Howard Dean does a great job on MSNBC shooting down every Republican talking point on health care reform that Norah O'Donnell throws at him. Here are the questions she asked him.
- Is a public option a stalking horse for this government control?
- Doctors don't support this plan--then proceeds to read a quote that doesn't say doctors are against a public plan.
- Medicare and Medicaid waste money.
- Doctors don't like it because they only get 80% of what they would under private insurance plans.
- How do you stop employers from dropping employees from their coverage?
As Media Matters has reported, this is nothing new for Norah O'Donnell: Hardball for Dean, softball for Allen: MSNBC's O'Donnell echoed Republican attacks, misleading statements
As Think Progress noted, Dean also did a good job of explaining why Kent Conrad's co-op proposal is a really bad idea and won't work:
He’s wrong about this. The co-ops are too small to compete with the big, private insurance companies. They will kill the co-ops completely by undercutting them, using their financial clout to do it. In the small states like mine and like Senator Conrad’s, you’re never gonna get to the 500,000 number signed up in the co-op that you need to in order for them to have any marketing [power].
This is a compromise designed to deal with problems in the Senate. But it doesn’t deal with problems in America. And I think it’s time for the Senate to stop playing politics, do what has to be done. … If the Republicans don’t want to get on board, then we can do this without the Republicans.
We need more voices like Dr. Dean and Sen. Sanders talking honestly about this issue as long as the media is going to continue repeating the Republicans talking points for them.
