Meet The Press: Gregory Repeats Healthcare Talking Points ALREADY Debunked By His Own Network
In the Russert days of Meet the Press, the Bush administration knew that it was the best venue for them to "catapult the propaganda" without taking those pesky follow-up questions or provide context. New host David Gregory didn't appear to be much of an improvement--at least when the administration in power were Republicans. Of course, now that the White House is inhabited with Democrats, Gregory seems to have found a journalistic need to question federal plans, even if it means reaching back to Republican talking points that were thoroughly debunked...by NBC colleague Keith Olbermann.
Gregory asked Senior White House Advisor David Axelrod about the part of the stimulus bill that will allegedly give the government the right to dictate medical practices to doctors, a outright fabrication conceived by Betsy McCaughey and furthered in the mainstream media by Matt Drudge and Rush Limbaugh. Heather did a post on Olbermann's dismantling of this particularly disingenuous slur against the stimulus bill at Video Cafe.
But even after his own network shows the falsity of the charge, Gregory still asks Axelrod to defend it...Hmmm...where is Gregory getting his sourcing for such a pathetic attempt at being a journalist? Drudge and Limbaugh? David, do you realize what this says about your credibility?
By the way, Betsy McCaughey has gone on record challenging Olbermann to debate her. While that isn't his typical format, I would so love to see that...
Dances With War Criminals should stick to what he knows best-being obsequious in the presence of powerful criminals. Just sayin'......
"I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative.”
- John Stuart Mill
But even after his own network shows the falsity of the charge, Gregory still asks Axelrod to defend it.
Said it before, and I'll say it again: Gregory is a tool. Just like Russert. He's following in some very fat shoes.
if one of his parts gives out?
"I mean Romney is the most conservative on illegal immigration and I don't think Ronald Reagan could get elected in California today."
Ann "Clipped" Coulter
Can't teach an old Puppet new tricks, or new talking points, or new ways of thinking. Bye now Greg.
"Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob"
-= Franklin Delano Roosevelt =-
Someone absolutely has their hand up this guy's bum. And he must be loving it.
*
Never debate a professional liar. You can't fact check them because they put no facts on the table.
Because they're all sociopaths.
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We're all Sociopaths now!
"I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative.”
- John Stuart Mill
Should we really be surprised that David Gregory is a corporate shill? He always was before he got the MTP gig so why should he change just because he got a new time slot?
is a republican tool - in every sense of the word.
Absolutely . . . he is so obviously biased and reeks openly the part of a propogandist. Brokaw was bad but at least had the sense to be cagey about it. Gregory will soon not be able to get any Democratic guest on the show .... and rightfully. This guy is so distasteful he makes Chris Wallace look fair!
Best thing about Gregory taking the helm @ MTP is that he is GONE from the 5 day a week PA AVE show that Schuster has nicely developed into something watchable (he excludes dumb as dirt Michelle Bernard-who is she anyway?)
It was difficult when Russert was there but as soon as Gregory got the nod, I have never watched it and I'm glad I didn't. Hope the ratings continue to tank & they might have to give that to Rachel Maddow too! (Wouldn't that be grand?) The only updates I get on MTP is here and being lampooned on the Daily Show or Colbert Report.
Now Olberman v McCaughey would be so much fun to watch, even as a PPV!
Oh yeah. Stupid question.
NOBODY 2012
I remember thinking at one time that this man actually had a smattering of personal integrity. Live and learn.
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but it smattered more to advance his career then it did to keep his personal integrity.
I mean it will just be This shill of a woman screaming talking point and talking over Olbermann(think of any of the "debates" Bill'O had). Olbermann would crush her with facts, but as we know right wing talking heads ignore facts and always think they won.
that she didn't last long as lt. gov. in NY. I remember this woman as a supreme looney tunes who stood through an entire speech by the gov. (maybe a state of the state speech or something like that) as a show of support for the gov. After that stunt she was pretty much the laughiing stock of the state.
Just watch the commercial sponsors on any of these shows and you'll understand why the host would repeat a lie over and over.
These Sunday morning shows are nothing but tabloid entertainment, just like Time, Newsweek and The National Enquirer.
I loathe Gregory and I never watch MTP. He was horrible during the primary on MSNBC and I can only imagine how awful he is on MTP.
As I mentioned yesterday on a different post, if Obama had an ounce of integrity as well as common sense, he would recognize, as the Institute of Health and Socio-Economic Policy has recently pointed out in a study done by that organization, that the best way to stimulate the economy is to initiate a single-payer health care system. Doing this would create 2.6 million new jobs, provide $100 billion in wages and inject $317 billion in new business and public revenues into the economy. The number of jobs that would be created by a single-payer system is nearly equivalent to the total job loss that was incurred in 2008.
Creating a single-payer system could be accomplished for $63 billion more than the current $2.1 trillion in direct health care spending. Putting that in perspective, the $63 billion is six times less than the federal bailout for Citigroup and half the bailout for insurance giant AIG.
All this begs the question why the [alleged] progressive president and agent of change is not backing Rep. Conyers' HR 676 which advocates a single-payer health care system while eliminating the private insurance industry. Could it be that Obama feels that he should be beholden to a group that contributed over a million dollars to his campaign? As Don DeMoro, who is the principal author of this study which is entitled "Single-payer/Medicare for All: An Economic Stimulus Plan for the Nation" points out, every direct health care dollar creates nearly three additional dollars in the U.S. economy.
You’re underestimating the cost of our existing Health-care structure I fear.
It costs more than that.
Aside from the raw-materials, the single most expensive cost of building a car in the US comes from paying the insurance for Health-Care according to the Union Contracts. Can’t pay the Union Contracts? Ship the manufacturing out of the US. This costs us.
Small businesses can no longer afford to provide health-insurance to their workers (and why should they be burdened with this cost in the first place?)
70% of the premiums we pay for existing health-insurance goes to legal-expenses for the insurers – to fight having to pay for actual health-car. Only 20% or so goes to paying for health care.
Auto-Insurance premiums are primarily for PIP – in case you need health care. If you do need that insurance, your rates go up, up and up…
70-80% of what some practicing private physicians earn goes toward mal-practice insurance. Failing health-care is driving those premiums to the point where a GP can hardly afford to practice medicine.
Hospitals are going bankrupt because of the costs of running their ERs – where they have become the de-facto primary care facility. When you can’t afford health-care, you go to the ER and the hospitals eat the costs (or pass it onto those admitted).
We are not a very healthy Nation, and primary care could help – if we could afford it.
One the main causes if bankruptcy is health related. Even if you have insurance, a catastrophic injury or sustained health-related problem may cause a family to lose everything.
What is the solution to all these problems and expenses? Of course Single-Payer Health-Care.
Why don’t we have it already?
As you wear out your thumb flipping through the cable TEE-VEE channels tonight, pay attention to who is paying for the commercials. Lately, I’m seeing mostly commercials for pharmaceuticals and insurance. They must be making a serious truck-load of money by us not having Single Payer Health Care, huh?
Any thoughts….
Taarak
You say that I have underestimated "the costs of our existing Health-care structure." Actually, if you had read my comments, I did not come up with those figures; rather, the quite reputable IHSP did. You correctly note the pervasive influence of the insurance companies in the media. As I mentioned, perhaps this is why the supposed agent of change is not offering to radically alter the health care system in this country as that might incur the wrath of that industry to which Obama has apparently sold his soul, despite his claim of being an [alleged] agent of change.
I read your comments Erroll. I should have said the IHSP is underestimating those costs, but I took a lazy short-cut. No offense was intended.
It’s too soon for me to say Obama has sold his soul though. I do think this administration is working on a plan to fix the health-care, but that plan must include the political maneuvering to get the damn thing passed. This was the mistake Hillary made in the 90’s.
Most likely it’s a matter of picking their political battles at the moment – and it’s been less than a month. I’m not expecting substantive progress for another year at least on this issue. Too many other issues like Iraq and our Economy are more pressing.
I do agree with you, the IHSP, and Rep Conyers, however. This issue must not go away, and fixing it will go a long way to fixing our failing economy.
it seems reasonable to me that we may need to wait for healthCare to be included/reformed in the stimulus/recovery package.to try to get healthCare included now would certainly delay the stimulus that's supposively needed sooner than later. your somewhat negative posture toward Obama does NOT seem reasonable to me at all. the (R) is going to fight like hell against single payer/universal healthCare.
they will chant social medicine for months on end to scare the simpletons. now is NOT the time. why Obama has to fixed/accomplish everything NOW is a mystery to me.....oh yeah you may NOT want him to do well/suceed.
Constitutent
"Now is not the time." That is what Obama is counting on, for someone like you to claim that the average American should, unlike every other advanced nation in the world [according to the WHO], not be entitled to free health care. To dare to criticize the great Obama is to be viewed as not being "reasonable." Try telling that to the 45 million Americans who do not have health insurance or the 18,000 Americans who die each year because they are uninsured. Obama wants to make it mandatory for all children in the United States to have health insurance. What he does not say is how those who cannot afford to have health insurance will somehow be able to pay for that insurance coverage for their children.
I suggest that you rent or buy Michael Moore's excellent documentary Sicko which explains in easy to understand terms how, other countries such as the UK, Canada, France and even Cuba are able to take care of its citizens. Could it possibly be due to the fact that those countries as well as others do not have to worry, unlike the United States, about paying for an enormous military budget, which Obomb-a is most reluctant to drastically cut? Cutting the strings for the military in half would certainly pave the way for a single-payer plan but that would not sit too well with the defense department and the insurance industry who, of course, contributed quite heavily to Obama's 2008 campaign.
It is simply unconscionable that the United States, according to Sicko and the WHO, ranks 37th in terms of quality health care which includes infant mortality and longevity of people's lives. But according to someone like you, it will always be "too soon" to think about bringing the U.S. in line with the rest of the industrialized world. As Taarak and I have tried to explain, apparently to no avail, single-payer is the only logical and intelligent way for a first world country to guarantee that the health and physical needs of its citizens are adequately addressed.
I don't disagree that Gregory is a corporate meatpuppet but I find it ironic that the Hudson Institute shill points out the posible problems with a federal governing board on medical treatments.
I'm a lifelong Democrat and a strong Obama supporter as well as more liberal than most people I know. I also have worked in medical research for over 25 years. I've also lived with End-stage Renal failure for over 40 years and have seen firsthand how the doctor-patient relationships has changed - much of it for the worse.
Remember HMOs? How we all objected to their defining the medical contact to increasingly smaller time with your doc and putting economic limits on covering treatments? There is a movement towards
something called evidence-based medicine that has grown out of the HMO/insurance objectfication of the medical contact.
Evidence-based medicine accepts the HMO model as a standard and that illnesses - as well as subsequent diagnoses and treatments - can be objectively quantified. (Imagine going to see your doc and being faced with a computer screen that asks you a series of questions and comes up with your diagnosis w/o seeing your doc?) There are certainly classical indicators of diseases and clinical research can track the success of such markers. But clinical practice is an art - not a science. It takes time and experience to properly diagnose and treat a patient. Shrinking the time needed for such contact and relying mnore on the kind of categorizing series of questions that drive you crazy when calling a company simply perpetuates the profit-driven schemes of the HMOs and health insurance corporations into a realm where it isn't needed.
The Hudson Institute simply wants to torpedo any efforts to establish a national health care system and the right wingers are just acting as their gophers so I can't take their alarm over this as serious. The industry that created this erosion of healthcare simply wants to preserve the health of the healthcare industry, not the health of Americans.
I am uneasy with the timid attempts toward health care reform by the new administration - this throwback panel does not help.
Milo
We are getting are butts handed to us AGAIN by message & media control by the GOP day after day. Axelrod's response was slow, stuttering and not direct. Obama's team needs more surrogates that can shoot down this misinformation.
Let us remember that people like McCaughey receive $$ from big pharma and so we cannot depend on the MSM to work this stuff out themselves.
Amen!!
I’ll start listening to David Gregory when he starts acting like he graduated from college instead of just the 8th grade. Why not do it like they do in India? They are responsible for their own medical records and are required to take them with them to every doctor visit. Course, I’d have to buy a little red wagon to carry them all around in.
This debate that Betsy McRoss speaks of, will she and her cronies be in charge of the debate rules or what? I mean, Keith Olbermann has his own show. Why not just go on Keith’s show, Betsy????? Come on. What on earth are you afraid of if you have the ‘truth’ on your side?
Their voices are fading and it’s about damn time.
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me-oww!
you heard a right winger complain about David Gregory being biased?
Bingo!!!!
Evidence based medicine is good medicine. It is not rationing.It is based on sound science. David is a neanderthal. However, I think that David Axelrod is not the one that I like to see as the Obama spokesperson. He appears too Machiavellian.
I mae no reference to Evidence-based medicine as being a form of rationing health care - rationing occurs when a limited level of health care is approved due entirely to budgetary constraints.
Evidence-based medicine does indeed employ the scientific method and is consonant with the general trend in the transformation of clinical practice in the use of biomedical informatics. Biomedical Informatics (BMI)acknowledges that the sheer volume of medical and clinical literature is so vast that no one can have read or understood it all. Hence the use of interreferenceable dynamic clinical databases - defined in standardized clinical vocabularies - can provide summarized reports on what is availabl on a given concept or treatment. More elaborate than a google-like search, the BMI algorithms define the weight given to the articles in question.
So far so good, when you want to perform a literature search. But
do you want to depend on such algorithms to define what is considered a valid treatment for *you* or would you feel a little better relying on an experienced clinician with a good-sized practice who can rely on the actual experience her/his patients have had in the use of a particular procedure or medication as being worthwhile for you? Use of evidence-based medical tools can be used to access a ranked view of published results on a diagnoses or treatment, but it is *not* a reliable diagnostic tool.
HMOs did not use Evidence-based Medical principles to ration healthcare - they used it to deny coverage in order to maximize profits. For example, Kaiser-Permanente denied liver transplants for infants because there had as yet been no studies on liver transplantation in infants, though there had been extensive experience on other solid organ transplants in infants as well as liver transplants on older subjects. It took successful lawsuits to change their policies. Relying on the published literature does not guarantee the effectiveness of a treatment for you.
The NIH has invested the greatest part of it's clinical research budget into BMI. It's a logical way to cope with the immense medical literature but you cannot extend those principles en masste via the Evidence-based movement to supercede experienced clinical judgement. The right wing simply wants to keep healthcare as is with corporations controlling access and payment. Universal healthcare is long overdue here but we have to be careful not to use the commercial insurance policies as a national model.
Milo
PS: You can find a basic introduction, pro and con - to Evidence-based Medicine on wikipeidia, but of course, it's not exhaustive.
...until David Gregory took over. No more.
Read, read, read and research....that's the only way to find the truth.
Fuck you, Howdy Doodey!
"A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life."....Muhammad Ali
the population of underinsured/uninsured regarding healthCare insurance is growing rapidly. there are many variables but one that is interesting is the "cheap labor" that has been let into this country for years. the last 8 years has seen little to NO wage increase for the working class. when people are making 6-7-8 dollars an hour they CAN'T afford healthCare insurance/auto insurance. they may use the healthCare with the inability to pay for services. these cost(s) vary with regions of the u.s. essentially the cost(s) are passed down to the paying pool and/or government. we are being TAXED. a family of four may an extra $500.00 annually to cover these cost(s). hillary clinton mentioned this during her campaign. the paying pool is shrinking. "cheap labor" is NOT free. with healthCare increasing in cost approximately 4-7% a year it's become a luxury for some. the public needs to be heard and heard loud with ongoing stamina. this will be the political war of all political wars.
Since health care costs rising faster than inflation, if the trend was to continue, eventually we would have no money for anything else. President Clinton was on Letterman last August and said that our health care costs were 16% of our national income, while our competitors in Europe and Japan spend 11%; we leave 16% of our people without insurance while they cover everybody. So we don't have to spend more on health care, we have to reallocate what we're spending.
There is such a proposal. H.R. 676, “The United States National Health Insurance Act” would provide health care for all. If we instituted national health care, like all our western allies do, we would change to a more competitive cost structure. This change, for example, would greatly assist the auto companies, since they're struggling with health care costs of retirees. It would be much more of a stimulus boost than tax cuts so people can buy more imported goods. Here's a cartoon - help us out and email it around.
Health care is the most prominent area that illustrates why the free markets don't always work. A pharmaceutical company needs recurring revenues to enhance shareholder value. Cures don't create recurring revenues, maintenance regimes do. However, from the national perspective, we need research for cures in heart disease, cancer, Alzheimers, and obesity. Reduce obesity and we'll reduce our heart disease and cancer. This research needs to be conducted by people not compromised to generate recurring revenues, and that is Federally financed research. The one thing we know for sure is the the current medical system costs too much and does too little.
The gentleman in the video is correct that costs are the problem. Too bad he leaves out the solution.
Medicare for all.
the actuary want a beginning with a determined end. unfortunately medicine yes even so-called evidence based medicine does NOT account for all the variables. it also depends on who is doing the research/standards of care. it's my opinion there are people/groups/corporations who do NOT want change in the present healthCare. these people make money and will fight like hell against the needed change all for greed.
fucking asshat!!!
Some stuff you can't make up!
who danced a happy dance with KKKarl Rove.
This imbecile lost any and all credibility with his ass kissing of Karl Rove and GWB, not to mention his out of rhythm white man dancing to teen idols!
EOM
That means David Gregory will always pimp the Republican frame-job.
It is useful to know who your enemies are.
So McCaughey indignantly states that she is only a fellow at the Hudson Institute and accepts no pay for prostituting herself to big pharma. She doesn't even rise to the level of prostitute, she's whoring herself for free. Is that altruism or what?
Gregory is such a POS, and GE/NBC earns every bit of condemnation it receives for being GOPer propagandists by putting that mindless douchebag in his own slot as a reichwing mouthpiece.
I would like to have us remember this CORPORATE HEMMROIDS very best performance at 'catapulting' the propaganda. And that was just before his hero , SHIT STAIN BUSH, invaded Iraq and had his only prime time 'news conference'. This was a 'news conference' that was a total collusion between the CORPORATE MEDIA AND THE ADMINISTRATION. As such, it was totally scripted and rehearsed before hand. So there we had the Administration writing the questions for the 'reporters' to ask the 'president', and the president who had been scripted and memorized the answers. The 'reporters' themselves had been selected by the Administration before hand: who could 'ask' the scripted questions. The deception to the American people was so complete that there were even 'reporters' who would wave their hands in the air, pretending to want to ask questions, knowing that they would not be called upon. This was a total collusion that reflects what Scott Mclellan finally said was the 'active complicity' of the Corporate Media to enable the agenda of Shit Stain Bush and the Corporate agenda that he represented. And who was the main ringleader of these 'reporters' who had been selected by the Administration to 'ask' the scripted questions ? None other than David 'swollen lips' Gregory representing the General Electric Corporation. He is nothing more than a oozing, hissing, corporate hemmoroid.
Axelrod needed to pose the answer differently. Something on the lines of "what you just recited is nothing short of a god damned lie, and David, YOU KNOW IT so why are you attempting to mislead the public?"
Until the administration begins fighting fire with fire, the forest is going to burn baby burn! The lack of honesty and actual journalism coming from Meet the Press is as bad (or worse) than that of blubber boy Rush Limbaugh, because people of every stripe watch MTP whereas very few who aren't braindead listen to Limbaugh. That makes Gregory far more dangerous in my opinion!
Look at the face of a cheap sell-out and traitor to his country, his family and to his-self. Here is a person...who would gladly eat a piece of shit, sell his kids and/ or kill his mother for the all mighty buck. How does this piece of human trash end up in public view? Every body knows he's a bought and payed for slut for the weapons makers and top 1% of the country who own just about everything. He should not be let off the hook by the citizens and should be confronted and laughed at when ever and where ever he is seen out in public. As for the propaganda septic tanks,get them where it hurts, don't watch, don't buy products or services from those that buy ads from them. Not only don't watch the news, don't watch any other programing ether. What we need is a national agreement to just turn off all our TVs and not turn them back on until we again have control of OUR air waves and scum suckers like toad boy is shamed out of the country. These lying skunks have to live here with us and I think it's high time we made their lives as shitty as they have worked to make ours, at least we would be honest in telling them what sub-human garbage they are. We all know that the shows are low-brow crap anyway, we the citizens could bring these rats to their knees in no time flat and its long over due, lets pull out the stops and let them worry how they are going to make ends meet every month or buy food and shelter for their family. CEO,citizens eyes,open
but in reality, i don't expect too much. did bush get his? did Rove or Cheney or savage or rush?
just saw colin powell this morning reaping as much as he could on the election of obama, it was all about how colin supported obama all the way. he's of the same ilk as condoleeza. sleezeballs come in all colors.
I haven't watched MTP since Tim Russert died and I won't watch it until Gregory gets FIRED!Quit watching this ass munch folks and if enough of us stopped watching this cocksucker maybe he'll get shit canned!
LEST WE FORGET DAVID GREGORY ALWAYS DOES WHAT IS BEST FOR DAVID gregory. he started off right, smelled the wind and the foul odor emanating from the bush camp, must have liked it, and then he went to work on procuring a position as an anchor or perhaps the head of a newsworthy program such as meet the press. congrats david, hopefully you will get what's coming to you in the end. you have no integrity.
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