NPR Check blogger mytwords has taken the time (8/4/09) to closely “consider [Scott] Horsley’s verbal sleight of hand” on National Public Radio‘s August 4 Morning Edition:
He equates a completely false distortion–characterizing the tepid Democratic health reform proposals as “government-run healthcare” in opposition to “the free market”–with a completely fact-based statement–“we have a system today that works well for the insurance industry but it doesn’t work well for you [the public].” Yes, the system works well (insurance profits more than quadrupled from 2000 to 2007) but not for the public, which pays more for less and suffers about 22,000 deaths a year from the insurance industry’s commitment to not covering people. How could anyone cast them as the villain?
Having set up this falsehood, Horsley turns to health insurance industry vampire representative, Karen Ignani (no stranger at at NPR–see March 7, 2009 and June 13, 2009), so she can claim how wrong Obama’s statement is because the mob her industry supports “reforms.”
But that’s not all–“Horsley ends this report with a bit of moralizing against the Democrats, noting that ‘Brookings scholar [Stephen] Hess thinks it’s unfortunate the Democrats have chosen to demonize health insurance companies.'” Leading mytwords to ponder: “Demonizing the health insurance companies, now why would anyone do that?”
Pretty cozy “demonizing”, wouldn’t you say?
The Demorats take faux populist stances, while raking in oodles of campaign cash from these “demons”, who in turn get to rail against being demonized.
Is that DC in a nutshell for you or what?
Meanwhile, people die.
Let’s not forget what this is all about.
People die.