The White House has launched a Health Insurance Reform Reality Check website to try to counter myths about the legislation pending in Congress such as the false claim that it will promote euthanasia. Given my research on the difficulty of correcting misperceptions (PDFs), I’m not optimistic about the site’s effectiveness.

It’s also not clear that all of the content will reduce misperceptions. For instance, the website highlights a video headlined “Reform will stop ‘rationing’ — not increase it,” a claim that I find to be extremely disingenuous. The reality is that all public and private health care systems ration care in various ways and will continue to do so after reform. While it is true, as the site says, that “reform will forbid many forms of rationing that are currently being used by insurance companies,” it is also true that the administration’s efforts to slow the rate of growth of health care costs will almost surely lead to further restrictions on the treatments and services that are covered by publicly funded health care plans like Medicare, Medicaid, and the proposed “public option.” If these decisions are properly informed by comparative effectiveness research, they may not reduce the quality of the care provided to patients, but such restrictions are still a form of rationing.