• Try Googling It, Mr. President

      During the President's State of the Union, Obama laid down a challenge to opponents of his health care plan:


      This is a tiring theme from the President: Pretend your opponents don't have their own ideas. As Reason's Peter Suderman put it, "Here, Obama, Let Me Google Some Health-Care Reform Alternatives For You":

      It's simply not true that reform opponents haven't offered solutions. Here's what I could come up with in about two minutes on the Google:

      In The Wall Street Journal, John Mackey suggested eight reforms that would make health insurance more competitive, more affordable, and more responsive to consumer demand.

      ... In The New York Times, Ramesh Ponnuru explained why mandatory universal coverage isn't likely to be the best way to solve our health-care problems and suggested, instead, that we break the link between employment and coverage and drop state coverage mandates.

      There's more out there from smart policy analysts like Arnold Kling and Michael Cannon, as well as from business-minded thinkers like Regina Hertzlinger and David Goldhill.

      No, not all of these essays and books come with thousand-page pieces of legislation attached (thanks goodness!), but every one of them offers innovative ideas for how to administer health-care and how to pay for it—ideas that, by and large, Obama has ignored.

      These ideas would "bring down premiums" in the individual insurance market, which would help "cover the uninsured" since this is generally the only market available to the uninsured. Obama's plan would raise premiums on the uninsured, but address that problem by forcing them to buy it and apply for a federal subsidy.

      These ideas would not add to the deficit, which is something you cannot say about Obama's plan, even though Obama feels comfortable repeating that falsehood.

      For a president that is credited as a consensus builder, someone who listens to arguments on all sides before coming to a decision, he is remarkably resistant to free-market reform. It's as it he stuck his fingers in his ears and sang "la, la, la, I can't hear you" whenever anyone tried to tell him about a health reform plan that did not involve expanding the scope of government or making millions of Americans dependent upon the federal government.

      Health Care
  • This Week's Show -- July 10, 2014

    MEDIA BIAS: When I began my career as a consumer reporter, I had an obvious agenda: Businesses cheat consumers! Government must regulate them! But when I wised up about the problems with government, my bosses resisted, and I stopped receiving Emmy Awards. Emmys reward liberal reporting.

    CENSORSHIP AT CBS: Investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson has a similar story. She explains why she left CBS after it became "harder and harder to get stories on television" that criticized this government and "any powers that be."

    IS STOSSEL BIASED?: Years ago, journalist Howard Kurtz criticized me for not being objective. I said it's impossible for any journalist to be completely objective. Now that Howard Kurtz is on Fox, we debate again.

    THE OBJECTIVITY MYTH: Andrew Kirell of Mediaite.com says, "every journalist has a point of view and they don't just magically check it the minute they walk in the newsroom door."

    NEW MEDIA: Reason TV's Remy Munasifi uses music videos and parodies to complain about things like politicians' spending. One of his latest parodies highlights the scandal surrounding the VA hospitals. Munasifi discusses his videos, which have gone viral on YouTube.

    RETRO REPORT: It's great there's a new media organization called Retro Report, which reveals media hype of the past ("crack babies," America's landfill "crisis," the "superpredator," etc.) and corrects stories everyone in the media got wrong. I discuss the new show with its executive producer, Kyra Darnton.

    REAL OR FAKE?: Sometimes people in the media say things that are so bizarre, you'd think they were made up. Kennedy of The Independents quizzes FoxBusiness.com's Kate Rogers, Fox Business host Charles Payne and me to see if any of us can tell which quotes are real, and which were made up by my staff.

    MY TAKE: I used to report on lots of scares. CBS even ran an ad for me where someone called me a "guardian angel."

    That's bunk. The only guardian angel is a free and open society. That's what allows innovation, gives people longer lives, and lifts billions out of poverty. But these gradual improvements aren't newsworthy. Scares and disaster make the news.

    News is broken not just because we're biased but because most good and important news happens slowly.

    9PM ET on Fox Business Network