{"id":373819,"date":"2018-08-18T00:43:12","date_gmt":"2018-08-17T23:43:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/jake-tappers-flawed-happy-fact-check-friday-on-medicare-for-all-widely-condemned\/"},"modified":"2018-08-18T00:43:12","modified_gmt":"2018-08-17T23:43:12","slug":"jake-tappers-flawed-happy-fact-check-friday-on-medicare-for-all-widely-condemned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/jake-tappers-flawed-happy-fact-check-friday-on-medicare-for-all-widely-condemned\/","title":{"rendered":"Jake Tapper’s Flawed ‘Happy Fact Check Friday’ on Medicare for All Widely Condemned"},"content":{"rendered":"
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CNN<\/em> anchor Jake Tapper added his name to a growing list of journalists in the corporate media who set out to debunk progressives’ calls for Medicare for All on Friday with a “Friday Fact Check” segment, promptly misrepresenting statements by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and New York Democratic congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as well as the conclusions of a Koch Brothers-funded study.<\/p>\n

In his segment, produced in partnership with FactCheck.org<\/em>, Tapper played two clips of Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez stating, respectively, that “Medicare for all would save the American people $2 trillion over a 10-year period” and that it is “actually much cheaper than the current system.”<\/p>\n

Tapper responded as though the two progressives had asserted that the system would be cheaper for the U.S. government\u2014a claim Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez did not make\u2014and ignored a conclusion of cost-savings that was buried in the study.<\/p>\n

Watch:<\/p>\n

Billy Gendell, a Sanders staffer, was among the critics who pushed back against Tapper’s attempt to fact check.<\/p>\n

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The fun thing in this “fact-check” is when @jaketapper<\/a> falsely states that AOC & Bernie are suggesting that Medicare for all will save the federal govt $. Both are clearly talking about national health expenditures. @jaketapper<\/a> should take down the video and issue a correction. https:\/\/t.co\/irXQSrxM7a<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Billy Gendell (@billygendell) August 17, 2018<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

Rather than arguing that Medicare for All would save money for the U.S. government\u2014which was able to afford a $1.5 trillion tax cut <\/a>for the wealthiest Americans last year and passed a National Defense Authorization Act this week allocating more than $717 billion <\/a>to its military\u2014single-payer healthcare advocates have generally focused on how such a system would save trillions of dollars in overall <\/em>healthcare spending, including for U.S. families, 26 percent of whom report struggling to pay medical expenses. <\/span><\/p>\n

The study cited in Tapper’s segment and in a Common Dreams<\/em> report<\/a> last month was completed by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, which has received millions of dollars in funding from the right-wing Koch Brothers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Matt Bruenig, founder of the People’s Policy Project, noted after the study was released that its author, Charles Blahous, focused largely on the $32.6 trillion he found Medicare for All would cost over the next decade and buried “the money-saving finding in the report’s tables.”<\/p>\n

Blahous and Tapper failed to mention the more than $3.4 trillion<\/a> the U.S. currently spends on healthcare per year, a number that suggests that the country will pay at least $34 trillion to keep the current for-profit health insurance industry running for another decade\u2014about $2 trillion more than Blahous’s projection for Medicare for All.<\/p>\n

“That’s right,” wrote<\/a> Bruenig in a piece titled “Fact-Checking the Fact-Checkers on Medicare-for-All” earlier this week,<\/span> “the same estimate with the scary $32.6 trillion figure they were promoting to all the journalists in the country also said that the U.S. could insure 30 million more Americans, virtually eliminate out-of-pocket expenses, and cover dental, vision, and hearing care for everyone all while spending $2 trillion less over the next 10 years.”<\/p>\n

As Tapper mentioned, CNN<\/em> spoke with Blahous, who denied Sanders’s and Ocasio-Cortez’s conclusions about single-payer’s savings.<\/p>\n

One social media user wrote<\/a>, “Matt Bruenig so thoroughly exposed the Koch brothers’ report as benefiting consumers that the authors of the study (who want to discredit the people citing it positively) are trying to squeeze good PR out of fact-checking and again by misrepresenting THEIR OWN report.”<\/p>\n

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This is exactly what is happening. The report’s goal was to get people to gawk at the federal expenditure figure. When they didn’t do that and gawked at the overall savings, the author turned around and started selling fact-checkers that a table in the appendix is the real score. https:\/\/t.co\/4dltCpjlGL<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Matt Bruenig (@MattBruenig) August 17, 2018<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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And the fact-checkers go “well the author says this study doesn’t say that at all” because we talked to him, totally credulous that a fucking paid stooge is shooting them straight in his damage-control operation.<\/p>\n

\u2014 Matt Bruenig (@MattBruenig) August 17, 2018<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

Despite numerous critics correcting Tapper’s conclusion, the “State of the Union” anchor would not budge.<\/p>\n

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Hey @jaketapper<\/a>: the claim you call false here is true. The $2 trillion savings is in the @mercatus<\/a> tables & is part of the *very scenario they pitched to media outlets,* as @MattBruenig<\/a> has repeatedly pointed out (see https:\/\/t.co\/IxwKGh922y<\/a>). Please make a corrected video. https:\/\/t.co\/elNso0FcB8<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Ben Spielberg (@BenSpielberg) August 17, 2018<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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So we reviewed everything and we stand by everything i said in the video. I do however take issue with the graphic in the piece that says \u201cFalse\u201d since our conclusion was far more nuanced and i never said that word. So I\u2019ve asked them to remove that graphic. Thanks \u2014<\/p>\n

\u2014 Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) August 17, 2018<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

Tapper is just the most recent corporate news anchor to show hostility toward Medicare for All advocates while relying on shaky reasoning. Earlier this month, CNN anchor Chris Cuomo pointedly asked<\/a> Ocasio-Cortez how the country would cope with the “sticker shock” of Medicare for All, appearing surprised when she responded, “When it comes to tax cuts for billionaires and when it comes to unlimited war, we seem to be able to invent that money very easily.”<\/p>\n

Following Tapper’s segment, Bruenig shared his concern that conservatives are likely not the greatest threat to the possibility of providing healthcare to all Americans.<\/p>\n

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Once again, the main impediment to the success of M4A is actually liberals who are either stupid or dishonest about this stuff https:\/\/t.co\/WelXQ1yzeM<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Matt Bruenig (@MattBruenig) August 17, 2018<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n