The headline over the weekend on a post about Obamacare:
Trump’s blow to Obamacare jolts health consumers, politics
President Donald Trump’s abrupt move to cut off federal payments to insurers jolted America’s health care and political worlds alike on Friday, threatening to boost premiums for millions, disrupt insurance markets and shove Republicans into a renewed civil war over their efforts to shred Obamacare.
Defiant Democrats, convinced they have important leverage, promised to press for a bipartisan deal to restore the money by year’s end. That drive could split the GOP. On one side: pragmatists seeking to avoid political damage from hurting consumers. On the other: conservatives demanding a major weakening of the Affordable Care Act as the price for returning the money.
“The American people will know exactly where to place the blame,” declared Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., all but daring Trump to aggravate what could be a major issue in the 2018 congressional elections.
Makes it sound that Trump just decided, on a whim, just lashed out against Obamacare and that ONLY Democrats can ride over the crest of the hill to save the day, right? Hey, why is Pravda on the Merrimack all that surprised – or complicit?
He campaigned against Obamacare, got elected by being against it, and now is getting rid of this Socialist / Progressive Totalitarian precursor to single payer (you, too, could be on a VA-style secret wait list to die – it’s what single payer systems do!). Now, the piece is from the Associated Press but birds of a feather, eh?
Now, these AP pieces can be, and often are, edited and the Fishwrap could have executed editorial control and actually said the actual reason why Trump SHOULD have stopped the payments? Hahahahaha! Of COURSE not! Instead, they soft-pedaled it – but not until paragraph 15:
A federal judge has found that Congress never properly approved the payments. The subsidies have continued under Obama and Trump until now, despite prior Trump threats to block them.
Schumer told reporters that Trump’s “threats and bullying are not going to work.” He said he saw a good chance of forcing money for the cost sharing reductions into a massive spending bill Congress is expected to approve late this year.
Approved? Only approved? How about the word that is the linchpin of the whole reason: Appropriated. Like this piece (emphasis mine):
Democrats attack Trump for obeying a federal judge’s court order
So much for the Democrats’ professed respect for the rule of law.
Late Thursday President Trump announced he plans on stopping the Obama subsidy payments to insurance companies. The reason for the stoppage was a May 2016 federal court ruling that the payments were unconstitutional. In her ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Rosemary Collyer wrote that then-President Obama and his administration ignored constitutional limits on executive authority and congressional control of the purse strings.
Sure, the Obamacare law allowed for payments to be made but Congress never approved appropriated the money to carry it out. Obama, under his “if Congress won’t act and I’ve got a pen and a phone” schtick decided to go Monarchy and told the US Treasury, contra the Constitution’s forbiding of such action, to pay the insurance companies anyways. The Congress brought suit (and rightfully so, for once).
No, the Concord Monitor didn’t just miss a chance to report the news correctly – they decided to IGNORE it and toe the Democrat line.
Fair and balanced? No, I wouldn’t expect that from them. However, for all of their preachiness on what is right and wrong (from the Progressive line), one should expect that they’d at least report the facts.
And they wonder why we Normals hate the MSM?
