watch her eyes...looking for carlos watson to save her....

hilarious...

She's always been rather clueless. I remember when she first started during the dot-com boom years. She'd spew a whole bunch of business buzzwords and obviously did not know what any of it meant. But she was cute and telegenic, so her career was assured.

Thus, today, we're stuck with her propounding ignorance on the air, helping to ensure the public knows less about an issue than it did before she opened her mouth.

Your third paragraph from the end repeatedly uses something like "Bartiromo thinks." Unfortunately thinking is not part of her skill set. She is eye candy. Nothing more. She gets paid to "report" on Wall Streeters. For her "reporting" is reading what her producer has put on the cue cards. Her Wall Street "interviews" are generally soft ball after soft ball. Sadly the term "bimbo" fits her like a glove.

It's amazing. I always thought my theory that 99% of humans are dumber than me was ludicrous, but now I'm not so sure.

The health care debate is positively moronic since no real debate is occurring, just pontificating shrilling.

I mean it's like ya think ..."Social Security was some kind of government run thing..".

Now who said that?

Thanks George, you dumbed us all down.

Come on, folks, cut the Money Honey a break.

She spends her days on corporate jets, interviewing Masters of the Universe in Davos and Dubai, lunching with Warren Buffet, going toe to toe with the tycoons of Wall Street.

Expecting her to undergo the culture shock of visiting OUR world is asking too much. . .

Perhaps policymakers should simply make Medicare available as an option to anyone who wants to be part of it.

Ted Kennedy proposed exactly that on multiple occasions. Unfortunately, the idea didn't go anywhere. But I think an up-or-down vote on Medicare For All on the House floor would at least educate people that no, Republicans are against this idea too.

Opening Medicare to all was always the best solution. The plan is understood by almost everyone, and while it isn't univewrsally popular, it doesn't have the down side of being a plan the Thugs can undermine as being socialism or foreign. Reform insurance practices of recission and pre-existing conditions, require minimal insurance offerings, mandate participation and allow participation in Medicare. Simplicity itself.

She finished with negative money on Celebrity Jeopardy. No joke.

It is indeed the common sense solution and I have no idea why the democrats where too fucking stupid not to make this their proposal. It is easy to understand no one who isn't as stupid as Maria would oppose it. Just allow people to buy into Medicare based on its per capita cost, and come up with a formula for subsidizes for those who can't afford it some time in the future after the dust settles.

It's cable TV. What did you expect?

"A lot of Americans are confused about health care policy."

Yes, thanks to MSNBC and CNN paying empty heads to rattle like this. Bartiromo is apparently not just uninformed, but seriously ignorant of the subject of Health Care in America, yet she is able to take down a nice fat paycheck by entertaining wealthy people as if the subject were comedy. MSNBC thinks it can be the opposition to Fox News by being Fox-Lite.

Simpler still. Medicare availability for the uninsured. If they want to buy private, they can. Employers with crummy private plans will be pressured by their own employees to dump it for a better plan or no plan at all so they are eligible for Medicare. Private care is so much better, this should pose no threat to free markets, right?

... simultaneously arguing argument against ...

Typo: "argument" should be deleted.

In a perfect world
In a perfect world
The fire which burns so bright
Is seen best in the darkest night
In an ordinary world
In an ordinary world
The smokiest fire with the least heat
Is seen best on the tee vee nuuus beet

If you've worked for 10 years, you've paid 40 quarters, so you ARE eligible for Medicare... when you retire.

Why not make Medicare coverage an option for the unemployed who are too young to retire?

I dunno as this works, as a fiscal or actuarial matter.

But I DO know that it is a powerful political response for the single mom waitresses of America, the Elizabeth Smiths, who can demand: "I have ALREADY paid for this health care, Congress: why are you denying it to me?"

Well?

So who pays for a massive influx into Medicare? And how would this prevent the growth of an already unsustainable system of spending with piss poor results, i.e. feeding the monster? This just ain't a question that conservatives alone might ask.

Compare this to the (unwitting) Huckabee Plan, which would let all Americans buy into the same health coverage that senators get.

http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2009/09/the-huckabee-plan.php

RALPH NADER, responding to how he would resolve the heathcare question: "I would go for full Medicare for everyone, because people understand Medicare. Forty-five million people get it. They have free choice of doctor and hospital. It’s a three percent administrative burden, compared to 20 to 25 percent for the Aetnas and the private health insurance bureaucracies. It’s something that people understand."

Weiner needs to get more air time on this issue. I loved the way he shut her yap and beat her down with the facts. She had no comeback and I don't think any other right-wing moron who passes for a conservative commentator would have had any more success.

We need more aggressive, assertive advocates like him.

just because Ralph Nader said it doesn't mean it is wrong.

I wonder why all these people, who are suddenly all concerned about deficits; I wonder why all these people were so silent during the lead up to Bush's Iraq War and Bush and the Congressional Republicans' unfunded tax cuts for the wealthy? I wonder why, too, people pitch fits over health care spending, while foolishly coughing up 52 cents of every tax dollar for the military. I mean, seriously, we have more nukes than anyone, enough to destroy the earth several times over, and more than 200 million guns in the hands of citizens...what country would DARE attack or invade us? Oh, forgot! We need to spend trillions fighting a handful of two-bit crooks that we call terrorists, because they hate us for our freedom, which, according to today's Republicans, we must forgo in order to defeat the ter'rsts. Talk about a nation with its priorities on assbackwards! No, wait! We need to limit gom'ment and surrender its functions to corporations, because corporations are more efficient and less wasteful and less dangerous than is gom'ment...forgetting, I suppose, that it was these same corporations that had recently bankrupted the country and had to be SAVED by the incompetent gom'ment. Sorry, Lou, but, f-sakes, I am so tired of hearing from people like you---people, who are so f-ing clueless as to continuously cut off your own nose to spite your face. Turn off FOX News, Lou, and go buy a f-ing clue already!

It is a disservice to the viewers when very uninformed people on TV act as critics, even questioners . Bartiromo should apoligize to all viewers and tell us she knows nothing about health care even Medicare.
Why watch cnbc anyway

Mike Pense, R, said on Morning Joe that he was against a 'public option', because employers would drop private coverage and let their employees go with a 'public option'.

like, this is a bad thing?

Lou--Participants can pay as they go. The uninsured would have to participate in a plan--that is the nature of insurance. If they don't pay up front, they can pay in taxes. We are already as a nation paying for this coverage for the uninsured and poor when they go to the emergency rooms and in county clinics -- and especially paying the profits to the private insurance carrier. I pay over $1,000 a month for my health care for. They have jacked up my costs every year of my life. I want out from under the thumb of the insurance monopoly, and access to public care.

"Sorry, Lou, but, f-sakes, I am so tired of hearing from people like you---people, who are so f-ing clueless as to continuously cut off your own nose to spite your face. Turn off FOX News, Lou, and go buy a f-ing clue already!"

Jeebus, talk about stirring up a little town hall rant! The extremists ain't only on the right side.

I was just asking a simple question (I don't have cable, but I do READ.)

The medical delivery system is seriously fucked up. I don't see how adding to Medicare, which is partly responsible for the runaway spending and growth of the this unsustainable medical industrial process, is going to address some of the really serious issues which this reform agenda is not even considering. Part of the problem is that Medicare AND the health insurance companies ARE the customers, instead of people like you and I.

Lou asks the right questions, albeit a bit too dismissively -- habit, I guess. Here are the answers as I understand 'em:

First, I dunno that providing Medicare for an otherwise eligible person who is too young to retire during unemployment would be a "massive influx". It could be, but somebody would have to actually prove that before dismissing the whole idea, particularly because the objection applies to the whole public option issue anyway. The principal objection to a public option is that, because it would be a direct subsidy of the patient's health care (rather than an subsidy for the private profit of the insurance companies), it would drive private insurers out of the health care biz. I doubt it, but it's a real objection.

Second, Medicare's funding issues are primarily the imbalance between those paying in, and those getting benefits: not enough young people paying while they work for an ever-growing number of old people getting care. I'll grant you that injecting younger people getting care (or more precisely, getting the insurance they've already paid for) would make that worse -- but some might regard that as a reality check on the whole system, INCLUDING the effect it would have to force private insurers to face cost issues as competition. I wouldn't continue to pay Aetna rates for Medicare coverage: would you?

Third, Medicare isn't -- quite -- as good as the care private insurance ostensibly provides (that is, if you're young and healthy enough not to need it). So there is a strong incentive for younger and healthier people who can afford it, to stay on private insurance or to return to it as soon as they have the scratch. In the example of the waitress, she has a job (and in my thought experiment, wouldn't be eligible cuz she's not unemployed), so she wants something cheap -- like Medicare -- through a public option. So your objection to letting her into Medicare doesn't necessarily directly apply, but the objection is essentially the same for a public option -- not so much that we can't afford it, but that private insurance couldn't compete with it. That's probably true as INSURANCE, but definitely not true for CARE. You get what you pay for, and Medicare (or a public option) will always be the Post Office, and never FedEx.

Fourth, the core political problem with health care reform right now is that the Democrats are working themselves into a position where we're going to massively subsidize the insurance companies without forcing them to compete with a public option: no incentive to cut costs, there. The reason is precisely because the unemployed and working uninsured can't afford private insurance, NOR pay for the inflated (cuz of third party payments) costs of health care. So Lou's objection to letting younger people buy into Medicare (as with my notion of a bridge during unemployment) isn't just an objection to a public option, it's the same indictment of the existing system that makes reform imperative: the goddam thing doesn't work right. So, finally:

Fifth, there's the political dynamic. People who already HAVE subsidized health care (like Medicare) are naturally afraid that they have something to lose, and generally being old and cranky, tend to feel like they've earned and paid for all the expensive care that younger people are actually paying for. "Why should we pay for your health care?" is the authentic voice of the opposition to reform -- and needs a clear answer.

I am just wondering if that answer isn't: "I've ALREADY paid for my health care, and I'm still paying for yours -- but Congress isn't giving ME what I've paid for: which is why we need reform."

What's your objection to that, Lou? I suppose you might argue that I didn't answer your question, that taxpayer-funded health insurance for everybody who wants it would cost taxpayers FAR too much, but I'm not at all sure that's true: forcing private insurers to compete with a public option would require them to compete on cost, as well as quality (not a savings to the taxpayer, but to those buying higher quality private care at a lower price, and thus a worthwhile public investment), and the competitive advantages that private insurance would continue to have on quality of care would tend to minimize the cost to the taxpayer.

Right?

It is indeed the common sense solution and I have no idea why the democrats where too fucking stupid not to make this their proposal.

Not too stupid- too bought by the insurance industry.

As I heard elsewhere, MSNBC why not cut to the chase and put her in a bikini ..we all know why she is there and it ain't for her thoughtful analysis

There is a little bit of the asshole in everyone associated with Wall St. Bartiromo is not to my eyes a particularly attractive woman anymore, if she ever was, so you wonder why she is on the air given her stupidity.

Hiring the ignorant, ill informed, lazy and sloppy seems to be the trend for the American media.

It will not take much for younger generations to surpass these adults by leaps and bounds.

Lou,

The short version is that Medicare currently has most (if not all) of the highest costing patients in the healthcare spectrum: elderly, retired individuals.

If it were opened up to all comers, younger individuals, who currently don't require a lot of care but need coverage, would start paying into the system. All the other cost-saving measures in the HCR bill would also apply to bring costs into line.

Currently, private insurers like Medicare because it removes the highest costing component that they may otherwise have to cover (which would reduce profits). They fear a public option because it would siphon away lower cost clients and force them to compete harder for every healthcare dollar.

I was so inspired by her breathtaking stupidity that I actually sent an email to CNBC that began:

"How stupid do you have to be to not know that you're ineligible for Medicare until you're 65 years old? I guess you have to be as stupid as Maria Bartiromo .... "

If you want to see another example of Bartiromo's idiocy, watch her debate with Matt Taibbi on health care:

http://thepoliticalcarnival.blogspot.com/2009/08/video-matt-taibbi-versus-maria.html

I don't see how adding to Medicare, which is partly responsible for the runaway spending and growth of the this unsustainable medical industrial process... -lou

Wait, what? How so? That's a bombshell of a claim to drop unsubstantiated, and one I've oft heard the right repeat.

The system takes the highest risk consumers away from the private system and administers care with a trifling 3% overhead.

If anything, Medicare has slowed the "runaway spending" by giving mostly elderly people consistent care, which is far cheaper than frequent emergency care.

Just saying, we need to fix it before adding more and making it even more resistant to change in the future. We delude ourselves if we think that any of this shit is sustainable. This isn't a conservative or a liberal idea.

And just how do you "fix it"? What's broken?

40 million or so Americans are uninsured. Is that part of what's broken for you, or not? If it is, then I don't see how you fix it without adding.

18,000 Americans die every year from curable or preventable diseases because they are uninsured (like the waitress) and can't afford the overpriced, subsidized care you're bitching about: how are you going to fix THAT, without adding?

You're bitching about the delusion the current system is unsustainable -- and then dissing people who are proposing real solutions to real problems.

Well?

I think that adding more people makes it easier to fix. Right now, it is "that thing for old people". Folks always look at it like it is just a drain on their income and something that is going to maybe be there in the distant future. If a significant fraction of the population besides the elderly had a vested interest in it, in the here and now, it would be easier to address its management rather than harder. It would be citizen owned and operated. That is the definition of public.

Just saying, we need to fix it before adding more and making it even more resistant to change in the future. -lou

The cash flow from new, lower-risk consumers would help make it more fiscally solvent into the future. Opening Medicare as a buy-in public option for all Americans with rates based on means is the solution to both the problem of uninsured Americans and Medicare's continued solvency.

Which is undoubtedly why the Democrats took it off the table before anyone even sat at the table.

Screw Matt Taibbi- I want to see the Jeopardy clip!!!

As I heard elsewhere, MSNBC why not cut to the chase and put her in a bikini ..we all know why she is there and it ain't for her thoughtful analysis
Posted by: johnR on September 2, 2009 at 9:14 AM | PERMALINK

**********************************************

Not just in a bikini, but put her in a window surrounded by red lights .. like they do in the red light districts in Amsterdam .. for that is what this corporate slut is about ... she stupid because she has been fucked silly by all her Wall Street customers

An influx of new enrollees that pay premiums wouldn't really destabilize Medicare further, particularly if they had previously been uninsured. The real test here is commitment to Medicare payment reform, but Medicare reimbursement has to be fixed whether it gets new enrollment or not. If there is only one program, then full time and resources can be devoted to its problems, rather than being diffused over more than one government run program. I would like to see elements of Medicaid folded into Medicare for that reason alone. In any event, the main point is, the problems faced by Medicare don't become worse because uninsured people now have access.

Spotted a a typo in the first paragraph.

"... sharing reflexively conservative, poorly-thought-out arguments...."

You repeated yourself needlessly.

Thanks for letting me know she's a rightwing bafoon. I've watched her only a few times and her stupipdity when it came to business and economic matters was so apparent that I had to change channels. Why NBC pays her to babble this way baffles me but then I've been wondering why they have CNBC in the 1st place. Like Lawrence Kudlow and his ilk can't find employment with that Fox Business channel? Oh wait - only 21,000 people watch this waste of air space. Seriously, can't they just play old movies and TV infomercials instead?

"I've tried to count of all the ways in which Bartiromo's remarks were foolish...She thinks a public option would undermine quality care, but she doesn't know why. She thinks Medicare somehow offers sub-standard care, but she doesn't know why. She thinks 44 year olds who like Medicare should sign up for it, unaware of eligibility restrictions. She thinks Weiner should choose to opt into Medicare, while simultaneously arguing argument against giving American consumers the choice of a public option."

Actually, I think she personifies the opponents of health care reform in one pretty package. Have you listened to the half-baked comments coming from the opponents of health care at these public forums? Oftentimes they don't realize that Medicare is a government run plan. They don't understand the legal language of the bill, even though they have claimed to read it but show a surprising lack of ignorance about what they've read. They've waved copies of the constitution as proof that government isn't permitted to provide health care, then freely admit that they aren't "constitutional scholars".

All I can say, is that Bartiromo is the Poster Child for the opposition. I'm kind of glad she's out their blathering.

If Anthony Weiner was an Insurance company CEO, The Money Honey would have asked to see his weiner.

Screw Matt Taibbi- I want to see the Jeopardy clip! Kevin Ray @ 10:40

Is this the one? 9:26min

Money quote: "And because we want you to be around for the final jeopardy, we'll give you $1k"...and still ends up with $300

After watching something so incredulous, I could not help but think just how or why such a "journalist" found herself actually hired to be in the position she is in. Obviously it wasn't for her investigative accuman! -Kevo

Doubtful sez: "The cash flow from new, lower-risk consumers would help make it more fiscally solvent into the future. "

Ummm... we all already pay into Medicare.

watch her eyes

I can't take my eyes off her eyes.

While she deserves all the bashing I'm sure she got in this thread, it is nevertheless nice to know that not all wingnut women look like men in drag.

The "Money Honey" has turned into the "Dow Cow".