CNN’s Sanjay Gupta: Millions of Americans Losing Insurance a ‘Red Herring’

CNN’s chief medical correspondent, Sanjay Gupta, thinks that millions of Americans losing their health insurance due to Obamacare regulations is “a little bit of a red herring,” and, besides, we’re only talking about a “small portion of the population.”

In other news, 1 million Californians have received cancelation notices for the very plans the Obama administration promised, again and again, they could keep...

Tuesday on Piers Morgan Live, Gupta attempted to deflect the in-deflectable criticism of Obama’s bold-faced “keep your plan” lie and worse-than-third-world rollout of his signature achievement. After portraying the administration’s deliberate deceptions as merely a messaging problem, the best defense Gupta could muster was the increasingly more insulting argument that the cancelations only affect a sliver of Americans.

Apparently Gupta hasn’t been keeping up with the headlines. Here’s the exchange:

Morgan: Sanjay, we know the take-up on Obamacare has been extremely low. The White House has now conceded that when the numbers are published, they will be very low. We now have President Clinton really directly challenging President Obama to, if it means changing the law, to change the law to keep his word about if you wanted to keep your plan or doctor, you could. This is turning into a huge mess, isn't it?
Gupta: Yeah, I think there is no two ways about that. You know, I think with regard to this idea of keeping the plans... this is another example of the message really having been not properly, uh, given. And, you know, we talked about the specific thing that if you have your insurance, you can keep it. As you know, and as President Clinton said, that's not true. But Piers, you and I talked about this before after I interviewed Secretary Sebelius. The number one cause of bankruptcy in the United States is medical bills, and a large part of that is because there are really bad plans out there. I think this is a little bit of a red herring. And if you look at the numbers, this is a relatively small portion of the population that we’re talking about—that fits into this idea that they have plans and want to keep them because they are buying insurance already on the individual market.

Gupta then shifted gears to the laughable Pinto-Ferrari analogy, ultimately dismissing the millions of plans Americans had chosen on the free market which are being canceled by Obamacare as simply “not good plans.”

Morgan then turned to his other guest, Dr. Eric Topol, and asked the question at the heart of Gupta’s clunker of a defense:

Morgan: Do you feel... that Obamacare is well-intended...?

To Dr. Topol’s credit, he quickly moved beyond Morgan’s irrelevant question and touched on the ACA’s failure to take advantage of medical innovation. But Morgan’s question provides a key insight into liberal ideology: The only thing that matters to the shallow Left is the good intentions of their elected leaders, no matter how destructive and tyrannical the results of their policies.

Gupta IS a tool. A useful one. He’s telegenic, “ethnic,” and “easy” to understand. My husband’s cardiologist office plays a closed circuit TV “health” broadcast (sponsored by cardio drug manufacturers) and Gupta is one of the hosts. He give indepth segments like “eat fruits and vegetables.”

What a microcosm of what passes for “knowledge” today. You (cardiac patient) are too STOOPID to learn actual medical terminology, to be schooled in the drugs they are being prescribed for you to use. Instead, sit here and listen to the nice foreign guy tell you to eat broccoli.

Everything, I am convinced, is low information.

Sanjay Gupta is repeating the talking points nearly verbatim. The supposedly "bad plans" are better than the new plans.

The "bad" old plans let you see out of network specialists when you get really sick. The new Obamacare plans don't.

The "bad" old plans had high deductibles, like $3,000. The new Obamacare plans have deductibles of $5,000 or $10,000 or $12,000.

The "bad" old plans were expensive, like $1000 for a family of four. The new Obamacare plans for the same family with no coverage for out of network hospitals and doctors costs $1340 per month.

And without out of network coverage bankruptcy will be a much more common situation for families who have someone who is really sick.

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