Medical Insurance

Liberal interviewers are quick to question reasonable but somehow "controversial" assertions made by Republicans and conservatives, while loony statements uttered by leftist interview subjects often slide right on by without challenge. On Tuesday, MSNBC host Thomas Roberts heard Bernie Sanders delegate Angie Morelli claim that single-payer health insurance might "help those people out" who made…

On Tuesday at TheFederalist.com, 2015 Noel Sheppard Blogger of the Year recipient Mollie Hemingway pointed to several outrageous examples of poor press coverage of the Supreme Court's unanimous move to send Obamacare's HHS contraception mandate case back to the lower courts. Hemingway's core observation was that usually plaintiff-sympathetic establishment press outlets "suddenly have trouble…

Three offensive elements pervaded the Associated Press's Monday coverage of Hillary Clinton's statement that she will put her husband "in charge of revitalizing the economy." The first was how AP reporters Lisa Lerer and Catherin Lucey decided to resurrect the infamous "2-for-1 offer" then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton campaigned on in 1992 — an especially weak move, given its real-world…

Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton believes we're supposed to be impressed by the idea of putting her husband Bill, in the Associated Press's words, "in charge of revitalizing the economy." Yep, the old "2-for-1" offer from the early 1990s is back. In 1993, President Bill put First Lady Hill in charge of health care. Fortunately, nothing tangible resulted, but we did get an…

Thursday evening saw the failure of all three of the network news outlets to report on the massive legal blow to ObamaCare. In her decision, U.S. District Judge Rosemary Collyer ruled that the Obama administration’s unilateral funding of $175 billion to insurance subsidies was unconstitutional. The ruling was a major win for House Republicans, a victory that was a long time coming. With a lack of…

In case you didn't get the message the first or second time around, the Washington Post wants you to hear it again: Cool your complaints about the weak U.S. economy, because it's your fault. To be clear, the problem is primarily with the Post's headline — "The economy’s real drag: Us" — than with Robert J. Samuelson's content, which at least gave American consumers credit for having "sobered up…

Just in time for tomorrow's first-quarter economic growth announcement from the government, Bloomberg Businessweek's Economics Editor is telling readers: "Don't Sweat America's Upcoming Microscopic GDP Growth." Besides, Peter Coy writes, people need to get used to the supposedly inescapable fact that "Normal growth for the U.S. economy is just a lot lower than it used to be." Americans shouldn't…

Search for "go further" and "Hillary Clinton" for recent news on the Democratic Party's frontrunner, and you won't find any establishment press coverage. This is disappointing but not unexpected. The establishment press continues to run interference for her, and reporting that Mrs. Clinton will "go further" (to the left, of course) on a number of issues than Barack Obama has while he has been…

Things must be getting grim on the Obamacare front if the Obama administration feels it must send "Zeke the Bleak" Emanuel out to defend it. Though he was on relatively good behavior compared to previous interviews he has given, Emanuel, rather than visibly losing his cool, kept on using Stuart Varney's first name in his responses during a Fox Business interview this week to the point where it…

Mike Barnicle prefaced his remarks on Obamacare by saying his understanding was "meager." He was grossly . . . overstating his knowledge. The subject in the Morning Joe segment today was UnitedHealthCare's decision to quit the Obamacare exchanges. Dr. Dave Campbell explained that UnitedHealthcare was going to lose $1 billion on Obamacare this year, and that all other insurers were also losing…

As the Washington Free Beacon reported today (confirmed here in a chart published two weeks ago), the number of Americans enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), traditionally known as Food Stamps, dropped below 45 million for the first time in almost five years (actually, 57 months) in January. This is hardly cause for cheer, and does nothing to change the fact that in…

Both ABC’s World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News chose to ignore the latest blow to ObamaCare. United Healthcare, one of the largest health insurers in the United States, has announced Tuesday that it will be pulling out of most of the ObamaCare insurance exchanges. The company cited the inability to persuade young people to sign on to insurance plans. Tuesday's CBS Evening News devoted 22…

As part of an interview with GOP presidential candidate John Kasich that aired on Tuesday’s CBS Evening News, anchor Scott Pelley fretted that Kasich might “tear out ObamaCare, root and branch, start all over again” and signal to the American people that they will be “going to war” to defeat ISIS. 

There’s a crucial difference between the Loch Ness Monster and any Republican health-care-reform plan worthy of the name: Nessie almost certainly does not exist, but the GOP plan cannot exist. That, essentially, was the message of a Monday blog post by New York magazine’s Chait. “It is impossible to design a health-care plan that is both consistent with conservative ideology and acceptable to…