Fox News host Eric Bolling: 'Obamacare literally may kill you'

Fox News co-host Eric Bolling on Wednesday asserted that President Barack Obama's health care reform law could "literally" kill people.

During a segment about Medicare on Fox News' The Five, co-host Dana Perino asked Bolling if Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan should do more interviews to explain that GOP hopeful Mitt Romney's plan would give seniors a choice of using private insurance.

"Absolutely not," Bolling insisted. "I spent the better part of all day trying to figure out the [Romney] plan and I'll tell you, here's what I found out. I'm not sure it's going to work. I'm not sure because it's not a mandatory switch over from the defined benefits to the defined contributions."

But the conservative Fox News co-host did have some advice for how Romney and Ryan could push back against the Obama campaign's argument that the GOP hopeful's plan would end Medicare as it exists today.

"It has to be laid out this way: Either you have Obamacare or you don't," Bolling explained. "Because Obamacare literally may kill you."

"I mean, you can say Mitt Romney did kill [people with layoffs by Bain Capital] -- this could kill you because of the independent panel," he added. "That board is going to be a big problem. We have bureaucrats deciding what's fiscally is responsible, which operations you can [have]."

"That's not true," liberal co-host Bob Beckel argued.

"Yes, they are," Bolling replied. "When you're sick, there is no amount of money that you wouldn't be willing to pay to feel better. Now, you're going to have someone else deciding what's good or not good, and whether it's worth the money for them to spend."

In 2009, PolitiFact awarded former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) the the "lie of the year" for her claim that the Affordable Care Act would establish so-called "death panels."

A fact check by The Associated Press determined that "Palin and other critics are wrong" that the health care bill would create a "death panel."

"Nothing in the legislation would carry out such a bleak vision," the AP wrote. "The provision that has caused the uproar would instead authorize Medicare to pay doctors for counseling patients about end-of-life care, if the patient wishes."

Watch this video from Fox News' The Five via Media Matters, broadcast Aug. 15, 2012.