This shows why Fox News is simply an arm of the Republican party disseminating propaganda instead of news. This type of misinformation can materially affect the publics support for health care reform.
Goler reverses meaning of Obama quote to falsely suggest he supports European-style health care
Summary: Fox News’ Wendell Goler cropped a comment by President Obama and took it out of context to falsely suggest that he supports creating a health care system "like the European countries." In fact, Obama was paraphrasing the town hall question he had been asked before explaining why he opposed such a system.
During the April 24 edition of Fox News’ Special Report, White House correspondent Wendell Goler cropped a comment by President Obama and took it out of context — effectively reversing the statement’s meaning — to falsely suggest that Obama supports creating a health care system "like the European countries." Goler claimed that Obama "doesn’t want to do it halfway" on health care, and then aired a clip from a March 26 online town hall event of Obama saying, "If you’re going to fix it, why not do a universal health care system like the European countries?" Following the clip, Goler reported: "His critics worry universal health care would mean government-run health care." In fact, Obama actually said, "Now, the question is, if you’re going to fix it, why not do a universal health care system like the European countries?" [emphasis added] In doing so, Obama was paraphrasing the town hall question he had been asked — "Why can we not have a universal health care system, like many European countries, where people are treated based on needs rather than financial resources?" — before explaining why he opposed such a system.
During the March 26 "Open for Questions" town hall event, Jared Bernstein, chief economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden, read Obama the following question submitted online by "Richard in California": "Why can we not have a universal health care system, like many European countries, where people are treated based on needs rather than financial resources?" After explaining of health care reform, "the reason that I think it is so important is that the high costs of health care are a huge drag on our economy," Obama paraphrased the question he had been asked, saying "Now, the question is, if you’re going to fix it, why not do a universal health care system like the European countries?" before responding that America’s current employer-based system "works for a lot of Americans. And so I don’t think the best way to fix our health care system is to suddenly completely scrap what everybody is accustomed to and the vast majority of people already have. Rather, what I think we should do is to build on the system that we have and fill some of these gaps."
.jpg)
Comments