Lies, damn lies, and obvious mistakes major newspapers don't bother to correct

It's become a pretty common thing for conservatives to get simple facts wrong--a very different thing from presenting different opinions, or even highlighting DIFFERENT facts--related to health care and health care reform. Jonathan Chait rounds up a few examples here, attributing the problem to conservatives' general lack of interest in health care policy.

Here's what I'd call the most egregious example: Martin Feldstein's op-ed in Tuesday's Post, in which he states the following:

Obama has said that he would favor a British-style "single payer" system in which the government owns the hospitals and the doctors are salaried but that he recognizes that such a shift would be too disruptive to the health-care industry.

Notably, the WSJ article to which Feldstein links gets the facts (again, not opinions or spin) right:

A single-payer system would eliminate private insurance companies and put a Medicare-like system into place where the government pays all health-care bills with tax dollars.

Perhaps it's an honest mistake. But if Feldstein doesn't know the difference between socialized health care and socialized health insurance--between the UK and Canada--then why is he writing an op-ed on the subject for the Washington Post? And, his intentions aside, will we see a correction from the Post? I won't hold my breath.

In other health-care-reform news, yesterday the president presented eight essential features of reform. It's a good list.