Megyn Kelly’s disingenuous mask of neutrality slipped big time tonight on The Kelly File as she debated Democratic Congressman Frank Pallone over Obamacare. Pallone put up a spirited defense of the Affordable Care Act – and rebutted those supposed Obamacare victims that Fox loves so much they can’t be bothered to fact check whether the victimhood is real. And Kelly? She was so determined to smear the ACA that she sounded on the verge of hysteria.
As our Priscilla so nicely pointed out in a recent post, Kelly won’t overtly state her opinions a la Sean Hannity or Bill O’Reilly. But she nonetheless freely telegraphs a conservative/Republican viewpoint – while pretending otherwise.
Kelly started off the segment by announcing President Obama’s approval ratings have sunk to a new low. She failed to mention that the same poll showed that Republicans’ approval ratings also sank to an all-time low, which happens to be a good 20 percentage points lower than Obama’s. So she left viewers with the impression that only President Obama is feeling political heat these days.
Kelly also hinted that President Obama or HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius are liars without coming out and saying so. Kelly said, “We’re struggling to understand” how Sebelius could say that President Obama kept his promise that Americans can keep their insurance plans under Obamacare.
Pallone explained: “You can keep (your health coverage) as long as the insurance company agrees to continue to sell it. The problem is a lot of insurance companies have now been caught because they’re selling lousy plans at a high price that are skeletal and don’t provide any benefits (as in one of Fox’s previous phony Obamacare victims). So they’re now canceling those lousy plans. …The President never said that he could stop the insurance companies from canceling plans. This is a private market. This is a competitive market.”
Kelly interrupted to regurgitate insurance company talking points as truth, without bothering to do any independent verification. Or if she had, she deliberately kept it to herself: Kelly said, “But that’s only partially true. …According to the insurance companies, the vast majority of these policies that are being canceled are being canceled because of regulations imposed on them by Obamacare left them with no choice.”
Kelly either missed or ignored the remarks of Patrick J. Geraghty, Chairman and CEO of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida on Meet the Press last Sunday. There Geraghty said, "(W)e're not cutting people. we're actually transitioning people. what we've been doing is informing folks that their plan doesn't meet the test of the essential health benefits, therefore, they have a choice of many options that we make available through the exchange, and, in fact, with subsidy, many people will be getting better plans at a lesser cost. This really is a transition ...and we're walking them through that transition."
The discussion devolved from then on. Pallone put up a feisty argument. And rather than challenge him, Kelly started shouting. That’s when she began to sound nearly hysterical, as if she might lose a digit on her paycheck if her guest came off too credibly.
With one of her little smiles that I’m sure she thinks viewers will find charming, Kelly “asked” “Why do you get to decide what’s lousy? Why can’t the American people say, ‘It’s lousy for you, for me, I like it!”
Tell you what, Megyn. Why don’t we just stop "deciding" cars must have seat belts and air bags? Sure, you might die if you get in a cab without them but why should the owner have to pay extra for something he doesn’t want? And since you don’t like food stamps, why don’t we stop regulating baby food so it can be cheaper for struggling mothers you want to stop supporting? Yeah, your new baby might get sick but I’m sure there are plenty of food producers who would tell you they have “no choice” but to raise their prices or go out of business if they are forced to make sure their food meets "your" minimum standards.
So while you’re whining that people should be allowed to have insurance policies that cover almost nothing, you might also think about all the sick people who may choose not to see a doctor because it’s too expensive but infect you or a loved one instead.
They don’t tell us beforehand what company we are going to be switching too. Only afterword when they tell us how much more it’s going to cost and what our new coverage looks like.
FYI right-wingers…they’ve been screwing us for years on our Health Insurance. Charging more-covering less. Pres. Obama is just trying to get Insurance providers to actually cover their customers like they should be. They used to provide good coverage for a fair price, but somewhere along the line they decided that their profit margin had to be so much as to screw the consumer over, just to make that margin.
Wake up right-wingers.
Also, FYI, they do the same thing with some of our 401K elective’s without mentioning it beforehand. Somebody is making money off of that and it ain’t me!
These are not plans that responsible people should want to keep. I understand if they didn’t know they were buying crap before, but if your plan was cancelled, you can be fairly sure it was cancelled because it didn’t cover you for major medical expenses. Which, frankly is really what insurance is for!
NHP
It’s interesting to me that Fox News has declared the ACA a “scandal” and a “failure” already, and that they’ve clearly directed their on-air talent to play this up as much as possible. On the other hand, it isn’t surprising, given that they declared President Obama a failure from the moment he took the oath of office in 2009.
It’s also interesting that you have Megyn Kelly desperately trying to drum up anti-Obama sentiment in her pieces while you have Bill O’Reilly clearly pushing for an impeachment of President Obama over what he knew about how the ACA would be implemented and when. Which is frankly ridiculous.
It seems as if Fox News has decreed that all their hosts need to stay on overdrive attack mode, even if there’s nothing for them to attack about.