Fox News Watchdog

Tracking talking points advanced by Republican lawmakers in response to Senator-elect Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts, Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy asserted that the election “may be a big indicator on how people across the country really feel about health care reform in the United States.” However, Massachusetts is not representative of the nation as a whole since it already has a health care program that insures nearly all residents — a unique situation that allowed Brown to argue that Massachusetts would not benefit from health care reform.

Echoing GOP
talking points, Doocy suggested Brown’s victory reflects nationwide attitudes
toward health care

McConnell:
“Message” is that “American people” are asking Congress “to stop this healthcare
bill.” Senate Minority Leader Mitch
McConnell reportedly stated in response to
Brown’s victory, “I think the message of the moment is that the American people,
all across the country, are asking us, even in the most liberal state,
Massachusetts,
to stop this healthcare bill.”

Cornyn: “American
people” telling
Congress “we need to stop this terrible healthcare bill.”
Appearing on the January 20 edition
of America’s Newsroom, Sen. John
Cornyn (R-TX) stated, “I think the American people, through the voters of
Massachusetts,
were trying to tell us something. And that is we need to stop this terrible
health care bill and start over, as Scott Brown said, and do something that will
help bring down the cost, make it more affordable, and make sense.”

Doocy: Brown
victory “may be a big indicator” of how American people “really feel about
health care reform.” From the January 20 edition of Fox
News’ Fox & Friends:

DOOCY: Massachusetts voters yesterday sent a Republican to
Washington, D.C.
Scott Brown is now the Senator-elect, and his win over Democrat Martha Coakley may
be a big indicator on how people across the country really feel about health
care reform in the United
States.

According to a new Rasmussen poll,
78 percent of Brown voters strongly oppose the health care legislation in
Congress, and 52 percent of Brown voters say it was the most important issue in
determining their votes.

But Doocy ignored
key factor making MA not representative of U.S.

Brown campaign:
Massachusetts
has “already achieved near-universal coverage.” Brown stated
during the final debate with Coakley, “We have insurance here in Massachusetts. We have
some of the best doctors, nurses, and hospitals in the country.” Brown further
said of the national health care bill, “[M]y job is to be the senator from
Massachusetts.
I’m not going to be subsidizing for the next three, five years, pick a number,
subsidizing what other states have failed to do.” Politico‘s Ben Smith further reported that Eric Fehrnstrom, a
Brown aide, stated:

In Massachusetts, 98 percent of residents are
covered by insurance through our own state reforms. The plan is not perfect, and
we need to get costs down, but we have already achieved near-universal coverage.
There is nothing for us in a national plan except higher taxes and more spending
to finance coverage expansions in other states. It’s a raw deal for Massachusetts.

NY
Times: Massachusetts is
“unlikely place for a referendum on the health care bill.”
The New York Times reported on January 19 that
“Massachusetts is one of the few states where the benefits promised by the
national bill were expected to have little effect on how many of its residents
got coverage, making it an unlikely place for a referendum on the health care
bill”:

Although the
race has riveted the nation largely because it was seen as contributing to the
success or defeat of the health care bill, the potency of the issue for voters
here was difficult to gauge. That is because Massachusetts already has near-universal
health coverage, thanks to a law passed when Mitt Romney, a Republican, was
governor.

Thus
Massachusetts
is one of the few states where the benefits promised by the national bill were
expected to have little effect on how many of its residents got coverage, making
it an unlikely place for a referendum on the health care bill.

Byron York: “On
health care, Massachusetts is in a unique position.”
Washington
Examiner chief political correspondent Byron
York wrote on January 18 that “[o]n
health care, Massachusetts is in a unique position. It
already has near-universal coverage, enacted in 2006 by Republican governor Mitt
Romney and the Democratic legislature, so a national measure designed to extend
coverage to millions of currently-uncovered Americans means little to Bay State
residents.”

Massachusetts
health plan, which is similar to Senate bill, enjoys support of Brown, people of
MA

Jonathan Cohn:
Brown supports Massachusetts’ health care reform, which is
similar to national plans. The New
Republic‘s Jonathan Cohn wrote on January 18 that “Scott
Brown is running on a promise to block the health care bill in Washington. But, as you
may have heard, he is not running on a promise to roll back the reforms that
Massachusetts
implemented three years ago. In fact, he says he supports those reforms.” Cohn
added, “[T]he basic architecture of the coverage scheme in Massachusetts is
virtually identical to what we’d do nationally if the bills before Congress
pass. The big difference — and, yes, it’s a big difference — is that the
Massachusetts
plan didn’t really try to control costs, as the national reforms
would.”

Pearlstein:
Massachusetts’
program “has broad support among voters and the business community.”
Writing in The Washington Post that “the Massachusetts contest was
not a referendum on health-care reform,” Steven Pearlstein stated:

Massachusetts has already
adopted a reform plan that, with its subsidies and individual mandate and
government-run insurance exchange, looks to the naked eye not unlike the plan
now before Congress. Despite some initial glitches and higher-than-expected
costs, the program has broad support among voters and the business community —
so broad, in fact, that Brown himself has said he would not vote to repeal it.
So why would those same voters now be rising up to defeat a national plan
modeled on the Massachusetts experiment, only this time with
better cost controls and special provisions to protect the state’s teaching
hospitals and increase its Medicaid funding?

Romney adviser Kaufman on why many
MA voters oppose health care reform: “They already paid for
it.” From a January 13 article at The Daily Caller:

Romney
adviser Ron Kaufman, a Washington lobbyist who
has been working with the Brown campaign in an unofficial advisory role, said
that the people of Massachusetts are “satisfied with what they
got” but that they are angry about the federal bill being debated because it
would force the state to pay for something they already have: nearly universal
coverage.

“They
already paid for it,” Kaufman said.

Brown said
much the same thing during his interview on Fox.

“Why would
we subsidize and why would we pay more for something we already have. It makes
no sense,” he said.

Boston
Globe: 59 percent said
they favored Massachusetts’ health plan.
On September 28, 2009, The Boston Globe reported that “[p]ublic support for
Massachusetts’
closely watched health insurance overhaul has slipped over the past year, a new
poll indicates, but residents still support the path-breaking 2006 law by a
2-to-1 ratio.” The article further stated: “Amid a severe recession that has led
to cuts in state programs and unrelenting job losses, 59 percent of those
surveyed said they favored the state’s multimillion-dollar insurance initiative,
down from 69 percent a year ago. The poll, by the Harvard School of Public
Health and The Boston Globe, found that opposition to the law stands at 28
percent, up slightly from 22 percent in a June 2008 survey.” The poll also found
that “[o]nly 11 percent of state residents favored repealing the law, similar to
last year’s finding.”

Doocy reports
that “52 percent of Brown voters say” health care was their “most important
issue,” but ignores that more Coakley supporters cited reform as number one
issue

Rasmussen election night poll shows
more Coakley than Brown voters said health care reform most important factor in
determining their vote. A Rasmussen Reports election night poll in Massachusetts
found that 63 percent of Coakley voters said health care was the most important
issue in determining their vote, while 52 percent of Brown voters said it was
their top issue. The poll also found that “52% of Coakley
supporters Strongly Favor the health care plan,” while “[a]nother 41% Somewhat
Favor the legislation.” As Media Matters for America has
documented, pollster Scott Rasmussen
previously reportedly worked for President George W. Bush’s re-election campaign
and for the Republican National Committee in 2003 and
2004.

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