On Fox Business this week, Stuart Varney declared that the rolling disaster known as ObamaCare is unraveling and demanded an apology from one of its chief architects.
Varney pointed out that premiums are going through the roof, health insurers are pulling out of exchanges, and the cost of health care is skyrocketing — all points even The New York Times this week admitted.
Varney didn’t mince words with ObamaCare architect Zeke Emanuel: “You owe the American people an apology and I want to know if you’re going to deliver that apology on this program because you really screwed America. Go ahead.”
Emanuel, not surprisingly, refused to apologize and blamed Republicans for the high ObamaCare premiums.
“It’s always somebody else’s fault, isn’t it?” Varney charged. “You’re sitting on a system which you helped to design, it is spiraling down out of control. The administration is trying to take some desperate last-minute measures, the people of Illinois—I believe your brother runs Chicago, right? Is he paying 55 percent more on his health care premiums? Because the people of Illinois are if they’re on the exchange. How about Tennessee? Up 60 percent come November the first! I noticed, Zeke, you lost your smile.”
“I’m just frustrated that you have me on the show and you don’t let me talk,” Emanuel complained. “You just want to go off. Let’s just explore as I said.”
But Varney wasn’t in the mood to “explore” Emanuel’s Grube-tastic talking points. “I’m representing our viewers who are mad as hell about what has happened to their health care system because of the system designed by you,” he interjected. “You’re not going to apologize?”
Next page: Did Emanuel apologize for the ObamaCare debacle?
“No!” the unrepentant wonk exclaimed. “It’s a better system than the one we had before. Your memory is just so poor about how bad the system was before.”
Varney persisted, “I think you should apologize and if you can’t, we’re done.”
“There’s no way. I’m not apologizing. The Affordable Care Act is a big improvement over what we had before. There’s no doubt about it. What we had before was pretty terrible. Now we have a framework for going forward. What we need to do is moderate reform,” Emanuel simpered.
“We are coming up against a hard break. You have to go out with a smile,” the disgusted Varney said.
“It’s the usual Fox. It just cuts me off,” Emanuel griped. “They’re not letting me talk and defend the system, just cutting me off. That’s what you usually do. I had pointed out that we had some important successes on the Affordable Care Act. Not everything is perfect and we need moderate reforms. If only the Republicans in Congress would pass it.”
“Thank you very much indeed. Smile, it’s over,” Varney responded curtly.
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