Sally Kohn is a committed supporter of president Obama who is often seen on the cable news shows. She is also, as her appearances make clear, no slave to the truth. My favorite of her tall tales came on Fox News' Special Report. On her first appearance as a panelist on that show, Kohn stated that president Obama was a budget hawk who had cut the federal deficit. You cannot make this stuff up. When she made her statement, the other two panelists looked at her in disbelief. Kohn has never made it back onto that show.
I was reminded of Kohn's past lack of honesty when I read her column today on the CNN website. According to Kohn, Republicans are responsible for closing hospitals because they don't want to cooperate with Obamacare. Her statements are completely wrong as I will explain. I just wonder if they are intentionally wrong.
Let's start with Kohn's mistake. According to Kohn, a few rural hospitals across America are closing because Obamacare cut Medicaid funding for them. So far, Kohn has it backwards; it was the Democrats who cut the Medicaid funding in the Obamacare bill, not the Republicans. But Kohn goes further. The second part of her argument is that Republican governors in a number of states are not accepting the expansion of Medicaid which would allow these hospitals to treat many more Medicaid patients and thereby stay open. This claim is idiotic.
There is an old joke in which a businessman says that he loses money on every item he sells. When he is asked how he stays in business, he announces that he makes it all up on volume. In essence, that is now what Kohn is arguing. The hospitals lose money on every Medicaid patient that they treat. Since Obamacare cut the Medicaid payments, the hospitals are losing even more money on each Medicaid patient. Kohn, however, wants the hospitals to take more of these losing patients and thereby to make enough money to stay open. It does not work like that.
The truth is that Obamacare has squeezed these small hospitals to the point where many are being forced to close. A true believer like Kohn cannot stand by and watch her beloved president get blamed for forcing many rural areas to lose their hospitals, so she makes up this nonsense about Medicaid. I can picture her here smiling and saying, "if only the Republicans would let the hospitals take more patients and lose even more money, they could stay open."
It is a disgrace even for CNN to publish items of this sort. There should be some respect for the truth.
That is true, even at CNN.
I was reminded of Kohn's past lack of honesty when I read her column today on the CNN website. According to Kohn, Republicans are responsible for closing hospitals because they don't want to cooperate with Obamacare. Her statements are completely wrong as I will explain. I just wonder if they are intentionally wrong.
Let's start with Kohn's mistake. According to Kohn, a few rural hospitals across America are closing because Obamacare cut Medicaid funding for them. So far, Kohn has it backwards; it was the Democrats who cut the Medicaid funding in the Obamacare bill, not the Republicans. But Kohn goes further. The second part of her argument is that Republican governors in a number of states are not accepting the expansion of Medicaid which would allow these hospitals to treat many more Medicaid patients and thereby stay open. This claim is idiotic.
There is an old joke in which a businessman says that he loses money on every item he sells. When he is asked how he stays in business, he announces that he makes it all up on volume. In essence, that is now what Kohn is arguing. The hospitals lose money on every Medicaid patient that they treat. Since Obamacare cut the Medicaid payments, the hospitals are losing even more money on each Medicaid patient. Kohn, however, wants the hospitals to take more of these losing patients and thereby to make enough money to stay open. It does not work like that.
The truth is that Obamacare has squeezed these small hospitals to the point where many are being forced to close. A true believer like Kohn cannot stand by and watch her beloved president get blamed for forcing many rural areas to lose their hospitals, so she makes up this nonsense about Medicaid. I can picture her here smiling and saying, "if only the Republicans would let the hospitals take more patients and lose even more money, they could stay open."
It is a disgrace even for CNN to publish items of this sort. There should be some respect for the truth.
That is true, even at CNN.
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