Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Stewart to Sebelius on Health Care Law “Am I a stupid man?”

Yes, apparently he is. After spending most of the segment browbeating  Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius for the incompetence displayed by government during its launch of Obamacare, does Jon Stewart call for free markets, so people can have choices? No, he calls for more government intervention in the form of a single-payer system. He then calls those who want freedom, "crazies."

CNN reports:
 "The Daily Show" took a more serious turn Monday night when host Jon Stewart introduced his guest for the evening, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

Sebelius, who has been on a media blitz in recent weeks as the health care exchanges for the Affordable Care Act opened for business on October 1st, has appeared on multiple networks to promote the new law and to attempt to tamper criticism of its rollout.

As the secretary sat down to begin the segment, Stewart opened a laptop on his desk. “I’m going to attempt to download every movie ever made, and you’re going to try to sign up for Obamacare, and we’ll see which happens first.”

Sebelius admitted the website rollout “started a little rockier than we’d like,” but said the administration had been working to make improvements. “It’s better today than it was yesterday, and it will keep getting better.”

The sign-up websites were offline for part of the weekend as efforts were made to fix multiple glitches that caused delays for many who attempted to use the program in the first few days.

When asked how many individuals had signed up for insurance so far, Sebelius admitted, “I can’t tell you, because I don’t know ... we will be giving monthly reports.” She added that hundreds of thousands of accounts had been created, which indicated to the administration that those consumers “are going to go shopping” for insurance as the next step.

The segment became more contentious as the Comedy Central host turned to the subject of the individual mandate, specifically the fact that while many businesses were given a one-year delay to comply with the law, individuals were not.

“If I’m an individual that doesn’t want this, it would be hard for me to look at a big business getting a waiver," Stewart said. "I would feel like you are favoring big business because they lobbied you ... but you’re not allowing individuals that same courtesy.”

Sebelius denied that was the case, but danced around answering the question directly, sticking instead to talking points.

After pressing her further on the issue to no avail, a somewhat exasperated Stewart finally smiled and asked, “Am I a stupid man?”

Later, as he threw to commercial, Stewart said he still was “not sure why individuals can’t delay” and asked the secretary if he could keep asking her that same question when they returned.

Later, while addressing the issue of businesses cutting back hours for employees to avoid having to provide health care under the new regulations, Sebelius held firm. “Economists, not anecdotal folks, but economists, say there is absolutely no evidence that part-time work is going up. In fact, it’s going down,” she said. The secretary also said that for the first time ever, part-time employees in the United Sates would now have the option to purchase health insurance under the new law.

Toward the end, Stewart argued that a market-based strategy toward health care is a flawed concept in itself and that a single payer system would have been a more simple approach. But Sebelius jumped in, saying, “if we could have perhaps figured out a pathway, that may have been a reasonable solution.”

“So this is jerry-rigged to deal with the crazy people?” Stewart asked.

“I think the president did not want to dismantle the health care that 85% of the country had," Sebelius responded.
Bottom line, Stewart belongs in the pathological altruist camp. Sebelius, on the other hand, appears to be just a crony socialist.

11 comments:

  1. Don't you understand, if you want more government intervention into your life and the lives of others, you are an activist, if you want less, an extremist or crazy person?

    IMO, the crazy people are those that want to keep doing the same thing hoping for different results. Take Stuart's profound logic. He clearly recognizes that the government was totally incapable of building a simple exchange to sell insurance plans to people but then argues that the better solution would have been for the government to have taken on the extraordinarily complex task of managing all aspects of healthcare finance and management. With that kind of logic being passed off as reasonable thinking, this country is screwed!

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    1. Statists use "crazy", but really mean "heretic".

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  2. Statism is religion. Numerous people seek salvation through The State. To them, The State is literally god. This is nothing new. It actually is very old.

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  3. So if I understand Mr. Stewart's "logic," he assert that the answer to a severely flawed Obamacare plan is to hand total control over to the same people who devised Obamacare. Really?

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  4. I literally LOL'd @ the statement:

    "Later, while addressing the issue of businesses cutting back hours for employees to avoid having to provide health care under the new regulations, Sebelius held firm. “Economists, not anecdotal folks, but economists, say there is absolutely no evidence that part-time work is going up. In fact, it’s going down,” she said."

    As of August 2nd, 731,000 of the 953,000 jobs created in 2013 were part-time jobs. That is 77%!

    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-08-02/obamacare-full-frontal-953000-jobs-created-2013-77-or-731000-are-part-time

    Yeah... definitely no evidence whatsoever, nothing to see here folks! I swear, with every passing day I think the term "economist" is simply a euphemism for government propagandist.

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    1. Absolutely WRONG!!!

      The term "economist" is a euphemism for educated Idiot with no practical experience doing anything...

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    2. 'no practical doing anything'....they have plenty of experience with mathematical models....

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    3. ...but have no brains (or practical experience doing anything USEFUL) to see that these models have no relationship to reality.

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  5. on Stewart mocks Affordable Care Act's rocky start ... laptop and turned to guest Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius: ”I'm .cancer treatment in india

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  6. Yes; calling people who want the freedom to dictate the terms of their OWN life "crazy people" makes you a stupid man, Stewart.

    It's a compliment; because the only other alternative to Stewart being "stupid", is being "evil".

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