According to the Associated Press, MSNBC’s Morning Meeting host Dylan Ratigan has issued an apology for a live confrontation with congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Democrat from Florida who appeared on the show last Friday to discuss the health care reform bill with Ratigan.

The conversation became heated when Ratigan pressed Schultz to explain why presumed passage of the bill was spurring insurance stocks to rise in value when logic would seem to dictate the opposite; when she demurred, stating that “I am not a stock analyst,” Ratigan castigated her for “not answering my question,” adding “I do not have time for you to come do talking points because it makes you feel good.”

After a few days of reflection, however, Ratigan appears to have softened his stance, yesterday issuing an on-air apology…

via MSNBC’s Dylan Ratigan Yells at Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL).

No doubt Schultz had words after the show with her Democratic colleagues running the MSNBC network, and pressure was brought to bear on Ratigan to apologize. What was he thinking anyway, criticizing a Democrat on MSNBC? Perhaps he had a momentary lapse, and thought he was back on CNBC’s Fast Money.

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With so large a chunk of the economy and medical practice itself in Washington’s hands, quality will decline. Ultimately, “our capacity to innovate and develop new therapies would suffer most of all,” as Harvard Medical School Dean Jeffrey Flier recently wrote in our pages. Take the $2 billion annual tax—rising to $3 billion in 2018—that will be leveled against medical device makers, among the most innovative U.S. industries. Democrats believe that more advanced health technologies like MRI machines and drug-coated stents are driving costs too high, though patients and their physicians might disagree.

via A Reckless Health Care Bill That Nobody Believes In – WSJ.com.

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…[a] raw exercise of political power for the single purpose of permanently expanding the American entitlement state. An increasing roll of leaders in health care and business are looking on aghast at a bill that is so large and convoluted that no one can truly understand it, as Finance Chairman Max Baucus admitted on the floor last week. The only goal is to ram it into law while the political window is still open, and clean up the mess later.

via A Reckless Health Care Bill That Nobody Believes In – WSJ.com.

This is “change we can believe in?” A “health care” bill written by insurance companies?

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