MSNBC’s Dr. Nancy Snyderman appeared on Wednesday’s Morning Joe and justified reducing the number of women in their 40s who get mammograms. "No, it is rationing. Let's be clear," she admitted.

Confusing private actions by American citizens and the government, the Dr. Nancy host compared, "But, you ration what food you eat. You ration how much sleep you get. And this is saying we should question about how we spend our health care dollars." Of course, the government doesn’t control how much food and sleep Americans get.

Host Joe Scarborough made the same point, though he didn’t seem so cheery about rationing: "You talk about the death panels. Forget the death panels. This is rationing, saying, 'Okay, we could do this. We could save some lives. It's just not worth the money.'"

After airing what she described as a "hard-hitting" ad by the Center for Reproductive Rights which ominously warned, "Don't let Congress ban abortion coverage millions of women already have," MSNBC's Dr. Nancy Snyderman today lamented to Politico's Jeanne Cummings that with Sen. Ted Kennedy gone, Democrats lack a unifying figure who could defuse an abortion battle that could mar Democratic unity on health care reform.

Snyderman praised the late pro-choice politician as a "man of his church and of his faith" (MP3 audio here):

Well, now the Catholic Church is lobbying hard to get House language into the Senate bill and then hopefully get it passed. Politico's assistant managing editor Jeanne Cummings wrote about this. And she joins me now.

MSNBC's Nancy Snyderman attacked Catholic bishops on Thursday for opposing abortion funding in the health care bill, agreeing with the President of NOW that the IRS should investigate them. The "Dr. Nancy" host also complained, "This is going to be a Pollyannaish statement. The Catholic bishops appearing and having a political voice seems to be a most fundamental violation of church and state."

Terry O’Neill, the President of the National Organization for Women, quickly concurred: "You know, that's the first thing that I said. I don't know where the Internal Revenue Service is, but I hope they're paying attention." Snyderman responded, "Me, too." Watching this segment, a viewer could be confused as to who was the leader of a left-wing feminist group and who was the supposedly neutral cable anchor. (It should be pointed out that NOW is a non-profit group and has a tax exempt component to its organization. Should the IRS go after them?)

Snyderman repeatedly allowed O’Neill’s hyperbolic statements to go unchallenged. She absurdly claimed that the amendment by Democratic Congressman Bart Stupak, which prohibits funding for abortion in the health care bill, "essentially overrules Roe V. Wade." The MSNBC host said nothing. When O’Neill frothed, "It's not acceptable to change health care for America while sending women off into the back alleys to die," Snyderman again stayed silent.

Insisting that her opinion was not influenced by her views on abortion, MSNBC's Dr. Nancy Snyderman went on a tear shortly after 12:30 p.m. EST on her November 9 "Dr. Nancy" program, denouncing the "infuriating" Stupak Amendment to the Democratic health care bill passed on Saturday.

That amendment, named for pro-life Michigan Democrat Bart Stupak (D) would bar private insurance plans sold in the bill's publicly-subsidized insurance exchange from covering abortion. [audio available here]

As a consequence, women seeking to have insurance pay for abortion procedures under the would need to pay out-of-pocket for additional coverage for abortion procedures.

Snyderman hinted that she was annoyed that pro-life Democrats even thought it necessary to press for the Stupak Amendment in the first place. After all, Snyderman complained to MSNBC correspondent Kelly O'Donnell, she and her colleagues at MSNBC had done their level best for months to calm fears of pro-lifers about ObamaCare:

Appearing on the Dr. Nancy program on MSNBC Friday, NBC News terrorism analyst Roger Cressey warned against labeling the mass shooting at Ft. Hood as terrorism, despite the apparent radical views of the shooter: “We’ve heard some family references that he was being criticized for his Muslim faith, that’s all we know right now....It’s still premature to draw the terrorism conclusion.”

Prior to Cressey’s assessment, host Dr. Nancy Snyderman spoke with Dr. Stevan Hobfoll, director of the Traumatic Stress Center at Rush University Medical Center and asked about the mental health of the attacker, Major Nidal Hasan. Hobfoll made no hesitation describing the shooting as a terrorist act: “Strangely enough, terrorism is not in itself an area – an act of mental illness. I think this was a Jihadist act, it’s certainly psychologically abnormal what he did, but that doesn’t mean that he had any psychological disorder, per se.”

Nancy Snyderman—huge fencing fan? Ping-pong aficionado perhaps?  I mean, what could explain the doctor being so down in the dumps over Chicago's loss of the Olympic games?

Here's how a crestfallen Snyderman opened her MSNBC show today: "A profound loss for Chicago . . . a stunning blow to the United States . . . I'm one of those people who is profoundly disappointed.  I can't hide this one."

There's video after the break that should give a hint to the real answer . . . 

Talk about an empathetic doctor, someone who really feels her patient's pain . . .

On her MSNBC show this afternoon, here's how Dr. Nancy Snyderman described her reaction to Rep. Joe Wilson's "you lie!":

"It was a gut punch to me."

Snyderman was kibitzing Pres. Obama's health care speech to Congress with NBC chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd.

Are you wary of the federal government using taxpayer dollars to advise senior citizens on "end-of-life" issues? If so, you're just "cruel," according to former ABC reporter Linda Douglass, now the communications director for the White House Office of Health Reform.

Douglass appeared on MSNBC's Aug. 12 "Dr. Nancy," with host Nancy Snyderman. Snyderman pointed out that some of the discussion about end-of-life care is just craziness and these "rumors" are difficult to combat (even though there is precedent for governments involved heavily in health care to take such measures, as Michelle Malkin pointed out.)

"I think the criticism about this euthanasia and death panels is just craziness," Snyderman said. "That, in fact, we should be talking about death and dying earlier, but these are rumors that aren't going away."

Who says a little engineering mixed in with your journalism is a bad thing? At least one MSNBC host and Washington Post reporter said it's a journalist's job to focus on "real issues" in the hotly debated issue of health care reform.

This was the topic of discussion in a panel featuring John Rother, executive vice president of Policy and Strategy for AARP, Ceci Connolly of The Washington Post, Tim Phillips of Americans for Prosperity and host Dr. Nancy Snyderman during MSNBC's "Dr. Nancy" Aug. 10.

Rother argued there has been far too much hyperbole on the issue, which he insisted was meant to mislead the public.

MSNBC’s graphics department on Monday provided some visually obnoxious examples of media bias, fretting about "unhinged" conservatives and "health care hysteria." Throughout the morning, the left-leaning cable network featured on-screen texts promoting the Democratic agenda. At 11:35am, MSNBC News Live host Carlos Watson anchored a piece urging liberals to get tough in supporting universal health care. The graphic screamed, "Are Liberals Being Too Weak?"

At the beginning of the 12pm show Dr. Nancy, Nancy Snyderman discussed whether or not conservatives such as Sarah Palin are frightening the elderly over health care. This time, the on-screen visual spun, "Health Care Fight: Scaring Seniors?"

ABC was embarrassed last week by NewsBusters’ exposure of how their new senior medical editor, Dr. Richard Besser of the federal Centers for Disease Control, donated $400 to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign in 2008, presumably an indication of his political sympathies. An ABC News spokeswoman, Cathie Levin, defended Besser to the Associated Press, arguing that he’s a doctor “whose job it is to give impartial and unvarnished advice and he’ll be able to do the same for a television audience.”

Maybe Besser can indeed separate his political views from his reporting on health care, but a review of campaign finance records at OpenSecrets.org finds that CBS’s Dr. Jon LaPook and NBC’s Dr. Nancy Snyderman have also chipped in their own cash to Democratic — but never Republican — candidates. And both correspondents, along with Besser’s future ABC colleague, Dr. Tim Johnson, have showered the liberal Obama health care plan with fawning press. Details:

The mainstream media dropped the ball in the past when it came to Gardasil, and they haven’t improved with time. The “Today” Show featured Dr. Nancy Snyderman, NBC’s chief medical editor and a longtime advocate for the vaccine, and Dr. Suzanne Gilberg-Lenz, somewhat of a skeptic. But the report was by no means balanced.
 
Dr. Snyderman began promoting the vaccine right out of the gate, saying:

Did someone make this "Declare Your Devotion To a Dem Day" at MSNBC?  You have to wonder.  During the network's noon hour, Dr. Nancy Snyderman declared herself a "big fan" of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

Not to be outdone, during the following hour Andrea Mitchell ended her interview with Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Ia.) by thanking him profusely—and I mean at length—for having pushed through passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act 19 years ago today. 

Liberal hopes for a quick health care bill are in collapse, as Senate Democrats push any floor action off until the fall, a move House Democrats may match this week. But if the Obama White House is upset that their plans for a huge expansion of government health care have been delayed, they surely cannot complain about the media coverage.

Last week, a new study by the Media Research Center’s Business & Media Institute (BMI) found broadcast coverage during the first six months of 2009 tilted heavily in favor of Barack Obama’s big government plan. BMI’s Julia Seymour and Sarah Knoploh looked at 224 health care stories on the ABC, CBS and NBC morning and evening news shows from Obama’s January 20 inauguration through his June 24 prime time special on ABC.

Among the key findings:

NBC's medical correspondent, Dr. Nancy Snyderman, was “rooting” for President Barack Obama to do well in selling his health care takeover during his Wednesday night press conference: “As a physician, you know, I felt like I understood the complexity of the problem. As an American citizen, I was rooting for the President to hit a home run.”

On the 10 PM EDT Hardball an hour after Obama wrapped up, Snyderman, who hosts the noon EDT weekday hour on MSNBC, fretted that he had “whiffed” in not making some persuasive points, such as using “plain talk to take the scare out of things like rationing, which basically is what's going on now -- some people get medicines, some people don't. It didn't come through tonight.” She also ominously warned of disaster if Obama does not prevail: “We're going to pay big time if we don't get this. I don't think we're going to be a great world power.”

MP3 Audio available here.

The White House's decision to offer interviews with the President to the medical doctors who are correspondents for ABC, CBS and NBC paid off Wednesday night with stories that embraced the assumption health care must be reformed; and interviews on CBS and NBC which put Obama's efforts in the best light. Ironically, ABC's Dr. Tim Johnson, a long-time advocate for government-directed universal coverage, didn't presume Obama's prescription is benign.

Anchor Katie Couric led the CBS Evening News by making the underlining case for Obama's view that government intervention is needed:

They've been talking about it for decades. President Obama says he wants it done now, as in this summer -- universal health care. As he put it today, it's time for us to buck up. And there are a lot of bucks at stake. Since 1999, health insurance premiums have increased 120 percent -- four times as much as wages. And about one and a half million American families lose their homes to foreclosure every year because of sky high medical bills. A number of proposals are making their way through the House and Senate this week.

In the subsequent story, Chip Reid did spend some time on the burden the new health care requirements would place on small businesses, before CBS played an excerpt from Dr. Jon LaPook's Obama interview in which LaPook empathized: “Mr. President, when people hear you talk about a national insurance plan, there are fears of socialized medicine, rationed care, limited choice. How do you handle this?”

Feeling a little overwhelmed by the amount of media attention the networks have given to Michael Jackson? You're not alone, according to a recent Pew Research Center poll, and that fact puzzles MSNBC contributor Touré.

Touré and David Wilson of TheGrid.com appeared on the July 2 broadcast of Nancy Snyderman's MSNBC's show "Dr. Nancy" to examine the premise that Michael Jackson's death was getting too much attention. Snyderman cited statics from the Pew Research Center for People & Press July 1 poll about the Jackson coverage.

"And of course, the Jackson coverage raises a question," Snyderman said. "Has the media been spending too much time covering the Michael Jackson story? Certainly, it's something you can't get away from right now. A new poll by the Pew Research Center shows that 64 percent of people surveyed think that the coverage of the Jackson story is excessive. Three percent think, too little, 29 percent just about right."

At one point during her new MSNBC show today, Dr. Nancy Snyderman proclaimed:

Snyderman would probably say she meant it only in terms of the subject matter the show will cover, not its point of view.  But she was, if unintentionally, revealing a larger truth.  Just in time for the Obama admin's push on health care, MSNBC has rolled out a show that loyally pushes the Obama plan, right down to the call for nationalization via the so-called "public option."

View video here if player not visible. 

In the name of gender equality, the Today show plumped this morning for government regulation forcing health care insurers to charge men and women the same for individual policies even though women cost insurers more because of greater use of services.  Hasn't the financial crisis taught the MSM anything about the danger of government meddling in markets? No.

Insurers wind up paying out more in claims under women's policies than men's.  Under the circumstances, charging women the same as men would make as much sense as FedEx charging a flat shipping fee no matter how big the box.  But that didn't stop NBC medical editor Nancy Snyderman and Today weekend co-host Amy Robach from decrying the unfairness of it all this morning.  Their solution? More government, of course.  They want legislation to force insurers to charge the sexes the same.

View video here.

Is there any strife in the world the "Today" show isn't going to blame on global warming? Last week NBC's Ann Curry cited climate change a cause of increasing tween stress, this week, "Today's" chief medical editor Dr. Nancy Snyderman warned global warming has sparked an increase of food allergies.

The following exchange between Snyderman and co-host Meredith Vieira occurred on a segment about the increase of food allergies in women on the October 25 edition of "Today":

Meredith Vieira: "You touched on it briefly in the piece but why are food allergies on the rise, especially with women?"