Posted on 11/14/2013 5:20:00 PM PST by Kaslin
Over the years, lefties have blamed Fox News for all sorts of things. Now, via Obamacare architect Ezekiel Emanuel, we learn that the nation’s sole non-liberal television news operation is actually responsible for the HealthCare.gov debacle. In a debate with FNC host Megyn Kelly on her program last night, Ezekiel argued that Fox News Channel was really to blame for the fact that almost no one has signed up for the Obamacare insurance exchanges that are the center-piece of the law.
“You and your colleagues were constantly criticizing, trying to underfund it and trying to make sure it didn’t work,” a very combative Emanuel ludicrously argued as Kelly pressed him on whether the Obama Administration actually knew that many people who had purchased health insurance in the individual market were going to lose their coverage thanks to mandates by the Affordable Care Act.
“It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. ‘We’re going to try to do everything we can to make it fail and then when it fails, we’re going to say, oh why did it fail?’” Emanuel said.
In the discussion, Emanuel, who is the brother of former Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, also provided a good example of challenging what he perceived as the biased statistics--something Republican television guests rarely do--as he refused to accept Kelly's claim that 5 million people who had purchased individual policies were going to be cancelled as a result of Obamacare. Emanuel preferred instead to talk about 3 million. “Only on Fox is it 5 million,” he insisted.
Watch the full segment below or continue reading for the relevant transcript.
Megyn Kelly Ezekiel Emanuel HEATED Over Obamacare Again: You Didn't Foresee Mass Cancellations?!
MEGYN KELLY: Five million people have already been cancelled. I’m not talking about the 7 million you guys [unintelligible]--
EZEKIEL EMANUEL: That’s not a reliable number.
KELLY: It’s at least 3 million. And the report’s out today that it’s 5 million people who have been cancelled so far.
EMANUEL: Only on Fox is it 5 million.
KELLY: If that is the truth--OK fine. So let’s go with 3 million. You can deny the problem all you want, sir.
EMANUEL: No!
KELLY: So 5 million people tonight by our numbers. If that is the case, (to producers) can we put the full screen back on the board? Then you need 156,000 people to sign up every day for the next 32 days just to break even. That’s not even talking about the 7 million you guys needed from the get-go to make Obamacare work.
EMANUEL: No, that’s not right, Megyn. You’ve got the numbers wrong. Seven million includes the people who were expected from the individual market to come on as well. So it’s not just 7 million and the number from the individual market, that’s the first point.
The second point is that you have to remember the individual market before Obamacare, the insurance companies were cancelling people all the time. That’s one of the reasons we wanted the exchanges to work. And I agree with you, without the exchanges working, this cancellation policy is worrisome. It was worrisome before Obamacare, it’s worrisome today.
The key thing is to get the exchanges working to get the website working so those people have a place to go where they’ll get better insurance at a more reasonable rate overall.
KELLY: OK there’s a lot in your answer. Let me ask you this first. Are you admitting then that it was foreseen that the individual insurance market would essentially collapse and that that was a key facet of Obamacare working?
EMANUEL: It’s not a matter of foreseeing. The insurance companies always cancelled policies before--
KELLY: It is a matter.
EMANUEL: They did it before. Now let me just--
KELLY: Now that’s spin. You know as well as I do that the mass cancellations we have seen tonight are hurting a lot of Americans. They’re very upset and their relationships with their doctor has been severed as a result of coverage in many instances.
There was further back and forth about the cancelled policies. Emanuel stuck to a legalistic argument that the Obamacare law did not actually force policies to be cancelled at all.
Kelly then asked Emanuel about his previous comments about how had originally recommended that the Obama Administration hire a single person to oversee the rollout of the new healthcare law rather than farm out the task to the existing government bureaucracy. After Emanuel said he still believed that such a person should have been hired, Kelly picked up the problem of the millions of cancelled individual insurance policies.
KELLY: Now I know you are loyal to the President and you don’t want to criticize him but the--I don’t understand why you can’t just tell it to us straight. Should he have seen this? Why didn’t they listen to you? Why wasn’t there such a person appointed?
EMANUEL: There were differences about how they wanted to run it, and they decided to run it with people in CMS [Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] having the charge for doing it. Remember, this was not an environment which was hospitable to setting up the exchanges.
KELLY: I know. And there was a lot of criticism--
EMANUEL: You, you and your colleagues were constantly criticizing, trying to underfund it and trying to make sure it didn’t work.
KELLY: You know what, sir? A lot of that criticism proved true. A lot of that criticism proved true, unfortunately.
EMANUEL: It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. We’re going to try to do everything we can to make it fail and then when it fails, we’re going to say, “Oh why did it fail?”
KELLY: What? I don’t think Fox News had anything to do with the rollout of HealthCare.gov. As far as I know, we didn’t touch that Web site. But listen, I want to talk to you about--
EMANUEL: You were constantly--
KELLY: All right it was our fault.
EMANUEL: --attacking the law and you were trying to make it underfunded.
KELLY: All right, I’ll give you that one, too. It was all our fault.
EMANUEL: Okay.
Gays just don’t like attractive women, do they?
Was THAT not the essence of “pure Evil”??
I had nightmares!
Every right minded person knows President Hoover is at fault.
Just saw a couple clips on FOX. This clown is a real fruitcake. No wonder the ObamaScam debacle is such a mess. This was a train wreck waiting to happen as soon as they put this clown in charge. Swoosh!
I’m somewhat embarrassed to report this, but it is not Ezekials fault, Bush’s, Fox’s... it is my dog. Yes, she is at fault for the whole thing.
Yes, I know, kinda strange for one little golden retriever to be at fault of this $Trillion-dollar mess... but...
On her behalf, I apologize to the whole nation.
[she only can meekly say ‘woof’ about that]
Watch his interviews…. do they make evil fruitcake?…if so Ezekial is IT!
The bitch set this up.
OK libs . . . which is it?
They are all so powerful to cause OCare to roll out in such a disastrous manner?
Or they are Faux News spouting nonsense to the densest of Americans?
Obama’s Dr. Mengele. He’s even more vile and evil than his rotten, corrupt brother, Deadfish.
You know the liberals been behind closed doors brainstorming (which is hard to do when they are all brainless) a way to spin the Obamacare disaster (they wanted it to fail but not this fast and this spectacularly).
If all they can come up with is “people on the right said bad things about it which hurt its feelings and made it fail” they’ve got nothin’. Nothin’!
been = have been
Fruitcake is evil! LOL!
No, I thought it was Bush...LOL!
He was a couple of weeks ago on Fox news Sunday with Chris Wallace. He was rude and let the other guest hardly get a word in.
After what I saw tonight, I’d say that the boy do have some “issues”. He’s definitely not very bright.
Thinking about that evil creep could give you nightmares
Oh gosh! And we thought it was our labradoodle - we’ve been yelling at her all night.
This guy is pure evil.
If Fox had the power this clown gives to it then Obama would not be President, He would be impeached.
I believe when Ezekial was born his mother shook the piss out of him repeatedly. he definitely shows the signs of shaken baby syndrome.
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