Medical Insurance

You really have to watch the video to perceive Chris Hayes' pathos.  The poor guy really needs a hug.  He needs to be reassured that—yes—it will all work out in the end for Obamacare. On his MSNBC show this evening, Hayes asked—begged—guest Dr. Kavita Patel, a former Obama healthcare policy advisor, to assure him that in six months or a year, Obamacare would be working.  Patel reached across…

On Wednesday's CBS Evening News, Nancy Cordes zeroed in on the three Republican congressmen who grilled top administration officials during a hearing on ObamaCare, ballyhooing that "none of them were really able to explain why this product they worked on for years was so flawed". Cordes played extended clips from the hearing totaling 51 seconds – nearly twice the combined number of ABC's World…

"It Wasn't Broke, But He Fixed It," insisted the Daily Beast's teaser headline for Jamelle Bouie's dutiful spin job for the president this afternoon. Bouie opened by whining about how much his life stinks, having to cover politics in the Obama era and all:

A commenter at my post yesterday ("TomsonaNonGrata") about how a pair of New York Times reporters characterized President Barack Obama's false guarantee to Americans that "If you like your plan-doctor-provider, you can keep your plan-doctor-provider" as an "incorrect promise" — because they couldn't work up the nerve to call it a lie — noted that "All these people (in the press) that were so…

In an episode that featured plenty of ObamaCare criticism from the president’s typical allies, MSNBC’s Morning Joe still found room for the law’s cheerleaders. On Thursday’s show, co-host Mika Brzezinski despaired over the fact that Bill Clinton advised President Obama to keep his promise to the country and allow people to keep their health care plans if they like them. The fact that Clinton…

Appearing on Thursday's NBC Today, chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd matter-of-factly declared that ObamaCare was always going to be a bad deal for some Americans: "There are always winners and losers in any piece of legislation. There is a small number of losers in here, if you want to count losing as in having to pay more for your health insurance....That was always the intention,…

"The Democrats Need to Stop Freaking Out About Obamacare and Take Charge," huffed the headline for Michael Tomasky's 9-paragraph November 14 Daily Beast story -- filed hours before the president's press conference -- addressing reports that nervous congressional Democrats were considering getting on board with a Republican proposal to make President Obama's "if you like it you can keep it"…

A President can deal with being disliked, even despised, by his opponents.  But when he becomes a laughingstock among his own supposed supporters . . . On today's Morning Joe, Dem Sen. Joe Manchin openly mocked President Obama's failure to communicate with Congress.  Asked by Joe Scarborough whether the President is disconnected from the Senate and House, Manchin sardonically said "everybody…

On Tuesday, ABC's World News and CBS Evening News both reported the latest poll numbers from the "respected" Quinnipiac University, as CBS's Scott Pelley labeled the institution, regarding President Obama's "lowest ever" approval rating, along with Americans' dim view of the politician's honesty. ABC's Diane Sawyer noted that "for the first time in his presidency, a majority of American voters…

"[Former president] Clinton did President Obama no favors this week when he endorsed a growing push on Capitol Hill to modify the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in order to allow people to keep their existing individual health insurance policies if they want to," MSNBC.com's Zachary Roth lamented in his November 13 story, "What's Bill Clinton up to on Obamacare?" The teaser on the MSNBC.com main…

On Tuesday’s PBS NewsHour, anchor Gwen Ifill interviewed former Vice President Dick Cheney about his notorious heart troubles as documented in his new book, Heart: An American Medical Odyssey. Apparently unwilling to let a good conversation about healthcare go to waste, Ifill spent the latter half of the interview trying to use Cheney’s experience as an infomercial for why America needs…

Early in the 9 a.m. ET hour on Wednesday's NBC Today, co-hosts Willie Geist, Natalie Morales, and Al Roker mocked a series of new ads designed to promote ObamaCare, even with Geist reading one of them while doing his best impression of Anchorman's Ron Burgundy: "Let's get physical. OMG, he's hot. Let's hope he's as easy to get as this birth control. My health insurance covers the pill, which…

At the New York Times on Tuesday evening for the front page of Wednesday's print edition, Michael D. Shear and Robert Pear wrestled with how to characterize President Barack Obama's false guarantee that "if you like your health care plan" (and doctor, and provider) "you can keep your health care plan" (and doctor, and provider. The headline called it a "vow" (actually a pretty good word). In…

If President Obama has lost Donny Deutsch, has he lost the Hamptons?  But seriously, the adman has generally been an an enthusiastic supporter of the President.  So when he gives a very pessimistic prediction as to the ability of Obamacare to rebound from its . . .  debacular debut, it's worth noting. On today's Morning Joe, Deutsch described Obamacare as so "tarnished" and "damaged" that he…