Heather Nauert helped cheerlead Republican Matt Bevin’s dismantling of Kentucky’s health insurance exchange while “forgetting” to mention the $23 million price tag and the very inconvenient fact that it only looks like Bevin is dismantling ObamaCare.
During her headlines portion on Fox & Friends, Nauert updated us while “FULFILLING HIS PROMISE” was written on the lower third of the screen.
NAUERT: Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin about to fulfill a promise he made last year right here on Fox & Friends. Remember this?
BEVIN: We’ve talked about these government programs that, frankly, while they make you feel good, you’ve got to, at the end of the day, pay for them.
NAUERT (enthusiastically): Pay for them? What a novel idea from the government! Well, Governor Bevin has now just informed the feds that he will dismantle the state’s health care program. It’s called Kynect. He plans to model the expanded Medicaid program after Indiana’s program. He says that they will do this by the year 2017. They need to be able to pay for it, he says.
Nauert was so busy painting Bevin as fiscally responsible, she “forgot” to mention the costs of his plan. Several experts cited in the Louisville, Kentucky’s Courier-Journal estimated the cost of dismantling the plan to be at least $23 million.
Furthermore, according to Vox, the whole move is kabuki theatre because Bevin is actually strengthening the federal government's control over health insurance at the same time that he is pretending to dismantle it. In fact, Bevin didn’t even fulfill his campaign promise because he had originally promised to undo the Medicaid expansion along with Kynect. Instead, he quietly announced during the week between Christmas and New Year’s that he would merely “transform the way Medicaid is delivered.”
The result, Vox notes, is that Bevin is turning control over Kentuckians’ health insurance marketplace to the federal government – which is exactly what liberals wanted in the first place.
Liberal Democrats originally envisioned a law where the federal government ran one big, national marketplace. This would give the Obama administration more control over health insurance sales, allowing them to set the rules of the game.
States balked. For centuries, they’ve had the authority to manage their own insurance markets. The more centrist Senate bill that ultimately passed turned control of the marketplaces over to the states.
Proof positive that Republicans will cut off their noses to spite their faces, or President Obama. And Fox News will help them do it.
Watch it below, from the January 12, 2016 Fox & Friends.
In fact, the “without question” is absolutely vital. After all, the FoxNoise model comes from “1984.” Today, it’s “We’re at war with Eurasia; we’ve always been at was with Eurasia.” Tomorrow, it’s “We’re at war with Eastasia; we’ve always been at war with Eastasia.” Except, of course, when it comes to anything related to Obama—then, it’s always “Obama, bad; Obama’s words and plans, worse.”
Who the fuck is Heather Nauert and from where did she obtain her qualifications to present herself as an expert on healthcare?