On Thursday's The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, MSNBC political analyst Joy Reid condescended to people angry about their health insurance policies being cancelled as she fretted that President Obama may have to "placate" the "three to five percent" of people who apparently are not intelligent enough to realize the insurance they like is merely "junk."
During a discussion of President Obama's interview with NBC's Chuck Todd in which ObamaCare failures were discussed, Reid began her analysis:
I thought maybe I was over-thinking this because I noted that he also said, "We're going to have to go back and look at where we can close the gaps in the law and that, we want people to be moving into better plans because they want it, not because they feel forced to." Which made me think, "Wait a minute, are you now saying they want to go back and do fixes, which would allow you to get junk insurance?"
Host Lawrence O'Donnell then jumped in:
The most narrow interpretation of that is he thinks that they didn't craft the grandfather clause tightly enough so that the insurance companies could not be doing what they're doing right now?
Reid then added:
That's right, that you can somehow find a way to grandfather in more junk insurance. It does sound, it's very frighteningly going back to Congress to get more junk policies grandfathered in, just to placate the five, the three to five percent of people who are having insurance they have, so they like having it, left lawful, when that insurance is usually junk.
Below is a transcript of the relevant portion of the Thursday, November 7, The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell on MSNBC:
LAWRENCE O'DONNELL: Joy, there are certainly some lines in there that the right is going to be thrilled about. The President actually said at a certain point, he made a reference to policy not just message. He said, "We didn't do good enough job in how we crafted the law." And it left me wondering, which part of it? What did he mean?
JOY REID, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: Yeah, and, you know, it's interesting, and I thought maybe I was over-thinking this because I noted that he also said, "We're going to have to go back and look at where we can close the gaps in the law and that, we want people to be moving into better plans because they want it, not because they feel forced to." Which made me think, "Wait a minute, are you now saying they want to go back and do fixes, which would allow you to get junk insurance?"
O'DONNELL: The most narrow interpretation of that is he thinks that they didn't craft the grandfather clause tightly enough so that the insurance companies could not be doing what they're doing right now?
REID: That's right, that you can somehow find a way to grandfather in more junk insurance.
O'DONNELL: Yeah.
REID: It does sound, it's very frighteningly going back to Congress to get more junk policies grandfathered in, just to placate the five, the three to five percent of people who are having insurance they have, so they like having it, left lawful, when that insurance is usually junk.