Via Michelle Cottle of the New Republic, I see that MSNBC’s “First Read” is trying to truth-squad the health-care debate–and not doing it well. The First Readers describe four town-hall questions as examples of “rampant misinformation” among critics of the Democrats’ health-care legislation.

One of the questions concerns whether the bills will involve taxpayer funding of abortion. We’re supposed to believe that they won’t because 1) people will pay for abortions in abortion-providing plans out of their own premiums, and 2) people will be able to pick plans that don’t provide abortions. The first point ignores the possibility that plans will be subsidized, and the second is non-responsive.

The First Readers go after another question, asked of Senator Specter: “President Obama has stated more than once that his goal is to have a single-payer system. Are you for a single-payer system?” The First Readers say that “every bill that has cleared a congressional committee doesn’t establish a single-payer system.” Note that this doesn’t mean that the system the bills set up wouldn’t quickly morph into a single-payer system, or that some of its backers support it for this precise reason (that it is, in short, their “goal”).

In other words, the fact-checkers have a 50 percent error rate (or, to be charitable, a 50 percent misleading rate). Naturally, Cottle thinks they’re being too tough on Obama.