Much to the outrage of her left-wing viewers, on Wednesday and Thursday, MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle actually sat down with five doctors who voted for Donald Trump to talk about the Republican health care reform plan. As Ruhle posted clips of the exchange on Twitter, liberals came out of the woodwork to condemn the discussion. On Thursday, the host was forced to rebuke critics.
“We have been getting a ton of reaction, that’s good and bad, to the special roundtable I conducted with five physicians, all who voted for President Trump,” Ruhle explained as she introduced the second portion of the segment during the 9 a.m. ET hour Thursday morning. After hearing the doctors voice support for the GOP plan, the anchor scolded her audience: “I know people are so fired up they don’t want to hear someone with another opinion. But guess what? We need to hear other opinions and other viewpoints in order to get to a place of compromise and working together.”
She concluded: “If you don’t understand that what they’re thinking, how are you going to find the middle? Stop being mad, let’s find a solution.”
Ruhle was referring to an avalanche of criticism she received on Twitter from left-wing snowflakes who were upset that they actually had to hear from people with different political views for a few minutes on MSNBC before the network returned to its regularly scheduled Democratic Party propaganda.
Here is just a sample of the social media meltdown:
Here is a full transcript of the June 29 segment:
9:38 AM ET
STEPHANIE RUHLE: We have been getting a ton of reaction, that’s good and bad, to the special roundtable I conducted with five physicians, all who voted for President Trump. We discussed several crucial aspects of the GOP’s health care plan in parts one and two, and we're reposting all of it on Twitter right now for you. Let us know what you think. And today, in part three, we talk about the price of health care and what needs to be done to bring it down.
President Trump looks – has looked at this and said this bill needs more heart. And across the board, we’re hearing people say “this bill is heartless, this bill heartless.”
DR. ANISH KOKA [CARDIOLOGIST, PENNSYLVANIA]: The more heart has to do with benefits that have been added for folks that are high-risk uninsurables, so for these high-risk pools, right? So I think it’s $50 billion over four years, plus an additional $60 billion, just for folks that are too-high risk to be insured by – in the regular individual market.
DR. NICOLE SAPHIER [RADIOLOGIST, NEW YORK]: A lot of people – there are people that cannot afford insurance without the subsidies because the premiums have skyrocketed. What we’re not accounting for are the people that are saying, “I’m really healthy, I live healthily, I do all the right things, these insurance premiums, why don’t I just save and pay for insurance – or pay for my health care with the dollars that I’ve saved.”
DR. JANE HUGHES [OPHTHALMOLOGIST, TEXAS]: We are not going to end up with a perfect bill here. This is a start and it has to go through this reconciliation process with the Senate.
RUHLE: Dr. Koka, what do you say to those who say, “Well, how is this going to help the poorest people? You’re just giving a tax break to the rich.”
KOKA: It does make for very bad optics. The problem is, is that, you know –
RUHLE: Take me past the optics.
KOKA: I mean, the problem is you’re trying to get health care legislation passed, you have 53 Republican senators [sic], you can’t get to 60 to actually write legislation like you did for ObamaCare.
RUHLE: Why are people dropping out of the exchanges? Why are insurance companies leaving ObamaCare?
KOKA: They’re still making a phenomenal amount of money.
DR. KEVIN CAMPBELL [CARDIOLOGIST, NORTH CAROLINA]: A lot of them have left.
RUHLE: But I’m saying, if it was such a blank check, if ObamaCare is the holy grail for insurance companies, why would so many drop out?
CAMPBELL: It’s also really good for hospitals.
RUHLE: How come in the medical arena nothing gets less expensive?
DR. ALIETA ECK [INTERNIST, NEW JERSEY]: Because government got involved. In 1965, we spent $210 a year per capita on health care. In 1965, Medicare and Medicaid started and a huge infusion of tax dollars just started to cause all kinds of excesses in the cost. And it’s never gone down.
KOKA: The pharmaceutical companies, you know, that’s 12% of the total budget. A full 33% of the total federal budget, $1 trillion, is spent on hospitals, right? Hospitals, large, nonprofit academic medical centers are the folks that are making – you know, when you get a bag of saltwater, saline, in the ER, that costs a thousand dollars.
CAMPBELL: Or a $10 Tylenol.
RUHLE: What gives you confidence that this bill is the start to help getting pharmaceutical costs down?
CAMPBELL: No one’s addressed the cost of pharmaceuticals. No one’s addressed regulating insurers and saying, “You know what? If you say you’re going to provide a service, you have to provide that service.”
RUHLE: This bill doesn’t either.
CAMPBELL: Exactly.
RUHLE: And if the biggest issue that we face is the influence lobbyists are having in the health care industry, how does this bill make it better for patients in America? Dr. Eck?
ECK: I always like to say that the Medicaid system spends billions of dollars and it makes millionaires out of hospital and insurance company executives, while it gives very poor care to the poor. The lobbyists are those executives and all those administrators. That’s gone up 3,000% while doctors have doubled in the same amount of time. The administrators are giving big bucks to the legislators who are then writing the laws.
RUHLE: Interesting conversation. I want to point out a lot of people asked me on Twitter Medicaid, do these doctors accept it? Well, of the five, three accept Medicaid and two do not.
And also, I know people are so fired up they don’t want to hear someone with another opinion. But guess what? We need to hear other opinions and other viewpoints in order to get to a place of compromise and working together. If you don’t understand that what they’re thinking, how are you going to find the middle? Stop being mad, let’s find a solution.
