Dail Kos - "Media parrot GOP Katrina talking point, ignore Bush Medicare drug debacle"

[TomCADem]

Another reminder of how the MSM media/GOP driven hysteria, which is now comparing the ACA to Katrina, has no basis in reality.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/11/15/1255902/-Media-parrot-GOP-Katrina-talking-point-ignore-Bush-Medicare-drug-debacle

And now for today's memo to Republicans and the media outlets determined to amplify GOP talking points. The troubled launch of the Affordable Care Act's enrollment period is neither Barack Obama's Iraq nor his Katrina (New York Times). Leave aside for the moment that one program is designed to reduce America's unnecessary body count while President Bush's bungling of the others added to it. To the degree that any calamity of the Bush years resembles the rollout of Obamacare, it was the disastrous launch of the GOP's Medicare Part D prescription drug program.

* * *
While the CBO projects that the Affordable Care Act will reduce the national debt over the next decade, the $400 billion Medicare Part D program was—and is—all red ink. As Orrin Hatch (R-UT) admitted in 2009, "It was standard practice not to pay for things."

While both laws passed the House by identical 220-215 margins, only the Republican actions in 2003 resulted in ethic charges. While Majority Leader Tom Delay (R-TX) extended the vote by hours and bribed fellow Republicans for votes, President Bush's Medicare chief Tom Scully was punished for trying to withhold the administration's much higher cost estimates from Congress.

While Republicans have tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act 47 times, Democrats sought to improve Part D by letting the government negotiate drug prices directly with the pharmaceutical firms. Other Democrats wanted to let the nation's 49 million Medicare recipients get their prescription coverage through the traditional government program and not from private insurers. Ironically, it was President Obama and his Affordable Care Act which has helped reduce President Bush's Medicare "donut hole," saving millions of seniors billions of dollars on their prescriptions.

[pansypoo53219]

1. the TEEVEE GNEWZ media didn't have a cow when part d had probs.

i couldn't get my meds for a week or so because of part d shit.