Fox News must have a battalion of glassy-eyed interns locked up in a basement somewhere watching congressional hearings all day to find snippets of testimony that they can deceitfully distort. And one of those scalawags is gonna find an extra lump of high fructose corn syrup in his satchel for this one:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Community’s Assault on Truth
During a House Ways and Means Committee hearing on the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare), the Commissioner of the IRS, David Werfel, was asked a question regarding the application of the law to IRS staff. Texas Republican Rep. Sam Johnson asked, “Why are your employees trying to exempt themselves from the very law that you’re tasked to enforce?”
To be clear, the issue was not really about any request to be exempted from the existing terms of the law. It was actually about an amendment offered by another Republican, Dave Camp of Michigan. Camp’s proposal would force federal workers into ObamaCare exchanges, and out of the federal health care plans they currently have. So what the IRS employees were requesting was that Camp’s amendment be rejected so that they could keep the plans they are on now, which is what President Obama had intended in the bill as it was passed. Camp’s attempt to amend the bill would profoundly alter the impact it would have on federal employees. Not surprisingly, they opposed this change, as did Commissioner Werfel who responded saying…
“[W]e have right now, as employees of the government or the IRS, affordable health care coverage. I think the ACA was designed to provide an option or an alternative for individuals that do not. And all else being equal, I think if you’re an individual who is satisfied with your health care coverage, you’re probably in a better position to stick with that coverage […] I would prefer to stay with the current policy that I’m pleased with rather than go through a change if I don’t need to.”
Exactly. The President has said many times that one of the features of ObamaCare was that people who were satisfied with their current plan would be able to keep it. Those without coverage, or who were not satisfied with the coverage they had, would have the option of shopping for a plan through the new exchanges. The effort by the GOP to screw with that formula was designed to sabotage the whole program.
So contrary to the false quote by the Fox Nationalists, the IRS commissioner never said that he didn’t want ObamaCare. He was saying that he didn’t want the Camp amendment that would force him and his department into a situation where they had fewer options than the law presently provides.
This is all a part of the larger strategy that the GOP is deploying to sabotage ObamaCare before it even gets underway. That strategy includes forty meaningless votes in the House to repeal the law, threats to withhold funding for it, and amendments to cripple or deform it. And, as always, Fox News is ready to lend a hand with any misinformation and propaganda that they might need.
Obama never made the claim that the ACA was the best thing out there for everybody, as pointed out in this post. I heard the President on many occasions reiterate the fact that if you like what you already have then by all means keep it. Now these republicans are attacking government workers, as usual, by trying to force them, by law, into something that was never designed for them in the first place. The states that are enrolling into the plan are finding premiums to be lower than expected and the ACA is an improvement over the broken system we had before. That is what terrifies them most because it proves them wrong and just like the political evangelists they are, their forgone conclusions about reality can not be wrong and they will do all they can to destroy the ACA for political reasons so they can say they were right.
Did the President say, and does the ACA wording state directly, or imply, that individuals will not be forced to give up they’re own insurance plan if they chose not to do so?
I am asking if the Law substantiates the Presidents’s words on the assertion that people who were satisfied could stand pat.
How would business owners who appear on Fox and elsehere … how would they serve themselves by asserting that ACA is a financial inducement for their reducing worker hours below the workload threshold that would trigger IRS fines against them if hours weren’t reduced?
How are the insurance companies going to make up revenue lost by ACTUARIALLY undercharging individuals with PRE-EXISTING CONDITIONS, individuals the ACA forces the companies to insure at rates that guarantee losses?
Is there any way for you, Randy, to show me that the premiums you describe as “low” are artificially low in the ACTUARIAL sense. What would, what do strictly apolitical actuaries say about the LONG TERM VIABILITY of this low premium, high benefit plan?
I knew one could “enrolling in a plan.” I never heard the “enroll INTO a plan”. Is using the word INTO what gives OBAMACARE its statistics-defying magic?
Please provide two examples of Fox pundits’ “foregone conclusions about reality” those analysts and writers believe “that cannot be wrong.” If it is their reality, why, most certainly they believe it. Which ones of the Fox people are “terrified”, and what evidence can you supply to support your claim?
Now, if you’re not terrified of not being able to support a single claim you’ve made, supply some evidence. Don’t be timid. I am not terrified of being shown the errors in my thinking. It makes me a better citizen. So please, you won’t terrify me with your reason giving.
I’m all for erudition.
To the MARK guy: What do you mean “deceitfully distort”?
You may have a defective lens which for you produces a virtual distortion, not a real spdistortion. Your lens may jus be bad.
However, if you have a perfect lens to view an object, and that object doesn’t conform to widely accepted standards — what are your standards, by the way? … , then what is the magic in your nearly perfect lens that detects the distortion is deceitful?
A chap can be wrong without being so intentionally. People make mistakes. The Fox clerks are possessed of uncommon genius always to know TRUTH when they see it. Without that genius, how would they know what they need to retail in a distorted form? Going further, if the Fox clerks are as smart as all that, and can fool everybody else — geniuses are good at that, I guess — then how the hell do you know they’re not deceiving you into deceiving you. They may just be toying with all people with average intelligence.
What do you think? Are the clerks having fun at your expense, and using Dana and Greta as their puppets?
Give some evidence where they have deceived, lied. I don’t mean how they have made mistakes like you and I make. I mean evidence of evil genius deception.
Go head. Write, corpse.
I wrote the book on Fox’s deceitful distortions – literally:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Community’s Assault on Truth
There are 50+ documented examples of Fox deliberately lying (not mistakes). And if you can’t afford the 3 bucks, there are numerous examples right here on this web site. Do your own research.