Health Care

Wednesday’s edition of the CBS Evening News chose to re-air portions of chief medical correspondent Dr. Jon LaPook’s interview with President Obama on climate change supposedly threatening public health and included LaPook fretting at the end to anchor Scott Pelley that “climate change legislation has stalled in Congress.” The network’s cheerleading of Obama’s newest environmental initiative…

Many people fantasize about what they’d try to accomplish if they were president of the United States. Some even write it down, and a few publish their thoughts, as Moore did earlier this week in the 150th-anniversary issue of The Nation. A few of the ítems on Moore’s list of twenty seem to be meant humorously (e.g., “free HBO for everyone”) but he’s serious about the clear majority of them,…

The CBS Evening News enthusiastically took to promoting ObamaCare in the form of a brief on its Monday night broadcast, hailing the fifth anniversary of President Obama signing the massive legislation into law. Anchor Scott Pelley began by reminding viewers that “[i]t was five years ago today that President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act known as ObamaCare.” Pelley rattled off a few…

CBS Evening News was the sole Big Three evening newscast on Friday to cover President Obama's visit to the V.A. hospital in Phoenix, Arizona, where "some vets died before they got treatment, and hospital officials hid those long delays on secret wait lists," as Scott Pelley put it. The CBS program also touted a veteran who poured cold water on the Obama administration's claim that appointment…

NBC News chief medical editor Dr. Nancy Snyderman announced her abrupt departure from the network on Thursday afternoon, stating that her violation of Ebola protocol in October 2014 has “contributed to my decision that now is the time to return to academic medicine.” After “becoming part of the story upon my return to the U.S.” from covering the Ebola epidemic in Liberia, Snyderman revealed that…

When it comes to right-wingers and the Affordable Care Act, biology and race are destiny. That’s the word from lefty pundit Marcotte, who argued in a Thursday column for Talking Points Memo that the “fight against Obamacare has been about needling the gender- and race-based resentments of the conservative base.”

In a piece headlined “The Supreme Court vs. Reality,” Jeff Shesol claims that when the SCOTUS agreed to hear King v. Burwell, it showed that “most or maybe all of the Court’s Republican appointees will entertain any argument, no matter how silly, that can derail or dismember the supposed abomination that is Obamacare.”

Leave it to a writer at Mother Jones to dispense condescending healthy eating advice while serving up a side dish of alleged historical racism with a tincture of capitalism bashing. Kiera Butler, a senior editor there, didn't have to engage in either exercise to make her nutritional points, which may have some validity. She must have felt that her primary headline ("Why You Should Stop Eating…

Continuing the standard set by NBC’s Today, on Wednesday night the major broadcast networks played up the fears that “health care coverage for millions” might be lost and “could doom ObamaCare” if the U.S. Supreme Court, in a case heard on Wednesday, rules against the federal government and its federal subsidies. ABC and NBC used covert liberal activists, with ABC turning to an ABC News…

On Wednesday's NBC Today, news anchor Natalie Morales warned viewers: "The U.S. Supreme Court today takes up a legal challenge that could doom the Affordable Care Act, better known as ObamaCare." In the report that followed, correspondent Pete Williams declared the high court would "determine whether millions of people will lose their health insurance."

On Monday, only NBC's Today mentioned the "important news" that the Supreme Court was set to hear a case that could potentially dismantle ObamaCare. In a news brief in the 7 a.m. ET hour, anchor Natalie Morales reported: "...the Supreme Court is gonna hear this week a challenge to President Obama's signature health care policy that could deal it a crippling blow."

The Associated Press's headline at Alan Fram's coverage of the controversy over the existence of an Obama administration contingency plan if it loses the Halbig v. Burwell case pending at the Supreme Court may be among the most inchoherent ever: "GOP CLAIMS PAPER SHOWS FED AIDES' PREPS FOR HEALTH LAW LOSS." "Paper"? What is in question is an alleged 100-page contingency plan should the Court…

Wyatt Andrews revealed the details of a new scandal at the Department of Veterans Affairs on Wednesday's CBS This Morning. Andrews zeroed in on how the veterans'  benefits office in Oakland, California simply ignored "more than 13,000 informal claims filed between 1996 and 2009 – all of which were stashed in a file cabinet." The correspondent spotlighted whistleblowers who claimed that "V.A.…

Thursday on his Your World show, host Neil Cavuto went after the Obama administration's near obsession with the coverage it gets on Fox News. While Team Obama can count on the Big Three triumvirate of ABC, CBS and NBC to toe the line, promoting its points while generally avoiding damning information, Fox has generally remained fair and balanced, an approach which has clearly gotten under their…