Amidst the focus on the intra-party battles in the presidential race, pundits and reporters have given little scrutiny to the candidates’ cheap shots at the other party, which is a bad precedent for the fall campaign. These sorts of falsehoods shouldn’t be allowed to become accepted and no longer “news” (like the claim that tax cuts increase revenue) — but that’s exactly what’s happening on health care right now.

For instance, consider this passage from a New York Times article on Mitt Romney:

So Mr. Romney talks about calls for national health insurance.

“I don’t want to show up at the hospital and have the guys who ran Katrina taking my blood pressure,” he said Sunday in Nashua, to much laughter.

The Times gives no indication that Romney’s claim is misleading. In fact, none of the top Democrats are calling for a single-payer system in which the government operates health care facilities. They’re proposing health care plans with a public option comparable to Medicare — an insurance plan that pays private facilities and doctors for care.

It’s not like this is a new issue – Romney said virtually the same thing during Saturday’s GOP debate:

We don’t have to have government take over health care to get everybody insured. That’s what the Democrats keep on hanging out there.

The truth is, we can get everybody insured in a free market way. We don’t need Hillary-care or socialized medicine.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board pushes a similar line in a recent editorial:

Whatever the minor policy differences among Democrats, their major domestic ambition this campaign season is the government takeover of the health-care market. The Republican nominee will need a free-market alternative, and a way of explaining it that is more concise and compelling than we’ve heard so far.

It’s hard to overstate how important it is that this misleading claim be countered. Health care is going to be a central issue in the general election campaign. And if the press doesn’t do a better job, millions of Americans will once again be fooled into believing that Democrats want government to take over the operation of health care.