Anyone who had actually been paying attention for the last 8 years would have realized our press corps no longer holds administrations accountable for their “innumerable” exaggerations, omissions and misstatements. To apply a double standard to one administration while glibly accepting the outright lies and corruption of another is pure hypocrisy. Or maybe you weren’t paying attention during the Bush years???
Further if you had been paying attention to what the current GOP members in Congress are saying you would notice an extreme amount of misinformation, omissions and outright lies are being stated by members who accept large campaign donations from the health insurance industry. Consider that most of them oversaw adding over three trillion dollars in debt without so much as a whimper about how that debt would be paid down or even how that expenditure would provide any benefits to the American people. No one accused the invasion of Iraq to be a tax hike, or asked how that debt was ever going to be paid off. Much like Ronald Reagan’s own nearly 3 trillion dollar deficit creation and lies and omissions for that matter. That’s still on our tab. Add to that a Tarp Bill with little or no accountability for the banks and brokerage firms it bailed out or sent out of business and you have exactly what you are critical of in the press coverage of Obama. I didn’t hear you complaining about the failure of the press to hold people accountable then.
Most of Obama’s current critics sat back and accepted the outright lies and deception of absolute guarantees of weapons of mass destruction, and when it became obvious to even FOX News editorialists that no such weapons ever existed, there was no effort to by the press or Congress to bring accountability to the table. Widespread corruption in the rebuilding process? No accountability. We don’t torture? Still no accountability. Politicizing the Justice department and using it to pursue political prosecutions? No accountability. Illegal and unconstitutional surveillance programs? No accountability. Lying to Congress? No accountability. The list goes on and on. Where was your attention then??
Our military budget is actually the big drain on the budget and serves the largest threat to our stability as a nation. Over the past 30 years there has been a deliberate attempt by opponents of government to make programs like Medicare and Medicaid less effective. Social security has also taken hits – although it sure is a good thing we didn’t privatize Social security like Bush wanted to do. Private insurance costs far more and is less efficient. Certainly the GOP government ineffective corrupt and criminal – no wonder they don’t trust government.
I do not support mandating and subsidizing the purchase of health insurance – because I don’t want to be forced to participate in government run corporate welfare programs and because insurance has absolutely nothing to do with providing actual healthcare. It simply adds cost to the process and we are suffering now from the inefficiencies of that system, which include corporate bureaucrats rationing healthcare, restricting choice of doctors and supporting lavish executive salaries and retirement plans. All unnecessary to providing healthcare. I don’t hear the press or your buddies in the GOP pointing to these facts. Obama understand clearly and has stated that the only way to provide universal healthcare is with a single payer system.
Clearly you have not been paying attention and at best you are simply adding to the misinformation, omissions and exaggerations. If you want it to end – stop doing it. Try bringing real accountability to the table instead of partisan propaganda.

Thanks for your response. I would agree that Medicare is a disaster. A local expert has told me that 74 cents of every dollar is administrative. He’s way right, politically, of me, but he is also highly informed, and I don’t doubt he is close to correct.
I am handcuffed in my own health care situation. I am a school district employee, but I am forced to pay for my wife’s high deductible policy out-of-pocket because our district’s insurance situation makes us pay the same as if we have twenty kids.
We have no kids.
I am also very fit, but have to pay the same as the sickliest of us. I eat well.
So yes, there is a lot of one-size-fits-all out there that is hurting health care.
I like your recommendations as well. What rankles me, as a left of center guy, is why was it okay for all the cumbersome inefficiencies in health care to exist for all these years? To me, it seems like fiscal conservatism is becoming all the rage in the last six months, but before that there was a spending spree. The Contract with America, (started in 1993 was it?) gave Republicans a lot of energy and time to effect change, but they didn’t.
So when I read your words, they seem partisan.
I see this country headed for a cliff in a lot of ways because of partisanship. I know that cuts both ways, but you seem to have the ear of our local paper (Pueblo Chieftain), and you could help things out by trying to mend fences. You could make the same points without “Pinocchio” remarks about the President of the United States.
Those kinds of remarks are plain irritating and divisive.

Thanks