Sen. Barbara Boxer appeared on Ed Schultz's MSNBC show earlier,
and her performance was a pretty stunning demonstration of how
little clue she has about what's actually in the health care
legislation she was on air to promote. A frustrated Boxer
appeared on the show to defend the bill against attacks from the
liberal Schultz, who began the segment by hammering Democrats for
caving into moderates and watering down the government-run plan.
In the clip below, Boxer tried to reassure Schultz by touting all
of the government programs that are expanded by the bill. But she
stumbled when trying to say how many new Medicaid beneficiaries
would be added, said she needed to fact check it, looked off
camera as if for guidance, and ended up asserting that the
Medicaid expansion alone would cover 30 million more people. Yet
anybody with an inkling of understanding of the Senate bill knows
that the entire bill only covers 31 million according to the
Congressional Budget Office. The expansion of Medicaid and SCHIP
accounts for 15 million of that. I may sound like I'm nitpicking,
but this is not some obscure provision of the bill or esoteric
statistic. The coverage provisions account for the bulk of the
overall cost of the legislation. It's alarming that a sitting
Senator would be this utterly clueless on the most sweeping
domestic policy initiative since Medicare was created in 1965.
