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Responding to Sen. Tom Coburn's suggestion that Fox News perpetuated the false claim that under the health care reform legislation individuals can be sent to jail for not having health insurance, Bill O'Reilly repeatedly insisted that "nobody" on Fox advanced that assertion. In fact, Fox has relentlessly pushed that falsehood, including on O'Reilly's own show.

O'Reilly: "[W]e researched" and "[n]obody" on Fox "ever said you are going to jail if you don't buy health insurance." On the April 13 edition of Fox News' O'Reilly Factor, O'Reilly told Sen. Coburn: "[Y]ou don't know anybody on Fox News -- because there hasn't been anyone -- that said people will go to jail if they don't buy mandatory insurance." He added: "[W]e researched to find out if anybody had ever said you are going to jail if you don't buy health insurance. Nobody has ever said it. What it seems to me is you used Fox News as a whipping boy when we didn't qualify there ... you were wrong to do that, Senator, with all due respect."

On The O'Reilly Factor, Glenn Beck told O'Reilly you "go to jail" for not having health insurance under bill. From the November 13, 2009, edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor:

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O'REILLY: Couldn't they do [liposuction] at the same time [as your appendectomy]?

BECK: No, they wouldn't. No. I don't have universal health care.

O'REILLY: No, let's get -- well, you will soon.

BECK: Or I'll go to jail.

O'REILLY: Are you going to be a conscientious objector to health care?

BECK: You know, this is the first time in history in our country where, just to be a citizen, just to be -- just to not go to jail, you have to buy something.

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On his own Fox show, Beck falsely claimed that "if you don't get into their government health care, there will be jail time." On the November 12, 2009, edition of his Fox News show, Beck claimed that "if you don't get into their government health care, there will be jail time."

On Fox & Friends, Rush Limbaugh falsely claimed the health care bill "puts people in jail" for not having health insurance. On the February 4 edition of Fox & Friends, Limbaugh asserted: "This is not even a health care bill. This is a bill that raises taxes 14 times; puts people in jail, potentially, if they don't have health insurance mandated by the government to buy. This is an avenue to control every aspect of life."

Dick Morris has repeatedly made the false claim. On the November 9, 2009, edition of Fox News' Hannity, Morris asserted: "One of the provisions in the Pelosi bill is you actually can go to jail for not having health insurance. It says if you don't have health insurance, you have to pay a fine of 2.5 percent of your income to the government. And if you don't, you face $250,000 or five years in prison. Can you imagine your prison yard? 'What are you in for?' 'Murder.' 'I'm in for rape.' 'I didn't have health insurance.' " Sean Hannity then replied: "Well I don't mean to laugh, but, I mean, this is the reality." Similarly, on the November 23, 2009, edition of Hannity, Morris asserted that among young people the question "has gone from 'Oh, yeah, we really need insurance' to 'What, am I going to go to jail if I don't have it?' "

Hannity cites Morris' false claim that jail is a penalty for failure to buy insurance under heatlh bill. During the November 10, 2009, edition of his Fox News program, Sean Hannity stated, "Dick Morris was on the program last night. Penalties for people who don't get government-mandated health insurance, uh, jail time, a possibility?"

Judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano falsely claimed that under the House health care bill, the government could "even put you in jail" if you fail to purchase insurance. From the November 10, 2009, edition of Fox News' Glenn Beck:

Bill Hemmer: "Could people be going to jail for not owning health insurance?" Hemmer perpetuated the debunked myth on the March 19 edition of America's Newsroom when he asked a guest: "Could people be going to jail for not owning health insurance?"

Van Susteren: "(I)t is theoretically possible" that if "you can't afford insurance for whatever reason" the government could "send you to jail." From the October 7, 2009, edition of On the Record with Greta Van Susteren:

Fox Nation: "Pelosi: It's 'Fair' to Jail People Without Health Insurance." On November 11, 2009, and November 12, 2009, Fox Nation posted a video clip with the headline: "Pelosi: It's 'Fair' to Jail People Without Health Insurance.

Under reform law, [there are] no "criminal... penalties" for failure to have health insurance coverage:

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"Non-compliance with" the insurance mandate "is not subject to criminal or civil penalties." The Joint Committee on Taxation stated in its analysis of the revenue provisions of the Senate health care reform bill and the health care reconciliation bill that "individuals who fail to maintain minimum essential [health insurance] coverage in 2016 are subject" to a fee, but that "[n]on-compliance" with that provision "is not subject to criminal or civil penalties"

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On his show last night, rather than admitting the error and moving along, O'Reilly instead doubled down and insisted that he was still right and Coburn was wrong -- even though we (and many others, most notably Media Matters and MSNBC's Countdown) were able to show plenty of video of plenty of Fox talkers in fact saying "you're going to jail if you don't buy health insurance," perhaps most notoriously Glenn Beck on O'Reilly's own show.

Here's what O'Reilly claimed in his opening Talking Points Memo segment:

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All right, as we all know, the prison option was taken off the when the final Obama-care bill was being debated. And that's what we were talking to Senator Coburn about! The final bill debate! Not all that stuff! So what I said was absolutely true and nobody at Fox News reported inaccurately about the Obama-care prison situation. Nobody.

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O'Reilly compounds his original lie here by lying about whether there was a "prison option" in the Obama-care bill at all in the first place: There WAS NEVER A 'PRISON OPTION.' Watch those clips he runs carefully: Neither Obama nor Pelosi support the concept of jail time, but instead claim that the legislation treats people fairly. The questions asked in the clips themselves were based on a false premise: The penalty for failure to buy insurance in that legislation, just like the final version that passed, is a not imprisonment or arrest, but simply a tax -- and failure to pay taxes is a matter for the civil courts. The claim that "jail time" was on the table was an utterly false smear back then -- just as it was even more provably false after health-care reform passed.

Indeed, O'Reilly is simply fabricating when he tries to claim that "we all know" a "prison option" was "taken off." Does anyone know WTF he's talking about?

But that, believe it or not, is not even the most bizarre thing O'Reilly did in this segment. He followed this up by lecturing sternly -- without even a hint of irony or self-awareness -- on the threat posed to the health of the nation by news media who blatantly and nakedly lie, without remorse.

That's right, projection's not just for theaters:

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O'Reilly: The importance of this is that you, the everyday American, are now being lied to on a regular basis by people working for huge corporations -- and nothing's being done about it. A voter-driven republic -- a voter-driven republic -- cannot survive if lies supersede the truth.

Bottom line on this story is that Senator Coburn -- again, a good man -- made an honest mistake. But that mistake was picked up by NBC News and used to hammer Fox News, which is kicking their butt all over the place in the cable-news ratings. The good news is that NBC News will soon be taken over by Comcast, an honest corporation, and perhaps changes will be made.

The American people deserve an honest government and an honest media, do we not?

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This is such an obvious inversion of reality that the simplest conclusion is that these people have just gone insane.

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