Fox News misreporting on health care reform? You could be excused if you saw the following exchange on America Live with Megyn Kelly and assumed it was a rerun from earlier this year or last summer, because the same old tired and incorrect assertions about the public option turned up again.

This isn't out of the blue. Megyn Kelly has a well-documented pattern of selling right-wing falsehoods and smears in the guise of news, but this segment was chock full, even for Fox.

Kelly described the public option as “contentious” and “divisive,” and radio host Mike Gallagher referred to it as “volatile” and an idea that had been rejected “wholeheartedly” by Americans, but polls taken near the end of the health care debate showed more supported in than opposed it. Kelly noted that “even” Sen. Joe Lieberman “drew the line” at supporting the public option, but Sen. Lieberman's public statements that he opposed the public option because it would add to the deficit were not based in fact.

Gallagher went on to describe the public option as “nationalized health care,” but of course even if a public option was implemented, the private health care system in America would remain.

Taking a page out of her horrific coverage of the New Black Panther Party non-story, Kelly then resurrected the myth that the public option would lead to a single payer health care system. As we've previously noted, a public health option bears no resemblance whatsoever to a single-payer government run health care system. It is, as the name implies, one of several options that would be available to citizens. No secret plot there.

Kelly then claimed that the recent appointment of Donald Berwick to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is evidence of President Obama's single-payer intent, citing Berwick's praise of the United Kingdom's National Health Service (NHS). The problem is that Berwick both praised and critiqued the NHS (a fact Fox personalities regularly omit, conveniently), and also that the NHS system isn't single payer (government pays for services) but actually a single provider (the government provides medical services), like the VA for veterans system here in America.

Gallagher mocked the idea that health care reform with a public option, or as he incorrectly calls it “single payer socialized medicine” (how many falsehoods can you stuff in a sentence?), could reduce the deficit. But the Congressional Budget Office has consistently forecasted that health care reform will reduce deficits, and that a public option would not considerably increase those costs.

Practically every minute of this segment where Kelly or Gallagher spoke, misinformation was passed on to viewers. But with Megyn Kelly on America Live, we're coming to believe that those are the low standards they hold themselves to.