The hiked skirt brigade otherwise known as Fox News’ Outnumbered cohosts have some concerns about the American Health Care Act (Trumpcare) that was just passed by the Republican House of Representatives yesterday. No, not concerns for the millions who are potentially going to lose health insurance or have their costs skyrocket. But for the Republican messaging on the bill. So what is Fox News for but to help out their GOP BFFs? Truth was optional and mostly missing.
Cohost Meghan McCain hilariously praised Republicans for “going through the legislative process instead of just jamming it down everyone’s throat.”
None other than Senator Lindsey Graham disagrees:
A bill -- finalized yesterday, has not been scored, amendments not allowed, and 3 hours final debate -- should be viewed with caution.
— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) May 4, 2017
But not one of the five cohosts challenged McCain’s mischaracterization.
McCain added, “There’s a lot of hysteria going on on the left, on the internet, on social media and in cable news.”
Well, yeah, when you’re in danger of losing health insurance, you do tend to get hysterical. But what’s funny, if not hysterical, is how unhinged McCain became last night at the mere mention of some of the flaws in the bill.
McCain's worries were not about whether people actually have decent health insurance (spoiler: they won’t under the new plan). No, she was worried about “keeping this momentum going forward, to make sure that the left doesn’t co-opt this narrative and just completely scare people and act like Republicans are these big, bad wolves that are going to leave people dying on the street.”
Maybe not on the street, but experts (which McCain is not) say that people will die under the Republican plan, She didn’t offer a single reason to think they won’t, other than her suggestion that if it’s coming from the left, it must be a lie.
But cohost Harris Faulkner said, “Right.”
“The left is really good at organizing, they’re really good at using PR,” McCain warned, “and I just think, again, the optics of this, yesterday – if I were advising [Republicans], I would say maybe wait on the Rose Garden [celebration] and maybe explain to people … there’s a lot more going into this going forward.”
Faulkner said she wanted to talk more about “this momentum” because “those town halls undoubtedly are coming.” She acknowledged that they might not even be all Democrats objecting. “People have their own stories to tell,” Faulkner said. But, she quickly added, Republicans “willingly” take that on. “They’re listening!” she assured us.
Fact check: Nine out of the 217 Republicans who voted for Trumpcare are holding town halls, according to The Town Hall Project yesterday. Today, Daily Kos counted 12. That’s a whole lot of Republicans not listening.
But nobody corrected her.
Cohost Dagen McDowell had some helpful hints for Republicans:
MCDOWELL: They’re already back on their heels, the Republicans, in terms of losing the narrative. They need to communicate with the American people about what this means to them and their health care, period. President Trump is terrific at that but he needs to be detailed, he needs to be on the road.
[… ]
A Democrat, who I know very well, posted on her Facebook page yesterday, “The sickest, oldest and poorest suffered today by this vote.” You know what the Republicans need to say to that? Well, the sickest are already covered, the oldest get covered under Medicare, the poorest get covered under Medicaid! And children get covered under SCHIP. They need to be fighting this tooth and nail and tell the American people they will have more choice and lower costs, potentially, with this plan.
McDowell is a business show anchor and contributor. She should know better.
Here’s how the non-partisan Center on Budget Policy and Priorities assessed the bill:
House Republican lawmakers voted today to add more than 20 million Americans to the ranks of the uninsured; require millions more people to pay thousands of dollars more each year for coverage and care — often for skimpier care; rip $800 billion out of Medicaid over the next decade by ending the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion that provides coverage to 11 million poor and near-poor people and by cutting federal support for state Medicaid programs and thereby forcing states to cut back health care for low-income people who are elderly, disabled, children, or parents; sharply weaken, and in many cases gut, protections for people with pre-existing conditions; eliminate the national requirement that health plans cover basic benefits like prescription drugs, mental health treatment, and maternity care; and let employers and insurers again impose lifetime limits on coverage for important health services for most people covered under employer-based health plans.
Watch the utter lack of concern for American lives below, from the May 5, 2017 Outnumbered.