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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bentway who wrote (522986)	10/23/2009 12:44:35 PM
From: longnshort	Respond to of 1580566

GULLIBLE PRESS "On October 7, the Congressional Budget Office released a preliminary analysis of Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus' health care bill. The report said that the bill would net the government $81 billion over 10 years - on certain assumptions, which the report itself suggested were unrealistic," Ramesh Ponnuru writes at www.nationalreview.com. "The report, for one thing, factored in $200 billion in reduced physician payments under Medicare. Congress has habitually enacted smaller payment cuts and then balked at letting them take effect; the CBO report went out of its way to mention that habit. The CBO assumed, further, that Congress would heap new burdens on people who get their health insurance from their employers, without offering them new subsidies. If the bill passes, it will, in short, almost certainly increase the deficit," Mr. Ponnuru said. "Democrats, naturally, ignored the fine print in their press releases. So did most of the press. "The morning after the CBO assessment came out, Maggie Rodriguez, a co-host of 'The Early Show' on CBS, said, 'President Obama's health care plan gets a green light from the Congressional Budget Office, as a key bill not only pays for itself, but actually saves billions.' She threw the story to Nancy Cordes, who repeated the spin: 'The new bill would actually reduce the federal deficit by $81 billion according to the new estimates. The price tag, $829 billion over 10 years, would be fully paid for, and then some, by an excise tax on top-dollar insurance plans, by fees on drug makers and medical-device manufacturers, and more.' "The two were back on the evening news. This time, Rodriguez said that 'according to a new report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the plan costs less than expected and would actually reduce the deficit. So why do Republicans still oppose it?' "At no point in either the morning or the evening did anyone on CBS cast doubt on whether the bills would 'actually' save billions for the federal government, let alone for anyone else. (My thanks to the Media Research Center for transcribing the segments.) "But that network was not alone in its credulousness. On the front page of The Washington Post, Lori Montgomery and Shailagh Murray reported that the CBO had said the bill would 'keep President Obama's pledge that [health care legislation] would not add "one dime" to federal budget deficits.' The duo did not mention that the CBO had also questioned the realism of its own forecast. "The story was the same at the New York Times, where another pair of reporters, also on the front page, also said that the president's not-one-dime promise had been kept, and also said nothing about the unbelievable assumptions of the analysis. "Gullibility regarding liberal claims about health care, combined with skepticism toward conservative ones, seems to be a chronic condition for most reporters on the health care beat."