Topic: NewsBusters
A Feb. 25 MRC Business & Media Institute article by Jeff Poor uncritically repeats claims by Fox News' Marc Siegel alleging "unintended consequences" to health care reform. Unfortunately for Poor, Siegel is hardly a reliable source for claims on health care reform.
Media Matters has documented Siegel's history of false claims and fear-mongering on health care reform -- for instance, repeating false claims about the end-of-life counseling that had been in the bill at one point.Siegel is not a dispassionate analyst on the issue but a full-fledged activist, having encouraged doctors to quit the American Medical Association over reform.
Poor makes no effort to analyze what Siegel says, instead suggesting that Siegel's presentation of "some of the myths surrounding the proposed political solutions for health care in the United States" is correct and authoritative -- for which there is no evidence presented to support. Poor repeats Siegel's agitation for tort reform without mentioning that, as the Washington Post's Ezra Klein has noted, there is already some tort reform in the bill.
