How nice of Consumer Reports to tell people to wait a month before using the Healthcare.debacle website (h/t Instapundit):
If all this is too much for you to absorb, follow our previous advice: Stay away from Healthcare.gov for at least another month if you can. Hopefully that will be long enough for its software vendors to clean up the mess they’ve made. The coverage available through the marketplaces won’t begin until Jan. 1, 2014, at the earliest, and you have until Dec. 15 to enroll if you need insurance that starts promptly.
Before you give Consumer Reports a big Thank You Consumer Watchdog For Watching Out For Me, keep in mind that Consumer Reports and its parent, Consumers Union, were big backers of Obamacare at the earliets stages, long before it took its final shape. Consumer Reports argued for even more activist government intervention, including the so-called Public Option.
As I reported on October 1, 2009, Consumer Reports’ Massive Fail:
As reported by Politico, Consumers Union is putting its brand behind current health care reform proposals (it’s not clear which ones), including a government run plan. An advertisement being run by Consumers Union is completely vague, only calling for “health care reform.”That concept is agreed to by almost everyone, it’s just that most Americans have a very different concept of health care reform than the monstrous proposals — laden with taxes, penalties, punishments, government bureaucracy and out-of-control spending — which actually are on the table in Washington.On its health care website, however, it appears (although the language still is somewhat vague), that Consumers Union is backing many of the concepts in the Democratic proposals to have government run our health care system.Consumers Union has done substantial damage to its reputation and status. It may know dishwashers, but it obviously doesn’t know much about the Democratic proposals which I have spend a considerable time studying. I have analyzed on this blog dozens of specific aspects of the Democratic proposals, and it is shocking to me that Consumers Union is so profoundly ignorant of what actually is in the proposals. The dreamy concept of providing care for everyone at low cost with higher quality, which is the thrust of the Consumers Union position, has no basis in the actual legislative proposals.
While the Consumer Reports branding of its “health care reform” push sounded benign:
For the first time ever, Consumers Union is weighing in with a TV ad that calls on lawmakers to find a solution for health reform.You may wonder why we are injecting ourselves so publicly into a heated debate that has generated an enormous amount of concern and confusion. We believe that so much attention has been focused on the politics of health care that we’re losing sight of the core problems. Health costs are skyrocketing, which affects all of us, and if you get seriously sick, having insurance is no guarantee that you’ll get the care you need.
But it wasn’t benign, and its presentation was full of evasion and implicit political posturing, as I documented on October 5, 2009, Consumer Reports’ Specious Stand On Health Care Reform:
CR has stepped out of being a provider of unbiased information (both good and bad) to empower consumers to make their own informed decisions, and has become a political advocacy group which seeks to minimize the legitimate arguments against the current Democratic proposals. If that is what one was expecting from CR, that’s fine, but that is not how CR presents itself to the public.
Consumer Reports stood with Harry Reid in supporting the God-awful Senate bill that eventually became law:
“You’re the reason we’ve come so far,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), told advocacy groups supporting reform at a press conference in the capitol today. DeAnn Friedholm, director of Consumers Union’s healthcare reform campaign, was there representing CU, which has endorsed the House bill and supports passage of the Senate bill. “You never let us forget this fight isn’t about politics, it isn’t about partisanship, it’s about people–real people,” said Reid.
Along with others in the Alphabet Soup of “non-profit”Obamacare supporters, Consumer Reports deserves no thanks.
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