Every time it seems the media makes strides in its pushback against Trump and the Republican’s lies and misinformation, it appears that they backslide into the normalcy of GOP appeasement.
Inept media allows Paul Ryan to lie unchallenged
Paul Ryan did what does best, lie to the American people. The media did what it does best, let GOP misinformation to go unchallenged, more often than not.
A reporter asked Paul Ryan if repealing Obamacare before replacing it was responsible. One had to expect the answer he gave.
“Well we’d like to see the Senate move on something,” Paul Ryan said. “We are proud of the bill that we passed. We passed a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare to replace it with a better system. But as you well know the legislative process for it to work, [the] House has to pass a bill. We’ve done that the Senate’s got to pass a bill for us to even move the process forward. That’s the next step. So we’re hoping that they can achieve that next step so that we can bring real relief. Here’s the problem. Obamacare is in the middle of a tailspin. This law is collapsing. So we’ve got a promise to keep and also we need to step in ahead of the problem that this law is collapsing. More and more people don’t even have any choices left or even one choice. Forty-one percent of the counties in America have no competition and health insurance. They have one health insurer left. Premiums have doubled. Options are disappearing. Many counties in America now have no health insurers left. So that is just the stark reality of the moment, and so we’re hopeful that the Senate can take the pause that they need to take and move forward on this issue so we can get something done.”
Paul Ryan made sure to use phrases like “failed system” and “failure of Obamacare” as he answered other questions.
Unfortunately, reporters allowed the plethora of lies in that response to go unchallenged. The reality is that Obamacare is not in a death spiral. In fact, the CBO said as much. MSNBC Ali Velshi has been doing excellent reporting on the fallacies from the Republicans as fast as they are letting them out. He did this great piece where he thoroughly debunked the Republican lie about Obamacare being in a death spiral.
The media did not challenge Ryan when he claimed Obamacare was a failure. How does one define failure? If Obamacare added more than 20 million to the uninsured and Trumpcare would cause over 23 million to lose health insurance, which program is or would be a failure? The answer is clear.
Obamacare does not have major problems everywhere. It is important to note where Obamacare is struggling. It is struggling in Red State. Were we speaking about failure?