Hannity misrepresented Obama's health care plan, asserting that Obama will "nationalize health care"
SUMMARY: Sean Hannity falsely asserted that Sen. Barack Obama promises "to nationalize our health care," and said his is a "false promise." In fact, Obama has not proposed, much less promised, to nationalize health care.
On the October 29 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, co-host Sean Hannity falsely asserted that Sen. Barack Obama promises "to nationalize our health care," and said his is a "false promise." In fact, Obama has not proposed, much less promised, to nationalize health care. As Media Matters for America has noted, Obama's plan would allow individuals to keep their private health insurance if they so choose, while establishing "a new public plan based on benefits available to members of Congress that will allow individuals and small businesses to buy affordable health coverage." During the Democratic primary, Hannity made a similar false claim about Sen. Hillary Clinton's health care plan, as Media Matters noted.
During the broadcast, Hannity also asserted that Obama's plan will "give welfare payments for 40 percent of the population that doesn't pay taxes." In fact, as Media Matters has noted, Obama proposes to "[c]ut taxes for 95 percent of workers [emphasis added] and their families with a tax cut of $500 for workers or $1,000 for working couples." All American workers are required to pay Social Security and Medicare taxes under the Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA).
From the October 29 edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes:
HANNITY: Let me say one thing as we close out the segment here. You know what, if you don't -- if you're not honest with the American people -- I, for example, I don't think -- it's impossible for him [Obama] to follow through on spending a trillion new dollars as he's promised, and give welfare payments to 40 percent of the population that doesn't pay taxes, and to nationalize our health care. It's -- these are false promises --
MICHAEL STEELE (chairman, GOPAC): Yeah.
HANNITY: -- he can never fulfill. And that's what -- that's what is at stake here and what's been missing in the discussion.
Until righties can ditch their reliance on lies, misinformation, false narratives and finally debate healthcare, or any issue, in terms of reality and fresh ideas, Republicans will occupy that rarified air of lunatic fringe.
It's not that rarefied. Everywhere I go, in an incredibly heavy dem area, I run into people who call Obama a Marxist. Most of them. So this stuff works.
If someone did a poll asking if people thought Obama was a Marxist or a socialist, 60 percent of the respondents would say 'yes' or probably. That's how crazy it is.
Until the Fairness Doctrine starts getting enforced again, Dems don't have a chance. I suspect there's going to be a real debacle on Tuesday.
Doom and gloom, doom and gloom.
Sheesh, Carlileb, can you be any more negative about Obama's chances? If I didn't know better, I'd think you were in the tank for McCain.
Have some faith. The polls don't support your assertions. Obama will take California - not sure why you're worried about that.
And one thing about the polls and the Bradley effect: I don't see the Bradley effect at all here. If it were the case, then the nationwide polls would be all over the place, as I doubt there is the same degree of racism in all parts of the country. EVERY poll has Obama up, most have him up (I believe) by at least 5 points. Some 4, some 6, some more, some less. But according to polls, Obama has a decent lead.
If, indeed, Obama loses, I'll be very happy to be on the receiving end of your, 'Ha ha, I told you so!'.
I love how people banter the term "marxist" around like they know what they're talking about. Even the Rovian perpetrators of the repeated phrase know nothing about it. Marxist = "some sort of enemy that we had when I was a kid" so I will repeat it like I'm know something.
I love how people banter the term "marxist" around like they know what they're talking about. Even the Rovian perpetrators of the repeated phrase know nothing about it. Marxist = "some sort of enemy that we had when I was a kid" so I will repeat it like I'm know something.
When most Americans hear "Marx", they think of these guys:
Everywhere I go, in an incredibly heavy dem area, I run into people who call Obama a Marxist. Most of them. So this stuff works.
Hey Carlileb, did you ever think that maybe you just happened to run into the few Republicans in the area?
Your cries of doom and gloom for Obama are nothing new.
You call those of us that supported Obama naive and nasty. You said that electing Obama would set the Democratic party back 30 years. Hispanics wouldn't vote for Obama and if we nominated Obama, we would be playing into conservatives hands.
YOU WERE WRONG!
Obama: The most recent two weeks of Gallup polling show 44 percent of non-Hispanic white voters presently support Obama - the highest number for a Democrat since 47 percent of whites backed Jimmy Carter in 1976.
Obama lead McCain in the Hispanic vote, Obama 65% vs McCain's 27%. http://www.gallup.com/poll/108040/Candidate-Support-Race.aspx
Across the more than 30 states that allow no-excuse absentee or early voting, votes have been pouring in at a record pace, and the data show Barack Obama as the clear beneficiary.
In the Washington Post-ABC News tracking poll, 59 percent of those who said they already voted backed Obama and 40 percent indicated they had supported McCain. So far, the numbers are a near mirror-image of the last two elections.
NOBODY thinks Obama has lost and this election is over but YOU!
"It's not that rarefied. Everywhere I go, in an incredibly heavy dem area, I run into people who call Obama a Marxist. Most of them. So this stuff works."---Carileb
Limbaugh: BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! -- (3 hours a day. Everywhere. With the best signals.)
Hannity: WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! -- (3 hours a day. Everywhere. With the best signals.)
Etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
If the structural propaganda imbalance on the radio isn't SOMEHOW corrected, there's little hope of uniting the country in the vast majority's self interest. Eventually enough will forget how bad the Republicans were and start to blame their economic woes on the Democrats in power.
Don't get them started on the fairness doctrine, even though they seem to forget that is what we have courts for to up hold the constitiution. If it were put back in place all they would have to do is fight it in court on the grounds that it is un-constituntional, which I see it would be. That is what the right seems to forget the most, If taxes hurt buisness why does allowing the big wigs tax breaks to sell their stuff cheaper help the little guy who is selling at cost just to be compeditive, and if this fairness doctrine is going to take them off the air why dont they fight it, as I said before as unconstitiutional? Use this system for the reason it was created!
It's been fought against and it has prevailed in court, because it's not individual censorship. No one has any inherent right to have a radio show, or be able to use the "people's" airwaves for their own purposes.
The FD is also still around, it's just not enforced by the FCC any more. When the Dems tried to put it into statute years back, they were defeated-- by many of their own.
Exactly. That's what these guys seem to forget. Having a radio show is NOT freedom of speech. It's not a right that we all have. If it were, then why do we have censorship on the radio and TV already? You can't say certain words. You can't show certain things. We already have lots of rules in place for radio and TV, and the FD would just be another one.
That being said, there isn't really anybody pushing for it to be re-enacted anyway. It's all a big troll from the right wing talk show hosts who use it as a wedge issue to try and make people believe (which a lot of them do), that if it were enforced, they would be forced out of business. And that it would impinge on their freedom of speech, which of course, it does not. But that's another story for later.
Personally, I don't think Obama's health care plan goes far enough. The problem won't be solved until we have a single payer system. The problem is that too many people are making too much money on the current system. To fix it, the government is going to have to do something drastic, and I don't think they have the political will.
I agree. I'm hoping it will be a stepping stone though.
I have a feeling, that should the Ds get a total of 61 seats in the Senate, any health care plan Obama signs will be far different than what he is proposing and will be closer to your ideal. With Teddy K authoring a Health Care Proposal and given his personal health problems, I'm sure the Senate (with a D supermajority) will fall all over itself to provide him a legacy (I don't think TK will serve out his term).
Cynical perspective, otg. Healthcare for all is all about Ted Kennedy, not the working people who are increasingly being crushed by high premiums?
Be afraid Oscar, if Dem's when a super majority, there will be liberals under your bed.
I'm already in bed with a liberal, what's two or three more in the room? We are already having a problem staffing certain parts of the country with health care professionals, what will it be like under "rationalized" health care?
Gee, i don't know. I guess we'll have to shift our priorities won't we?
4 hours a day, 5 days a week, plus another hour on Sundays, and something has been missing from the discussion? Understandable, I suppose, with all that Bill Ayers and Rev. Wright stuff that needs discussing.
Neon, off topic, but I have to tell you about my lucky break. I was going to go look at a job yesterday to cover for my inspector who was a little overloaded. He had somebody cancel, so I ended up not going.
I was looking at his photos today, and as I zoomed in on some damage in the garage, I saw the potential clients PT Cruiser had a "Stop Obama Express" sticker on the rear window with Hannity.com on the bottom.
I've become pretty good at interacting with the wingnuts living where I do, but it's probably better I didn't make this trip. Probably would have cost me the job if I met face to face with a fully-Hannitized human.
There are oh so many things wrong with what you just wrote about.
First clue for me was that these folks had a PT Cruiser. Strike 1 for sure, because those cars are just Dodge Neons with a different body, and both were, and are horrible automobiles for, well, anyone. And they're ugly. There, I said it.
Strikes 2 and 3, the fact that adults actually listen to, and believe Hannity. I'm sure that these clients are probably the folks that call into his show and say, "Sean, honor to talk to you. You're a great American Sean." Ignoring, of course, the fact that what has Hannity done to be called a great American? Shot his mouth off on TV and the radio? That's it.
Well, far be it from me to criticize the car that someone drives - we all have different tastes and styles and budgets. However, I find that someone's car CAN give me a sense of one's judgement, and......Chrysler? Somebody, please...what was the last decent, well-constructed car produced by Chrysler? How could anyone (excluding old widows, of course) be unfamiliar with Chrysler's reputation?
I will give the Col's potential client the benefit of the doubt, and assume that the Hannity sticker was simply a handy repair item holding the glass in. Or maybe she was an old widow.
Nah Chrysler has put out some good stuff recently. Wouldn't put the PT in that catagory though. Overal there have been some good things come out of detroit in recent years. In large though it seems very morbund design/productwise, lazy works too.
I've got a very good friend who loves Hannity. She thinks he, along with George Bush is not only smart, but handsome.
Needless to say, we usually talk about the weather, each others health or our kids, but not politics. She always tries to bait my wife and I into a political discussion, but we learned the hard way, and now avoid it at all costs.
WK, that's how I've learned to talk with them.The mildly informed will give up, the badly misinformed wil argue all day long, and think they've won.
" and give welfare payments to 40 percent of the population that doesn't pay taxes"
This is another example of how unaware of their own history, how willfully ignorant of he greater good, the modern Republican is. That 40 percent pays significant payroll and medicare taxes, they also pay tax on consumer goods. But where Republicans flaunt their ignorance is in their attacks on those who, they condescendingly claim do not pay taxes, are welfare recipients of a socialist government, if they receive an earned income tax credit. You know started that, right? The EITC? It was Ford. You know who expanded it in 1986, you ignorant conjob mfer's? Your boy Reagan did it because saw the benefit in spreading the wealth around.
Come up with some ideas, learn the history of your own Party, and you lying bastards won't have to tear down your opponents with the cowardly taunts of socialism.
And before the usual Hanniturd apologist chimes in, please note that he did NOT specify "income taxes".
They keep changing their stats.
First they said that 40 percent of workers don't pay taxes. A lie. Then they said that 40 percent of Obama's plan will go to non-workers-- another lie, but wierder. Now they are claiming that 40 percent of people don't work-- with the new claim that Obama is going to give them all free money, another blatant lie.
How do you explain to people that only taxpayers can get tax cuts, and that if you don't pay taxes you have nothing to cut, so you won't get any money?
And again, there are people who are on the low end of the earning scale, who PAY taxes (including income) on their paychecks all year long, but some of them make so little money, that they get their income taxes back when they file their taxes. THIS is the 40% that these folks are talking about all of the time. They work. They pay taxes. It's just that they earn so little, they get everything that they paid in back in April every year, until they get out of said tax bracket.
And at the other end are Cindy Gramps...
McCain favors making the Bush tax laws permanent, and also plans to repeal the Alternative Minimum Tax, double the dependent exemption and offer tax breaks on business income...Had McCain's tax proposal been in place in 2006, [they] would have done incredibly well - saving even more than they did under the existing Bush plan. John and Cindy McCain would have walked away with $373,429 in their pocket.
http://crooksandliars.com/jon-perr/mccain-offers-tax-windfall-cindy-beer-hei
And at the other end are Cindy Gramps...
Should be Cindy & Gramps
Someday, Sean Hannity will get the frontal lobotomy he so desperately needs - then he'll only have to worry about which side of his mouth he's gonna drool out of each day.....
Today it must be cold in hell.
OT, but Cavuto just threw Gramps under the bus.
Cavuto (to Grampy) "...on economic matters, you have no convictions, period."
I think you read that wrong, WK. He was giving McC props for walking away from the Keating 5 deal Scot free.
Naaaaaiiiled it.
Yeah, and all 2000 people watching FBC at that time saw it.
I chalk it up to childish selfishness. They can't stand the idea that a penny of their tax dollars might not benefit them directly.
True enough. I do believe though that if we do things to benefit others within our own country, and around the world for that matter, we'll be a lot better off.
Well that's the liberal position. The conservative position is "I got mine so screw you."
I'm guessing that it's because the Insurance Companies would lose their gravy train if we had a single payer system. They would have to clean up their acts to compete, or go out of business. I have no doubt that big Insurance Companies are among the sugardaddies who subsidize Rush Limbaugh's monstrous salary, so that explains why dipsticks like Joe the Plumber hate the idea of any kind of National Healthcare program.
I believe that universal healthcare would go a long way toward revitalizing our auto industry. One of the main reasons the Big Three are dying is because their foreign competitors don't have to provide insurance for their workers.
The sad reality is that we could have used the funds wasted in Iraq to fully insure every single American. Bush and his cronies have set this country back years if not decades financially.
Single payer healthcare is a dangerous liberal initiative, that if enacted, would expose the you're on your own crowd as the lying liars they are. It 's a question of good government. Conservatives have spent decades and untold sums of money tearing down all vestiges of the public trust on behalf of their true core constituency; the privatization gangsters.
Let the notion of shared sacrifice take hold of peoples imagination, let the benefits shared reward visit their family and cons know their wealth concentrating agenda will be rejected.
I think you're right. There was a book "The System" written about the failure of Hillary's health care plan. According to the authors, the Republicans launched a concerted effort to defeat her plan because they could not allow the Democrats to have such a significant legislative victory, which could guarantee a Democratic majority for a generation.
Sarah Robinson has a good article that dovetails into that idea.
"With one fell stroke, giving Americans universal access to health care will undermine some of the deepest and most persistent myths of the conservative worldview."
Funny he puts it like that because I think Obama has been pretty cautious about his proposals. McCain on the other hand has guaranteed he will balance the budget while lowering taxes across the board, win both wars we're currently in and maybe even a couple more just for kicks, capture Osama bin Laden, solve the financial crisis, solve the energy crisis, and help Joe the Plumber buy the business he works for. If either of the 2 is less likely to fulfill their campaign promises I think it's McCain.
Oh, and don't forget. He'll do all of that after freezing spending completely.
I loved it when he blurted that out in the first debate. Like a kid goofing off in class suddenly put on the spot.
"7 X 3 is 14!"
"14?"
"Sure. Why not? I think 7 X 3 is 14"
Is the government going to fund the healthcare? If so wouldn't that be nationalized healthcare?
What are you afraid of? If you like your private plan you can keep it. You will also have the option of signing up for a public plan.
Don't like competition or something?
Or would it be like the Hawaiian experiment where, even though one had a good private plan, the children were enrolled in the "free" plan so as to save household funds? That worked out soo well. The corporate "overlords" will unload as much of the currently company funded benefit as possible and probably won't compensate the employee nearly enough to buy in without public funds. The "free lunch" will be provided by the 5% again.
That's why you're a conservative. You don't seem to think it's possible to learn from mistakes and move on, progress, be progressive and develop a book of best practices.
Stay mired in the failed status quo, it's been soo effective for the right lately.
I mean seriously, you're going to get irate at the public plan because employers weren't satisfied with their sweet tax deals, had to have more and more for themselves, so they do the scumbag thing and threw their employees to the wolves? That's lame.
The five percenters have been eating our lunch for decades and gave us a stagnant wages and financial ruin in return.
Yes and no.
Media Matters:In fact, Obama has not proposed, much less promised, to nationalize health care. As Media Matters for America has noted, Obama's plan would allow individuals to keep their private health insurance if they so choose, while establishing "a new public plan based on benefits available to members of Congress that will allow individuals and small businesses to buy affordable health coverage."