Give CBS’s morning crew this much credit: they’re not fickle. Even as the media air began perceptibly leaking from the president’s health care balloon, “The Early Show” was valiantly clinging to “maybes.”
On July 22, host Maggie Rodriguez talked to Jill Schlesinger, editor-at-large for CBS moneywatch.com about “who really benefits” from Obama’s health care plan. They discussed three examples of people who will be affected.
The first was Debby Smith an unemployed woman with a pre-existing health condition who coulf not afford health care. Schlesinger explained, “She represents the 46 or 47 million Americans who don’t have healthcare right now. So what’s going to happen with this health care plan is Debby will have access to, hopefully, affordable healthcare … I think Debby ends up benefiting quite beautifully from the new healthcare plan.”
Schlesinger, of course is mistaken since Smith does not represent “46 or 47 million Americans,” a point that BMI has made repeatedly [1].
Rodriguez then pointed out, “But she does so, critics of this proposal say, at the expense of the next two people that we are going to show.”
The first was Letty Hudson, a small business owner. ,Because she can’t afford to give her employees health care coverage,
The last example is Dr. Tripp Gordon. Gordon provides health care for his employees, yet he has “the fortunate and unfortunate ability to earn 350,000 dollars,” which, under the proposed health care plan, means he’ll have to pay a 1percent surtax . Schlesinger made sure to mention however, “Nancy Pelosi said maybe she’s going to bump that to $500,000 to individuals and 1 million for families.” Maybe. And maybe she won’t.
In fairness, “The Early Show’s” report was accurate. It accurately reflected the administration’s approach to health care “reform”: fingers crossed and a nice coat of maybes.