Why Is Meet the Press Having So Many Problems With Health Care?

"Meet the Press" has really got to step up its game on the health-care debate. Last week, host David Gregory tweeted "Compelling fact today: dem-wh health care plan would only cover 16 of the 50 mill uninsured. That makes it a harder sell. Info from cbo." Problem was, his fact wasn't much of a fact. CBO didn't score a "Dem-White House" plan. It scored a partial version of the Senate HELP Committee's plan. The White House wasn't involved. And nor, for that matter, would that plan have only covered 16 million. The version of the bill examined by CBO was missing the employer mandate and the specifics on the individual mandate. It was missing, in other words, the parts of the bill that would cover people. Gregory was right to say that the CBO score was a setback. But not for the reasons he suggested.

But so be it. That was just a tweet! Less forgivable was Nina Easton's performance on the actual program last weekend. She explained to the viewers that "the big speed bump this week, of course, was that CBO, Congressional Budget Office, study that said that the costs of a public plan are going to be well beyond what they expected." Later, she said that the CBO estimate "showed that 16 to 23 million people would lose their private or other type of health insurance if that public plan went through." One problem: The bill that the CBO scored didn't have any public plan in it at all. Her statements were simply untrue.

On a related note, I'm generally free Sunday mornings.