In a blog post Wednesday, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman aggressively swiped “talk show hosts” who “literally know nothing” about health insurance data-collecting and yet accuse the U.S. Census Bureau of trying to “cook the books” on Obamacare.
He didn’t mention him by name, but Krugman was referring to Joe Scarborough. He linked to this article about the MSNBC host making that exact claim on his show Wednesday morning, one day after it was reported that the Census would change how it measured insurance coverage rates (which angered many Republicans).
“You can argue that the Census decision to change its health-insurance questionnaire starting with the 2013 data wasn’t such a good idea — in fact, I know a number of health care experts who are dismayed,” wrote Krugman, a liberal columnist and Nobel Prize-winning economist. “But it’s really quite vile to have talk-show hosts who quite literally know nothing about the field, other than that they’re against covering the uninsured, casually accusing Census of “cooking the books” to support Obamacare.” (Link in the original.)
Here’s what Scarborough said: “Listen, the White Houses on both sides do their best to cook the books… This is a particularly clumsy effort.”
The headline of Krugman’s blog post? “Obamacare Truthers at MSNBC.”
I watched it and I think PK is over reacting just a bit, but I do understand the problem with how flippantly people make such serious allegations
A failed politician on television always knows more than anyone with experience and education in an area, just ask them.
The Republican Fantasy World only allows for any success by anyone non-Republican to automatically be guilty of “cooking the books.”
None of this should surprise any of us. Neither is there anything that can be done to keep it from happening. Those who claim the ACA numbers are being faked, are the same people who loathe anything Obama but love their SSI checks every month. Or love their Medicare or their unemployment, or their disability, or their pell grants or their GI Bill or whatever, yet simply refuse to acknowledge anything that might be of good news to a Democrat.
It’s not just Obama either. Sure they hate him and always will. But they hated Clinton too. How many times did they tell us he was going to destroy the country? Was going to take all of our guns away?? How many times have they claimed the surpluses were the result of the GOP congress? How many times did they blame him for weakening our military-- the very same military they chest thumped when Bush sent it into Never Ending War. They’re insane. And the best thing we can do is to never forget just how insane they truly are.