Tuesday, August 04, 2009

Free Pass for Right-Wingers

Linda Wertheimer hosted Senator Kyl for a stop-health-insurance-reform commercial this morning.

Here's Kyl repeating chief insurance lobbyist, AHIP's talking points (pdf. file):
"91% of people, according to a Rasmussen survey, say that they have insurance and 84% of them rate their insurance as excellent or good."
That 91% should have raised a flag with any decent interviewer. A simple calculator shows that with at least 47 million Americans without health insurance divided by a population of 307 million means that 15.3% are without. The highest possible number of insured would then be 84.7% - and with the jobless rate spiking that 47 million is probably closer to 50 million. Of course, if you are a Fox News Poll lover (pdf. file) then you would get the EXACT numbers that Kyl was spouting - what a surprise! The Rasmussen poll in question gives no number for the insured and does claim a rise to 80% of covered respondents rating their insurance good to excellent a rise from 70% back in May. I've yet to meet anyone who pays a lot for private health care say they are satisfied with it - so I'd be curious to see numbers teased out for those with generous employer provided coverage or Medicare.

It must be reassuring to be a radical free-marketeer, corporate blood-sucker, warmonger or miscreant going on NPR - knowing that you can say or make up anything and never have it questioned.

3 comments:

GRUMPY DEMO said...

I had a similar response, but with more typos.

Yeah, now that the GOP knows they won't be challenged on NPR they can treat it like FOX and "just make shit up" that sounds good, they won't be challenged.

Sen. Kyl (R-Insurance) has taken millions for the health care and insurance industry.

Here's a great website that lets you look up the individual and PAC donations. (Got it off Bill Moyer's Journal's site).

http://www.opensecrets.org/index.php

Anonymous said...

When I heard the story I sent an email complaining about the bias to NPR....I got the usual generic reply, thanking me for my input.

Anonymous said...

Anon:

I got the usual generic reply, thanking me for my input.


Did they ask you for money anyway? lol

edk