Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer said this morning that Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) does not support the Baucus bill — which seemed strange to us, since Lieberman had joined moderate Democrats in a September statement commending the Senate Finance Committee health care reform bill.
“Sen. Joe Lieberman, now an independent, was weighing in on the Senate Finance bill earlier today,” Hemmer said. “He was speaking with Don Imus on the Fox Business Network moments ago. (He was) asked whether or not he would vote for the Baucus bill. He’s worried about costs. His answer: no.”
Well, not quite. Hemmer then showed Lieberman’s segment on Imus’ show. He never quite said that he doesn’t support the Baucus bill — at least not in the segment Fox News showed.
“I’m concerned that there’s a danger that we’re trying to do to much here,” Lieberman said, adding that trying to bend the health care cost curve down while simultaneously expanding coverage to millions of uninsured Americans “may be really hard to pull off.”
This puts us in this position where you say, “On the one hand, what we’re about to do on adopting health care reform will reduce the cost of health insurance from what it would otherwise be,” and on the other hand you say, “Well incidentally, we’re gonna raise your taxes or cut your Medicare to the tune of $900 billion or $1 trillion.” And people are beginning to think they that maybe they’d do better holding onto what we have now. If you ask me, I’d say we should really focus on what’s been called health care delivery reforms.
So this doesn’t seem to be the unequivocal “no” that Hemmer led the segment with. Still, even though the independent senator doesn’t sit on the Senate Finance Committee, one might read into Lieberman’s remarks that he’s hesitant to support the sort of ambitious health insurance reform that many in the Democratic Party are pushing for.
Late Update: So Lieberman did say he doesn’t support the Baucus bill — though for some reason, Fox News didn’t show that clip this morning to back up Hemmer’s claim.
Here’s the video from Think Progress.
When asked by Imus if he supports the Baucus bill, Lieberman says, “Not, not, no, I mean, not the way it is now.”
I’m afraid that in the end, the Baucus bill is actually going to raise the price of insurance for most of the people in the country.
Why Fox News didn’t show this clip to back up Hemmer’s claim that Lieberman doesn’t support the Baucus bill, well, I don’t know. But Hemmer was right — Lieberman says he doesn’t support the Baucus bill.
Editor’s Note: The headline of this post was revised since it was first published.
