Responding to a question from The Daily Caller’s Kaitlan Collins during Monday’s White House press briefing about slanted media coverage of ObamaCare, Sean Spicer accused journalists of ignoring the failures of the health care law and instead portraying it as “all rainbows and puppies.”
Collins wondered: “How is the press making ObamaCare look good?” Spicer began his response by observing: “Well, I think when you see some of these comparisons [between ObamaCare and the GOP replacement plan] that occur in they talk about who’s gonna win and who’s gonna lose, it misses a lot of the competition that's going to take place. It doesn't talk about the increased choice [in the GOP plan].”
He explained:
I mean, right now you have one choice in a lot of places. You have no decision about how much you're going to pay and what you're gonna get. Choice allows you to determine what scale of health care you need, what kind of package is good for you, your family, or for your business. And when you look at a lot of these analysis, when you open up various major papers, they make it seem so simple. It's what are you going to get? How much are you going to get paid for on this plan? How much are you going to get paid for under the current plan? It misses an entirety of the whole process, which is that you don't have competition...
Spicer continued: “...the bigger point that I think the President and a lot of others are getting to, is that the system is failing on its own. It makes it seem like it's all rainbows and puppies. At the end of the day, if you have a card and you're getting a subsidy but you're not getting care, you have nothing.”
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In an analysis by the Heritage Foundation conducted in February, the public policy think tank easily compiled a list of “8 Reasons Why Obamacare Should Be Repealed.” Chief among those reasons were soaring costs as well as the lack of choice and competition for consumers.
During the 2016 campaign, a Media Research Center study found that the network evening newscasts only spent a paltry 10 minutes of air time reporting on ObamaCare’s failures.
Here is a transcript of the March 13 exchange during the White House briefing:
1:43 PM ET
(...)
KAITLAN COLLINS [THE DAILY CALLER]: How is the press making ObamaCare look good?
SEAN SPICER: Well, I think when you see some of these comparisons that occur in they talk about who’s gonna win and who’s gonna lose, it misses a lot of the competition that's going to take place. It doesn't talk about the increased choice. I mean, right now, as the President has noted, as Secretary Price noted, in a third of all counties in five states, you have one choice. Those analysis that are very – trying to look at how much you'll pay and how much you won't, A, don't take into consideration the competition that’s going to occur, the choice that’s going to occur. I mean, right now you have one choice in a lot of places. You have no decision about how much you're going to pay and what you're gonna get.
Choice allows you to determine what scale of health care you need, what kind of package is good for you, your family, or for your business. And when you look at a lot of these analysis, when you open up various major papers, they make it seem so simple. It's what are you going to get? How much are you going to get paid for on this plan? How much are you going to get paid for under the current plan? It misses an entirety of the whole process, which is that you don't have competition, number one.
Number two, and the bigger point that I think the President and a lot of others are getting to, is that the system is failing on its own. It makes it seem like it's all rainbows and puppies. At the end of the day, if you have a card and you're getting a subsidy but you're not getting care, you have nothing. And so walking into a doctor's office where you can hand them a card and say I've got a $5,000 tax subsidy, if that doctor doesn't take the care or the deductible is so high, then you really don't have anything. And so to do an apples and apples comparison is hardly an accurate analysis of what the current situation is.
(...)
