Health Care

The network morning shows on Friday derided the move by House Republicans to defund ObamaCare as simply "bowing to demands" from the Tea Party. But it was CBS's Bob Schieffer who made no attempt to restrain his contempt, declaring the ObamaCare fight "over" and linking GOP members to elderly Japanese veterans of World War II who refused to accept that the fight was futile. After noting that the …

On Wednesday's CBS Evening News and Thursday's CBS This Morning, Nancy Cordes repeatedly played up how an unidentified Republican in the U.S. Senate attacked a House proposal to de-fund ObamaCare as "suicide". Cordes underlined that "Speaker Boehner was forced into the risky strategy by his right flank", and wondered if the plan was "just a recipe for a government shutdown". Norah O'Donnell…

A Morning Joe kind of Republican?  With Joe Scarborough absent today, was Nicolle Wallace assuming the role of the Republican who gets more satisfaction from ripping fellow members of her party than in criticizing Democrats?  Wallace mocked congressional Republicans who are trying to defund ObamaCare, analogizing them to two-year olds on scooters racing into traffic against a red light.  She…

It's almost amusing to watch writers like Christopher Rugaber at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, pretend not to understand why the economy isn't growing as much as one would "expect" based on the number of jobs being added each month and falling weekly unemployment claims. In a Thursday story which was mostly worthless because the incompletely collected government data…

The AFL-CIO came out swinging against Obamacare this week, calling its implementation "highly disruptive" and warning that big changes need to be made to the law. CNN has entirely ignored big labor's resolution, adopted on Wednesday. The resolution comes after the country's largest federation of labor organizations pushed for the law's passage in 2010 and funded President Obama's re-election…

President Obama’s signature health care law continues to lose support, but NBC’s Chuck Todd sees no problem with the law itself. On Thursday’s Morning Joe on MSNBC, he chalked up the declining support to bad messaging by ObamaCare supporters. Host Joe Scarborough announced that 57 percent of Americans now oppose most or all of the law, according to a recent CNN poll. In addition, the AFL-CIO…

 NBC and CBS on Wednesday night and Thursday morning failed to cover the "impassioned" demand by big labor unions to reject large portions of ObamaCare. Only ABC's Good Morning America, allowing just a 24-second news brief, covered the complaints that the law will spike the cost of health care. At a convention in Los Angeles, the AFL-CIO adopted an angry resolution in opposition. [See video…

According to the three networks, the serious effort by conservatives to defund ObamaCare isn't worth as much coverage as the addition of a new dog to the President's family. In just a 24-hour period, the ABC, CBS and NBC evening and morning shows devoted six minutes and 23 seconds to the debut of the puppy "Sunny." In contrast, those same shows have granted a scant two minutes and 26 seconds over…

The liberals at MSNBC continue their PR campaign on behalf of ObamaCare. On Wednesday’s PoliticsNation, the Rev. Al Sharpton cited one very convenient finding from a recent poll: only 6 percent of registered voters want Congress to delay and defund the Affordable Care Act. However, Sharpton ignored two other key findings from the same poll that were far less favorable to his pro-ObamaCare…

On Wednesday's CBS This Morning, Jan Crawford boosted the latest pro-ObamaCare campaign from the President's supporters in Hollywood. Crawford played back-to-back soundbites from liberal comedian Will Ferrell's "Funny or Die" website, and highlighted the list of celebrities who have signed up for the campaign. The correspondent did later acknowledge that the controversial law is still "…

The AFL-CIO has just lost 40,000 of its most militant members, and it's not news at the Associated Press's national site (there is a regional AP story at the Seattle Times) or at the New York Times. It is getting virtually no other establishment press coverage (results at the link are primarily center-right blogs and similar outlets). The departing members are those in the International…

In a Thursday morning speech, AFL-CIO head Richard Trumka told of how surprised how he was, in the words of Time's Alex Rogers at it Swampland blog, "that employers have reduced workers’ hours below 30-a-week to avoid an employer penalty scheduled to go into effect in 2015." Here's another "surprise" from Rogers' report, at least for those who think that lawmakers sit alone and draw up 2,000-…

If we're to believe Tom Raum's Friday afternoon report at the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, the economy is humming along smoothly enough that we really shouldn't think about it that much any more, especially as something to consider when voting. And besides, it's being "eclipsed" by "other pressing events." I'll stay away from those other "events" in the interest of…

There are two key words missing from the report Bloomberg's Kasia Klimasinska & Shobhana Chandra published Tuesday morning — a writeup that is so incredibly sunny and over-the-top that is probably would have embarrassed the Old Soviet Union's Pravda in its heyday. One is "income." The reason is obvious. Real median household income is still way below where it was when the recession ended…