FAN Moderator

In TV ads, the pharmaceutical industry claims congressional plans to allow the federal government to negotiate drug prices in Medicare would deny beneficiaries’ access to medicines their doctors prescribe. Experts say that’s unlikely, and an inaccurate portrayal of recent legislation. Under current law, the federal government is barred from negotiating […]

The recession caused by the COVID-19 pandemic officially lasted just two months and ended in April 2020. But Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg wrongly credited President Joe Biden for guiding “this economy out of the teeth of a terrifying recession.” Buttigieg made his remarks on CNN’s “State of the Union,” while […]

SciCheck Digest Merck and Pfizer are each developing a new oral antiviral drug that might prevent or treat COVID-19. The pills are very different from the antiparasitic medication ivermectin, contrary to claims online that they are “suspiciously similar” or that the companies are “repackaging” ivermectin in a ploy to increase […]

As of 2020, almost 52% of the United States population 25 to 34 years old had earned a postsecondary degree — putting the U.S. in 11th place among the 38 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The roughly 50% of U.S. residents 25 to 64 years old […]

SciCheck Digest Southwest Airlines’ flight cancellations fueled partisan claims over the weekend that transportation workers were protesting COVID-19 vaccine requirements and causing the cancellations. But there’s no evidence that workers staged protests. The Federal Aviation Administration, the airline and labor unions have all cited other reasons. Could a COVID-19 vaccine […]

A Republican group’s TV ad falsely claims that President Joe Biden’s tax plans would force the sale of family farms passed on to children due to burdensome taxes. The policy proposed by Biden would tax heirs on the gain in value for assets such as farm land (the current value […]

Quick Take A Senate-approved $1 trillion infrastructure bill would create a voluntary pilot program aimed at studying per-mile user fees for motor vehicles to fund the Highway Trust Fund. The bill does not include a “driving tax,” as some social media posts misleadingly claim. Full Story A bipartisan $1 trillion […]

Infectious disease experts say low vaccination rates, resistance to protective measures such as wearing a mask and the highly transmissible delta variant are driving the current surge of COVID-19 cases in the U.S. But with numerous Republicans criticizing the Biden administration for the rise of immigrants, some of whom are […]

To help detect unreported income and narrow the gap between federal taxes collected and owed, the Biden administration has proposed expanding annual reporting requirements for banks and other financial institutions to include the total amounts of money flowing in and out of all business and personal accounts worth at least […]

Summary The statistics for the entirety of Donald Trump’s time in office are nearly all compiled. As we did for his predecessor four years ago, we present a final look at the numbers. The economy lost 2.9 million jobs. The unemployment rate increased by 1.6 percentage points to 6.3%. Paychecks […]