http://www.npr.org/...
The story linked to above could be a prime example of a David Koch-funded NPR “news” story which means that NPR reporter Julie Rovner could be regarded as a Koch employee. Koch has heavily funded PBS and until recently sat on the boards of WNET New York and WBGH Boston so it can be assumed that he and/or brother Charles have also put a few hefty pay packets into the coffers of NPR. Read here about David Koch and PBS: http://www.dailykos.com/...
And more on this from Jane Meyer with The New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/...
This NPR story reeks of right wing propaganda, with Rovner even going so far as to use a sound bite from Paul Ryan and ONLY Paul Ryan to support its contention that Obamacare is soundly and roundly hated by the American public. But then comes in the false equivalency between it and Medicare Part D, the Republican legislation that prohibited government bargaining with Big Pharma over prescription medicine prices and threw countless numbers of seniors into the “donut hole” along with a huge chunk of their disposable income, forcing them to pay out of pocket for their meds.
This apparently Koch-funded story claims that Obamacare is just as unfavored now as Medicare Part D was in 2005. But Rovner re-writes history when she claims it was partisan Democratic politicking and not the egregious Republican kickback to Big Pharma and the slap in the life savings to seniors on Medicare now being required to pay for all their meds themselves that was the source of contention and disfavor. She further skews the story by using the memory of George W. Bush H&HS Secretary Mike Leavitt to spin the story to make it appear that the opposition was just due to partisan politics. Not ONE Democrat is interviewed for this story to shed some truth on it. Here is Leavitt’s big Republican spin comment: "’There is always a political backdrop to the implementation of a controversial law,’ said Leavitt in an interview. ‘With Part D, clearly the Democrats did not believe this would succeed, and I think in their heart didn't want it to succeed. I suspect the inverse is true in the context of this [Affordable Care Act] law.’” Once a Bushie always a Bushie.
The only reason why Medicare Part D has never been repealed is because the Republicans have remained in control of Congress from that time until now except for a small window of time in 2009 when the Democrats couldn’t get their act together to get it wiped off the books.
Rovner offers not one positive analysis of Obamacare, but she is just toeing the Koch/Fox/Republican Party line because NPR has been broadcasting Obamacare-bashing story after Obamacare-bashing story for weeks. I’m not a fan of Obamacare only because it was just a tepid toe in the water of health insurance reform. But I stand with everyone who supports it by saying that Obamacare is a lot better than what we had before and is helping to bring health insurance to 50 million previously uninsured or uninsurable people.
It is truly a shame that publicly-funded NPR is a sham when it comes to news reporting. And it raises the question that if NPR is the deceptive and false in its reporting of domestic issues, how are we to believe it when it comes to the reporting of international news stories? For more on the purchase of PBS by at least one Koch brother (David) read Thom Hartmann’s excellent article: http://truth-out.org/...
Another word for corporate dictatorship is fascism.