ObamaCare

Last week New York Times economics columnist and liberal hero Paul Krugman actually said "death panels," the critique of Obama-care popularized by Sarah Palin and universally mocked by liberals, while discussing the necessity of cutting health care costs.

On January 30, Krugman spoke at the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue in D.C. (Krugman is out hawking the paperback edition of "End This Depression Now!," his paean to more government spending on infrastructure and other forms of stimulus.) During the Q&A, Breitbart's Joel Griffith noted, Krugman was asked about the rising national debt. A truncated version of his remarks follows:

CNN's Carol Costello scolded Whole Foods CEO John Mackey for calling ObamaCare "fascism" on Friday. She also questioned why he was entering the ObamaCare debate at all and lectured him that many of his customers would disagree with his opposition to ObamaCare.

"And you realize when you say 'fascism' it brings up Nazi Germany and all sorts of things. And we really want that kind language out of our public forum at the moment, don't we?" Costello admonished Mackey. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

In what is likely to become a common occurrence as ObamaCare takes effect, the owner of another nationwide business is under fire from liberals, this time for passing on the extra health care costs to customers instead of absorbing them and increasing the company's operating expenses.

Papa John's Pizza CEO John Schnatter was the subject of a segment on Monday night's edition of The Ed Show on MSNBC even though the businessman did not appear on the program.

Two New York Times's liberal columnists are agreed: Repealing Obama-care would have a massive body count. Paul Krugman (pictured) wished readers a happy Monday with his cheerfully titled column "Death by Ideology."

Mitt Romney doesn’t see dead people. But that’s only because he doesn’t want to see them; if he did, he’d have to acknowledge the ugly reality of what will happen if he and Paul Ryan get their way on health care.

In the middle of a light-hearted discussion on Monday afternoon about the 'lame duck' session of Congress, MSNBC's The Cycle co-host Touré got a little heated.

Taking out his pent-up frustration on the Republicans who have prevented the Obama Administration from fixing what ails the country, and blaming the congressional gridlock and prolonged economic instability on them alone. [ video below the page break, MP3 audio available here ]

At the top of the 9 a.m. et hour on Friday's NBC Today, news anchor Natalie Morales eagerly touted a study released by Washington University in St. Louis on contraception: "A new study suggests that free birth control can dramatically lower rates of abortion and teen births."

Morales then quickly used the findings to promoted ObamaCare: "The report comes as millions of women are about to gain access to free contraception under most workplace insurance plans as part of President Obama's health care law."

On Wednesday, New York Times political reporters Jackie Calmes (pictured) and John Harwood offered a pre-debate fact-check which predictably leaned in Obama's favor (and blamed former President Bush): "A Closer Look at Assertions the 2 Sides Have Made on Economic Issues."

The New York Times Sunday Review, run by the ultra-liberal Andrew Rosenthal, again pressed for the Democratic side by running an op-ed that was the #2 most e-mailed Times story as of Monday afternoon, the provocatively titled "The Conservative Case for Obamacare," by J.D. Kleinke, a resident fellow at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute.

If Mitt Romney’s pivots on President’s Obama’s health care reform act have accelerated to a blur -- from repealing on Day 1, to preserving this or that piece, to punting the decision to the states -- it is for an odd reason buried beneath two and a half years of Republican political condemnations: the architecture of the Affordable Care Act is based on conservative, not liberal, ideas about individual responsibility and the power of market forces.

CNN's chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta boosted ObamaCare on Friday morning's Starting Point without disclosing that he was once a candidate to be President Obama's Surgeon General, and thus the megaphone for ObamaCare.

"Since President Obama's health care law was enacted, 3.1 million people under the age of 26 are now covered by their parents' plans and preventive care is covered 100 percent by insurance companies. Seniors, in particular, have benefitted on prescription drugs," Gupta trumpeted at the start of his report on the health care plans of the presidential candidates. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

NewsBusters has been showcasing the most egregious bias the Media Research Center has uncovered over the years — four quotes for each of the 25 years of the MRC, 100 quotes total — all leading up to our big 25th Anniversary Gala tomorrow evening. (Click here for posts recounting the worst of 1988 through 2011.)

Today, the worst bias of 2012 (so far): Newsweek sees Barack Obama as “grotesquely underappreciated,” afflicted by critics who are simply “dumb;” Chief Justice John Roberts becomes a media hero by voting to save ObamaCare; and an ex-CNN correspondent charges Republicans are trying to take the country back “to the good old days of Jim Crow.” [Quotes and video below the jump.]

NewsBusters is showcasing the most egregious bias the Media Research Center has uncovered over the years — four quotes for each of the 25 years of the MRC, 100 quotes total — all leading up to our big 25th Anniversary Gala on Thursday night.

Click here for posts recounting the worst of 1988 through 2008. Today, the worst bias of 2009: Journalists are thrilled by Barack Obama’s arrival in the Oval Office, with ABC’s Terry Moran suggesting he’s the “first President since George Washington to be taking a step down into the Oval Office,” and Newsweek’s Evan Thomas seeing Obama’s approach to foreign policy as being “above the world. He’s sort of God.” [Quotes and video below the jump.]

"Nearly 6 million Americans -- significantly more than first estimated -- will face a tax penalty under President Obama's health-care overhaul for not getting insurance" according to analysts for the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, reported the Associated Press's Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar yesterday. That's 50 percent higher than the 2010 prediction -- when ObamaCare was passed -- of 4 million facing the ObamaCare penalty, which the Supreme Court has declared is really, well, a tax. "The average penalty... will be about $1,200 in 2016," Alonso-Zaldivar noted. That's roughly $100/month in new taxes.

Both the Washington Post and the New York Times ran the AP story in their print editions, but the former placed the 786-word story at the bottom of page A4 with the headline "6 million uninsured expected to face health-care penalty," while the latter ran a condensed 270-word version on page A18 entitled "More Expected To Face Penalty In Health Law." A search of Nexis and NewsBusters/MRC DVR recordings shows that none of the three major broadcast networks -- ABC, CBS, and NBC -- mentioned the story on either their September 19 evening newscasts nor September 20 morning programs.

Two weeks, conservative columnist George Will spoke of the need for fact-checkers to be themselves fact-checked.

A fine example is CBS's Minneapolis affiliate WCCO-TV which on Wednesday ran a truly bogus "Reality Check" of an Americans for Prosperity ad (video follows with partial transcript and commentary).

"By the time voters go to the polls in November they’ll be saying ‘Praise the Lord’ about ObamaCare."

So said Newsweek's Eleanor Clift on PBS's McLaughlin Group this weekend (video follows with commentary):

As NewsBusters reported, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman on Sunday called Newsweek's cover story "Hit the Road, Barack" unethical.

Niall Ferguson, the author of the piece, responded at the Daily Beast writing, "I suggest Krugman reads a wee bit more carefully before his conscience next starts blogging":

NewsBusters reported Sunday that Newsweek is out with a truly shocking edition featuring a cover story entitled "Hit the Road, Barack: Why We Need a New President."

New York Times columnist Paul Krugman took to his blog Sunday excoriating the article in a piece he called "Unethical Commentary, Newsweek Edition":

For a network claiming to be non-partisan, CNN was quite partisan on Thursday when it used a Democratic talking point to fact-check a claim made by many conservatives. Anchor Brooke Baldwin focused on a Romney campaign ad claiming, as many conservatives are, that the Obama administration is infringing on religious liberty with its contraception mandate.

"One, this article is an opinion piece," Baldwin said of a headline in the ad accusing Obama of waging "war on religion," adding that "it came out actually before the President made this compromise back in February when he compromised putting birth control mandates on insurance companies and not on religious employers, right?" That was enough for her to ask if the ad was "misleading."

ABC News is missing no avenue in its promotion of ObamaCare. The liberal network's website trumpeted the news that, under the President's health care law, "it is against the law to discriminate against transgender and LGBT patients in federally funded healthcare programs."

Writer Susan Donaldson James offered several sympathetic stories of individuals who, previously, struggled to be receive treatment after undergoing sex change operations. Ms. Donaldson James promoted the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) and their study "Injustice at Every Turn." The author insisted that the group "paints a bleak picture of life as a transgender person in the United States. It revealed harassment in education, employment, housing and health care, as well as in the government and prison systems."

Media coverage of both the "Fortnight for Freedom" events sponsored by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), and the competing "Nuns on the Bus" campaign, reveal interesting results.

A total of 141 dioceses, involving tens of thousands of Catholics, participated in the USCCB events; it ended with a crowd of 5,000 at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception on July 4. Although Bill Moyers wrote that "a bus filled with nuns" participated in the "Nuns on the Bus" campaign, in actual fact a total of two nuns made the entire bus trip; there were never more than six at any one time on the bus. No matter, CNN did eight stories on the nuns, and none on the bishops; MSNBC did six on the nuns, and one on the bishops; and CBS News did two on the nuns and none on the bishops.

Former New York Times executive editor Bill Keller's Monday column defended Obama's embattled health-care law against Republican "slurs" and "lies," in "Five Obamacare Myths." And Keller calling the Democratic-slanted "truth squad" FactCheck.org "impartial" won't do much for his credibility among conservatives, even if he does call himself a "devout capitalist."

On the subject of the Affordable Care Act -- Obamacare, to reclaim the name critics have made into a slur -- a number of fallacies seem to be congealing into accepted wisdom. Much of this is the result of unrelenting Republican propaganda and right-wing punditry, but it has gone largely unchallenged by gun-shy Democrats. The result is that voters are confronted with slogans and side issues -- “It’s a tax!” “No, it’s a penalty!” -- rather than a reality-based discussion. Let’s unpack a few of the most persistent myths.