruling was significant in the area of redistricting and racial gerrymandering. The court ruled in a 5-4 decision that redistricting based on race must be held to a standard of strict scrutiny under the...
U.S. Supreme Court decision in favor of five white voters who said their rights had been infringed by redistricting that had been done to comply with the Voting Rights Act
Voting Rights Act
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 is a landmark piece of national legislation in the United States that outlawed discriminatory voting practices that had been responsible for the widespread disenfranchisement of African Americans in the U.S....
.
Influential critic of Clinton healthcare bill
On September 22, 1993, U.S. President Bill ClintonBill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
delivered a nationally televised speech about his healthcare reform plan to a joint session of Congress. From September 28–30, 1993, First Lady Hillary Clinton
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Hillary Diane Rodham Clinton is the 67th United States Secretary of State, serving in the administration of President Barack Obama. She was a United States Senator for New York from 2001 to 2009. As the wife of the 42nd President of the United States, Bill Clinton, she was the First Lady of the...
, the architect of the universal health care
Universal health care
Universal health care is a term referring to organized health care systems built around the principle of universal coverage for all members of society, combining mechanisms for health financing and service provision.-History:...
plan, testified about its details before five U.S. congressional committees
United States Congressional committee
A congressional committee is a legislative sub-organization in the United States Congress that handles a specific duty . Committee membership enables members to develop specialized knowledge of the matters under their jurisdiction...
. The cost of providing insurance for the estimated 37 million people who were then uninsured was to be covered in part, by new taxes on tobacco
Cigarette taxes in the United States
In the United States cigarettes are taxed at both the federal and state levels, in addition to any state and local sales taxes and local cigarette-specific taxes. Cigarette taxation has appeared throughout American history and still presents itself prominently today. Overall public health officials...
. On the last day of Hillary Clinton's testimony, The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed by McCaughey, who wrote that the 239-page draft legislation differed markedly from the White House's public statements and would have "devastating consequences". Citing words and phrases from the draft, she argued that the 77 percent of Americans then covered by insurance would see a downgrade in their policies—most would not be able to keep their own physicians and would be forced into price-controlled Health maintenance organizations (HMOs), which would provide only the most basic of care. According to McCaughey, the HMO plans would not pay for visits to specialists or for second opinions, and most physicians would be driven out of private practice.
In late November, 1993, the Clinton health care plan of 1993 bill was introduced in the U.S. Congress as a 1,342-page document, (in large print and double-spaced), and was also distributed to the press and made available to the public. The Wall Street Journal then published an op-ed by McCaughey in which said she had pored over the entire bill and concluded that it had price controls
Price controls
Price controls are governmental impositions on the prices charged for goods and services in a market, usually intended to maintain the affordability of staple foods and goods, and to prevent price gouging during shortages, or, alternatively, to insure an income for providers of certain goods...
that would cause rationing
Health care rationing
Health care rationing refers to governmental mechanisms that are used to allocate health care when resources are scarce. Countries differ upon the mechanisms they use to ration the distribution of health care...
, and that in her opinion, the bill was dangerous.
McCaughey expanded her op-eds into a five-page article titled "No Exit", that appeared as the cover story in The New Republic
The New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
(TNR) and was published a few days before President Clinton's 1994 State of the Union address
State of the Union Address
The State of the Union is an annual address presented by the President of the United States to the United States Congress. The address not only reports on the condition of the nation but also allows the president to outline his legislative agenda and his national priorities.The practice arises...
. An internal memo by tobacco company Philip Morris
Altria Group
Altria Group, Inc. is based in Henrico County, Virginia, and is the parent company of Philip Morris USA, John Middleton, Inc., U.S. Smokeless Tobacco Company, Inc., Philip Morris Capital Corporation, and Chateau Ste. Michelle Wine Estates. It is one of the world's largest tobacco corporations...
, dated March 1994, indicated that representatives of Philip Morris had collaborated with McCaughey when she was writing "No Exit", stating: "Worked off-the-record with Manhattan and writer Betsy McCaughey as part of the input to the three-part exposé in The New Republic on what the Clinton plan means to you. The first part detailed specifics of the plan." (When the memo was discussed in a 2009 story in the Rolling Stone, McCaughey declined to comment.)
McCaughey's "No Exit" article was quickly used by conservative officials and commentators seeking to discredit the Clinton plan. Senator Bob Dole
Bob Dole
Robert Joseph "Bob" Dole is an American attorney and politician. Dole represented Kansas in the United States Senate from 1969 to 1996, was Gerald Ford's Vice Presidential running mate in the 1976 presidential election, and was Senate Majority Leader from 1985 to 1987 and in 1995 and 1996...
, in the Republican Party response to the President's State of the Union, used some of McCaughey's arguments of fewer choices, lower quality and more government control. Bill Kristol's Project for the Republican Future quickly launched television advertisements featuring quotes from McCaughey's two Wall Street Journal op-ed columns and herTNR article. Newsweek
Newsweek
Newsweek is an American weekly news magazine published in New York City. It is distributed throughout the United States and internationally. It is the second-largest news weekly magazine in the U.S., having trailed Time in circulation and advertising revenue for most of its existence...
columnist George Will
George Will
George Frederick Will is an American newspaper columnist, journalist, and author. He is a Pulitzer Prize-winner best known for his conservative commentary on politics...
used McCaughey's writings as a basis for predicting the Clinton health plan would kill patients and make it illegal for patients to pay doctors directly for care—with 15-year jail terms for patients who tried to do so.
The Clinton White House press office issued a response to McCaughey's "No Exit" article, arguing that it contained "numerous factual inaccuracies and misleading statements." McCaughey responded that her claims were accurate and factual because they came "straight from the text of the bill". Supporters of the Clinton plan questioned McCaughey's claims, including her statements that "the law will prevent you from going outside the system to buy basic health coverage you think is better," and that "doctor[s] can be paid only by the plan, not by you", by pointing to the text of the legislation such as Section 1003 that said: "Nothing in this Act shall be construed as prohibiting ... An individual from purchasing any health care services." — House Bill 3600. February 4, 1994.
According to The Washington Post, the "No Exit" article, the White House response, and the ensuing television and radio interviews with McCaughey made her a star, and, "Her toothy good looks, body-conscious suits, Vassar BA and Columbia PhD reduced right-wingers to mush". The bill stalled and died in Congress in 1994, and the next year Clinton was reduced to asking Congress for a series of small, incremental reforms to the healthcare system. The "No Exit" article won the National Magazine Award
National Magazine Award
The National Magazine Awards are a series of US awards that honor excellence in the magazine industry. They are administered by the American Society of Magazine Editors and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York City...
for excellence in the public interest. Andrew Sullivan, then the editor of The New Republic later acknowledged he was aware of flaws in McCaughey's article, but said he ran it "as a provocation to debate." In 2006 a new editor recanted the story as part of an effort by the magazine to return to "its liberal roots."
Political career in New York
Following the national attention McCaughey received in the healthcare legislation debate, George PatakiGeorge Pataki
George Elmer Pataki is an American politician who was the 53rd Governor of New York. A member of the Republican Party, Pataki served three consecutive four-year terms from January 1, 1995 until December 31, 2006.- Early life :...
, a one term state senator who was running for governor of New York, chose her as his lieutenant governor running mate. Though she was political novice whom he did not know, he perceived she was popular among conservatives, and was a candidate who could appeal to independents and women. Regarding her status as a political rookie, McCaughey said, "Many New Yorkers see that as a plus."
She said she accepted the nomination believing she would be Pataki's "point person on health policy". After winning the election, Pataki told The New York Times, would have "very real and significant responsibilities" as lieutenant governor. McCaughey was initially tasked by Pataki to work on education policy and on reducing the Medicaid
Medicaid
Medicaid is the United States health program for certain people and families with low incomes and resources. It is a means-tested program that is jointly funded by the state and federal governments, and is managed by the states. People served by Medicaid are U.S. citizens or legal permanent...
budget. By January 1995 she had produced a set of recommendations that required cost cutting by hospitals and nursing homes, so that the poor did not have to bear the entire burden of balancing the Medicaid budget. However, her recommendations were mainly ignored. After Pataki refused to give her permission to conduct a study into child abuse, she did one anyway, and announced the results. She was publicly critical of the governor's proposed cuts to Medicaid, and gave a pro-choice
Pro-choice
Support for the legalization of abortion is centered around the pro-choice movement, a sociopolitical movement supporting the ethical view that a woman should have the legal right to elective abortion, meaning the right to terminate her pregnancy....
speech without getting his permission. In March 1996 The New York Times reported that she was locked out of the governor's inner circle because she had violated the unwritten rules of the lieutenant governor's job—which required staying in the governor's shadow, following his orders, and setting personal ambitions aside. In the spring of 1997, Pataki announced that McCaughey would not be his running mate in 1998, later selecting State Supreme Court Justice Mary Donohue
Mary Donohue
Mary O’Connor Donohue is a Judge of the New York Court of Claims and a former Lieutenant Governor of New York State. She was first elected lieutenant governor in 1998 and reelected 2002 on a ticket with Gov. George Pataki.-Teaching and legal career:...
to replace her.
Though she had always voted Republican in presidential elections, McCaughy then switched her party affiliation, officially becoming a Democrat, and soon announced her plans to run for governor against Pataki. McCaughey was the early frontrunner for her new party's nomination in part because of her statewide name recognition and financial support from her wealthy husband. During her campaign, she was criticized for firing a succession of aides and political advisers, and for possibly changing her core political beliefs. As her poll numbers sank, her husband withdrew more than half of the campaign funds he had provided. She was defeated in the nomination race by Democratic New York City councilman Peter Vallone, who lost the general election to Pataki 54 percent to 33 percent. McCaughey had earlier received the nomination of the Liberal Party
Liberal Party of New York
The Liberal Party of New York is a minor American political party that has been active only in the state of New York. Its platform supports a standard set of social liberal policies: it supports right to abortion, increased spending on education, and universal health care.As of 2007, the Liberal...
for governor and stayed on the Liberal ticket. The party attracted little support and McCaughey received only 1.65 percent of the vote in the general election.
Career since leaving office
McCaughey has worked on patient advocacy and healthcare policy issues since leaving office in 1999. She was senior fellow at the conservative Hudson InstituteHudson Institute
The Hudson Institute is an American think tank founded in 1961, in Croton-on-Hudson, New York, by futurist, military strategist, and systems theorist Herman Kahn and his colleagues at the RAND Corporation...
beginning in 1999, then an adjunct senior fellow beginning in 2002. She was a member of the board of directors of Genta
Genta (company)
Genta Inc. is a biopharmaceutical company based in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey, United States, which develops products for the treatment of patients with cancer.Its products include:*Genasense...
, a company focused on the delivery of innovative products for cancer treatment from 2001 until she resigned in October 2007. She was also a member of the board of directors of the Cantel Medical Corporation
Cantel Medical Corporation
Cantel Medical Corporation is a company which produces and sells medical equipment. The company is based in Litte Falls, NJ. The company has four subsidiaries:...
, a medical device manufacturer, from 2005 until she resigned in August 2009 to avoid the appearance a conflict of interest while she was engaged in advocacy on healthcare reform legislation.
In 2004, she founded the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths (RID) in reaction to the alarming rise in anti-biotic resistant staphylococcus aureus and other hospital-borne infections. The non-profit RID is "devoted solely to providing safer, cleaner, hospital care". As the chairperson and representative of the organization, McCaughey has made the prevention of hospital infections through the use of hygiene protocols and products a prominent public issue, while pointing out to hospitals that they can increase profitability and avoid lawsuits by reducing the number of infections. She has appeared on Fox News, CNN and many radio shows to discuss her research and how to prevent infection deaths. Her organization's efforts have led to legislation in more than 25 states requiring hospitals to report infections.
American Cancer Society
In August 2007 the American Cancer SocietyAmerican Cancer Society
The American Cancer Society is the "nationwide community-based voluntary health organization" dedicated, in their own words, "to eliminating cancer as a major health problem by preventing cancer, saving lives, and diminishing suffering from cancer, through research, education, advocacy, and...
dedicated $15 million to a public awareness campaign on inadequate access to healthcare for the 47 million Americans not covered by insurance. The ACS claimed that there would be a greater decline in cancer deaths if more cases of cancer were diagnosed in the early stages. The society noted that studies had shown that patients without insurance were more than twice as likely to have their cancer diagnosed in the late stages of the disease. One of the cancer society's commercials stated, "We’re making progress, but it’s not enough if people don’t have access to the care that could save their lives."
McCaughey criticized the ad campaign, saying the ACS should drop it and re-focus on educating people about cancer prevention and detection. She argued that evidence had shown that the U.S. had higher rates of cancer survival than countries with universal healthcare coverage due to shorter wait times for treatment, better availability of new drugs for therapy and more frequent cancer screenings. She expanded her argument into a "Brief Analysis" published the following month by the National Center for Policy Analysis
National Center for Policy Analysis
The National Center for Policy Analysis is a non-profit American conservative think tank whose goals are to develop and promote private alternatives to government regulation and control...
, in which she maintained that the U.S. was number one in the world in cancer care. Sources for her analysis included a paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research
National Bureau of Economic Research
The National Bureau of Economic Research is an American private nonprofit research organization "committed to undertaking and disseminating unbiased economic research among public policymakers, business professionals, and the academic community." The NBER is well known for providing start and end...
, a non profit, non partisan research organization, and an article in the British medical journal, Lancet Oncology
The Lancet
The Lancet is a weekly peer-reviewed general medical journal. It is one of the world's best known, oldest, and most respected general medical journals...
, that analyzed 2000-2002 cancer survival figures from Europe. The ACS responded by citing a study of nearly 600,000 cancer cases that concluded that compared to people with private insurance, uninsured patients in the U.S. were 1.6 times more likely to die within five years of their diagnosis.
2009 stimulus bill
McCaughey published an op-ed on February 9, 2009 claiming that the Obama administration's pending economic stimulus legislation contained hidden provisions that would harm the health of Americans as well as the healthcare sector of the economy. She argued that the bill would establish two powerful new bureaucracies; the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology, and the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research. McCaughey said the first entity would monitor patients' electronic medical records to ensure that doctors and hospitals treated patients in a way that "the federal government deems appropriate and cost effective", and that doctors and hospitals that deviate from the government's "electronically delivered protocols," would be penalized. She said the Federal Coordinating Council would be composed of appointed bureaucrats charged with a cost-cutting agenda that would slow the development of new medical products and drugs, and ration healthcare for senior citizens. She opined that the bureaucrats would use a comparative effectiveness formula that in the U.K. had resulted in a requirement that senior citizens go blind in one eye before the government would pay for a treatment to save the sight in the other eye.Critics claimed McCaughey's claims were distorted, pointing out that the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology was not new but had been created five years earlier by George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
, and that the 2009 legislation was not about limiting doctors' ability to prescribe treatments, but instead was about establishing a system of electronic records to give physicians complete and accurate information their patients. FactCheck
FactCheck
FactCheck.org is a non-partisan, nonprofit website that describes itself as a consumer advocate' for voters that aims to reduce the level of deception and confusion in U.S. politics." It is a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University...
noted that comparative effectiveness research had been funded by the U.S. government for years, but agreed with McCaughey that there would be penalties for health providers that did not use the electronic records system. The effectiveness research council was a new initiative, as McCaughey had said. However, supporters of the stimulus bill provision said the research that would be funded would provide additional evidence to guide treatment decisions, and would save lives and money by avoiding unnecessary, ineffective or risky treatments. Critic James Fallows
James Fallows
James Fallows is an American print and radio journalist. He has been a national correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly for many years. His work has also appeared in Slate, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker and The American Prospect, among others. He is a...
remarked that McCaughey's arguments against the stimulus legislation were similar to the false claims she advanced years ago against the Clinton healthcare bill.
McCaughey's viewpoint was soon echoed and extended by conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh
Rush Limbaugh
Rush Hudson Limbaugh III is an American radio talk show host, conservative political commentator, and an opinion leader in American conservatism. He hosts The Rush Limbaugh Show which is aired throughout the U.S. on Premiere Radio Networks and is the highest-rated talk-radio program in the United...
, and multiple Fox News Channel
Fox News Channel
Fox News Channel , often called Fox News, is a cable and satellite television news channel owned by the Fox Entertainment Group, a subsidiary of News Corporation...
broadcasters. Republican U.S. Representative Charles Boustany Jr.
Charles Boustany
Charles William Boustany, Jr. is the U.S. Representative for , serving since 2005. He is a member of the Republican Party.-Early life, education, and medical career:...
of Louisiana, a heart surgeon, added that he feared that comparative effectiveness research would be misused by federal bureaucrats to "ration care, to deny life-saving treatment to seniors and disabled people." Other conservatives agreed that the legislation could put the federal government in the middle of the doctor-patient relationship. The stimulus bill was passed with the healthcare related provisions still included and McCaughey urged their repeal, so that their potential impact could be studied further.
2009 healthcare reform bills
McCaughey opposed the healthcare reform billsAmerica's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009
The proposed America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 was an unsuccessful bill introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives on July 14, 2009. The bill was introduced during the first session of the 111th Congress as part of an effort of the Democratic Party leadership to enact health...
debated in Congress in 2009 and enacted in 2010. She made allegations about certain provisions of the bills that provided for Medicare payments to physicians for end-of-life and living will counseling, and about a particular physician, Ezekiel Emanuel, who was then an adviser to the Obama administration's budget director and chairman of the bioethics department at the National Institutes of Health. McCaughey's claims led to Sarah Palin
Sarah Palin
Sarah Louise Palin is an American politician, commentator and author. As the Republican Party nominee for Vice President in the 2008 presidential election, she was the first Alaskan on the national ticket of a major party and first Republican woman nominated for the vice-presidency.She was...
's death panel
Death panel
"Death panel", , is a term that originated during a 2009 political debate regarding health care reform in the United States. The death panel claim portrayed the health care bills then pending before the U.S. Congress as encouraging euthanasia for the elderly and as rationing health care for the...
controversy. The provisions in the legislation that McCaughey advocated against were removed from the bill before it became law.
In July 2009, McCaughey claimed that a section in the pending healthcare legislation titled "Advance Care Planning Consultation" actually prescribed "euthanasia for the elderly" because it included provisions that "would make it mandatory … that people [on] Medicare [be told] how to end their lives sooner". McCaughey's choice of words and analysis were described by The Atlantic's James Fallows
James Fallows
James Fallows is an American print and radio journalist. He has been a national correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly for many years. His work has also appeared in Slate, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker and The American Prospect, among others. He is a...
as inaccurate and sensationalistic. The fact-checking site, PolitiFact.com
PolitiFact.com
PolitiFact.com is a project that is operated by the St. Petersburg Times, a project in which its reporters and editors "fact-check statements by members of Congress, the White House, lobbyists and interest groups...." They publish original statements and their evaluations on the PolitiFact.com...
, responded that the end-of-life counseling was voluntary, and gave McCaughey a "pants on fire", (least true) rating. In August 2009, WNYC
WNYC
WNYC is a set of call letters shared by a pair of co-owned, non-profit, public radio stations located in New York City.WNYC broadcasts on the AM band at 820 kHz, and WNYC-FM is at 93.9 MHz. Both stations are members of National Public Radio and carry distinct, but similar news/talk programs...
's On the Media
On the Media
On the Media is an hour-long weekly radio program, hosted by Bob Garfield and Brooke Gladstone, covering journalism, technology, and First Amendment issues. It is produced by WNYC in New York City...
also addressed McCaughey's claims, concluding that the provision actually mandated that the federal government compensate "counseling sessions" on elder law, such as estate planning, "will writing and hospice care."
McCaughey described healthcare advisor Ezekiel Emanuel in a New York Post
New York Post
The New York Post is the 13th-oldest newspaper published in the United States and is generally acknowledged as the oldest to have been published continuously as a daily, although – as is the case with most other papers – its publication has been periodically interrupted by labor actions...
opinion article as a "Deadly Doctor" who advocated healthcare rationing by age and disability. PolitiFact called this claim a "ridiculous falsehood." FactCheck.org said, "Emanuel's meaning is being twisted ... he was talking about a philosophical trend, and ... writing about how to make the most ethical choices when forced to choose which patients get organ transplants or vaccines when supplies are limited." An article in Time magazine said that Emanuel "was only addressing extreme cases like organ donation, where there is an absolute scarcity of resources", and quoted Emanuel as saying, "'My quotes were just being taken out of context.'" The New York Times noted that Emanuel had, in fact, opposed the legalization of euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide when such proposal were being debated in the late 1990s.
McCaughey resigned from the Board of Cantel Medical Corporation on August 20, 2009, "to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest during the national debate over healthcare reform," according to a press release by the company. Other reports opined that she resigned after negative reactions to her performance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, one day earlier. After McCaughey's Daily Show appearance, James Fallows of the Atlantic Monthly criticized McCaughey's contributions to healthcare debate over the years as destructive and full of misinformation.
In an appearance on MSNBC
MSNBC
MSNBC is a cable news channel based in the United States available in the US, Germany , South Africa, the Middle East and Canada...
's Morning Meeting on October 6, 2009, McCaughey advocated gradually extending the minimum age for Medicare coverage upward from 65 years of age to 70 in order to keep the Medicare system solvent.
Electoral history
| Governor candidate | Lt. Gov. Running mate Running mate A running mate is a person running together with another person on a joint ticket during an election. The term is most often used in reference to the person in the subordinate position but can also properly be used when referring to both candidates, such as "Michael Dukakis and Lloyd Bentsen were... |
Party | Popular Vote | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| George E. Pataki | Betsy McCaughey | Republican, Conservative Party of NY, Tax Cut Now |
2,488,631 | 48.8 % |
| Mario Cuomo Mario Cuomo Mario Matthew Cuomo served as the 52nd Governor of New York from 1983 to 1994, and is the father of Andrew Cuomo, the current governor of New York.-Early life:... |
Stan Lundine Stan Lundine Stanley Nelson Lundine is a politician from Jamestown, New York who served as Mayor of Jamestown, a United States Representative, and lieutenant governor of New York. A Democrat, he was inaugurated Mayor in 1970 and served to 1976 when he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives after the... |
Democratic Party, Liberal Party of NY Liberal Party of New York The Liberal Party of New York is a minor American political party that has been active only in the state of New York. Its platform supports a standard set of social liberal policies: it supports right to abortion, increased spending on education, and universal health care.As of 2007, the Liberal... |
2,364,904 | 45.4 % |
| B. Thomas Golisano Tom Golisano Blase Thomas Golisano is an American businessman and philanthropist. He is the founder of Paychex, the second-largest payroll processor in the United States and former co-owner of the Buffalo Sabres hockey team and of the Buffalo Bandits lacrosse team... |
Dominick Fusco | Independence Fusion Independence Party of New York The Independence Party is an affiliate in the U.S. state of New York of the Independence Party of America. The party was founded in 1991 by Dr. Gordon Black, Tom Golisano, and Laureen Oliver from Rochester, New York, and acquired ballot status in 1994... |
217,490 | 4.1 % |
| Robert T. Walsh | Virginia E. Sutton | NY State Right to Life New York State Right to Life Party The New York State Right to Life Party was founded to oppose the legalization of abortion in New York in 1970. The party first made the state ballot in the 1978 gubernatorial election, where its candidate Mary Jane Tobin won 130,000 votes... |
67,750 | 1.3 %) |
| Other parties | Less than 1% | |||
| Governor candidate | Lt. Gov. Running mate | Party | Popular Vote | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| George E. Pataki | Mary O. Donohue Mary Donohue Mary O’Connor Donohue is a Judge of the New York Court of Claims and a former Lieutenant Governor of New York State. She was first elected lieutenant governor in 1998 and reelected 2002 on a ticket with Gov. George Pataki.-Teaching and legal career:... |
Republican, Conservative Party of NY |
2,571,991 | 54.32% |
| Peter F. Vallone Sr. | Sandra Frankel Sandra Frankel Sandra L. Frankel is the Supervisor of the Town of Brighton, Monroe County, New York. A former school board member, Frankel is a longtime town supervisor.... |
Democratic, Working Families Working Families Party The Working Families Party is a minor political party in the United States founded in New York in 1998. There are "sister" parties to the New York WFP in Connecticut, Massachusetts, South Carolina, Delaware, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Oregon, but there is as yet no national WFP... |
1,570,317 | 33.16% |
| B. Thomas Golisano | Laureen Oliver Laureen Oliver Laureen Oliver is an US politician who co-founded the New York State Independence Party.-Career:In 1992 Oliver Co-Founded the New York State Independence Party with B. Thomas Golisano. Prior to the Independence Party Oliver served as the Monroe County Chairwoman of United We Stand America.Oliver... |
Independence Party of NY Independence Party of New York The Independence Party is an affiliate in the U.S. state of New York of the Independence Party of America. The party was founded in 1991 by Dr. Gordon Black, Tom Golisano, and Laureen Oliver from Rochester, New York, and acquired ballot status in 1994... |
364,056 | 7.69% |
| Betsy McCaughey Ross | Jonathan C. Reiter | Liberal Party of NY | 77,915 | 1.65% |
| Michael Reynolds | Karen Prior | NY State Right to Life | 56,683 | 1.20% |
| Al Lewis | Alice Green Alice Green Alice Green is an American political activist, living in Albany, New York. She is perhaps most notable for her campaigns for political office for Lieutanant Governor of New York in 1998, and for Mayor of Albany in 2005. Green has been the Executive Director of The Center for Law and Justice, a... |
Green Party US Green Party (United States) The Green Party of the United States is a nationally recognized political party which officially formed in 1991. It is a voluntary association of state green parties. Prior to national formation, many state affiliates had already formed and were recognized by other state parties... |
52,533 | 1.11% |
| Other parties | Less than 1% | |||
External links
- Biographical resume of McCaughey at Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths website.
- Chassie, Karen (ed.) "Who's Who in America, 2007 (61st ed.)," New Providence: Marquis Who's Who, ISBN 0837970067, p. 2961.