Neil Cavuto passed off anti-Obamacare activist Kristin Held as a non-partisan healthcare expert on Your World this week. Not only did he fail to disclose her agenda or her history, he even introduced her by saying, “You have no political axe to grind here.”
Cavuto started by asking Held what in the Affordable Care Act had made her sever ties with health insurance provider Aetna.
Instead of answering the question, Held launched into a mini-rant:
We as doctors do not treat political parties; we treat patients, and we are very saddened by what’s going on. And the law really has divided us up into two teams. We’ve got Team Glitch over here, we have government, lobbyists, insurance companies, and hospitals colluding. And then on the other side, way over in a small corner, you have doctors and patients really trying to survive as almost like an inconvenient afterthought of what’s going on, with all of the corruption, and really dysfunction on the left.
And I just decided I can no longer be an enabler to the dysfunction that is harming patients. And it‘s time to take a stand and switch over to Team Tough Love and Collaboration. You know they really making a false promise of doctor‘s services, of health care, of medications… and they‘re not delivering.
Cavuto tried to probe for (anti-ObamaCare) specifics, asking what her patients who were covered by Aetna had said.
Instead, Held doubled down about “corrupt billing,” later adding in this accusation:
When you get that bill, it scares you to death; but remember that that bill is part of the scam from Team Glitch. They have a thing called a charge master, where they show you this very high bill. What you really pay is much lower, because your insurance company negotiates a fee with the hospital. By the outpatient services charging higher than what the insurance does, they get to write off a loss - a phantom loss- and therefore stay non-profit, and not pay taxes. So all of the perks and favors and everything go to Team Glitch, whereas the patients get no tax benefits on these residual plans at all. In fact, they’re penalized. And Team Glitch changes the rules, all throughout the game.
Not surprisingly, Cavuto never asked for a single bit of evidence or proof.
Here’s what Cavuto withheld from us about “no political axe to grind” Held.
It should be noted first and foremost that she’s the co-founder of a group called American Doctors 4 Truth, which is dedicated to spreading the myth that Obamacare is “a politically driven government takeover of our healthcare, passed by overt bribery and coercion.” Their “True Reform Template” begins:
There are those who say that ObamaCare is now the law of the land and we as citizens should accept it and proceed with compliance. However, the overt bribery with cloistered deliberations and the failure of Congress to read the bill prior to passage are an affront to every American citizen regardless of political persuasion. As we now begin to understand this takeover of one sixth of the private sector economy, we see a fundamental transformation of the relationship between the individual and the federal government. The profession of medicine has been politically commandeered to accomplish centralized power in government bureaucrats who now have the potential to intercede in some of life’s most critical and intimate affairs. Between the State Exchanges dispersing 61 pages of personal medical and private financial information to five federal agencies, and the IPAB (Independent Payment Advisory Board) which will have life and death rationing capabilities, this law literally allows government intrusion into all aspects of our lives.
AD4T has also produced an anti-Obamacare video which they described as “A response to the Democrat ad showing Paul Ryan throwing grandma off a cliff.” In fact, Cavuto interviewed Held about it – in case you think he was unaware of her resumé.
A quick visit to Held’s Twitter feed, as well as her anti-ACA blog reveals that she’s not just partisan, she’s downright unreasonable. In her blog, she makes claims worthy of Glenn Beck, such as this bizarre “compliance is death!” epic.
It was so nice of Cavuto not to point any of this out. One would think that he didn’t want his viewers to know what kind of "expert" they were getting their information from.