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In the first election since the Citizens United decision, misinformation played a central role. That’s the finding of a new study, Misinformation and the 2010 Election, from the University of Maryland’s World Public Opinion. Voters believe they heard more lies than in past elections. Researchers found voters were also influenced by the lies they didn’t catch.

The bad news for FOX News viewers is that merely watching the channel appears to be toxic. Most voters believed a few whoppers during the 2010 election cycle. But daily watchers of FOX News believed more misinformation than everyone else.

Are FOX viewers simply people who watch the station to reinforce misinformed views they already have? “No,” says Clay Ramsay, Research Director for the project, “Even Democratic voters who watched FOX News were more misinformed than others.” While all cable news earns some criticism from Ramsay, “FOX displays a particular pattern of misinformation. The more you watch the more inaccurate your views.”

The researchers didn’t originally intend to rank news outlets. They simply wanted to know sources of voter misinformation. Ramsay discovered the unusual FOX correlation—the more you watch the worse it gets—unexpectedly, while sifting through the data. FOX was alone in this regard.

(Source: sarahlee310)

The concept of support for universal health care is taboo among Republicans who scrutinize the Affordable Care Act — dubbing it the “Job-Killing Health Care Law Act” — and call for its repeal. But a new UC Irvine study challenges the GOP argument that the health care law is too costly, with data illustrating that health care costs on the whole fall when poorer, uninsured patients are provided with insurance.

“In a case study involving low-income people enrolled in a community-based health insurance program, we found that use of primary care increased but use of emergency services fell, and — over time — total health care costs declined,” David Neumark, a co-author of the study, said in a release accompanying the findings.

The study — which focused on uninsured people in Richmond, Virginia who fell 200 percent below the poverty line — found that over three years, health care costs fell by almost 50 percent per participant, from $8,899 in the first year to $4,569 in the third after they received insurance. Participants who enrolled in health coverage made fewer trips to the emergency room, which are notorious for running up patient bills. Instead, insured participants went for more primary care visits.

(Source: sarahlee310)