Progress Illinois

While making the rounds on FOX's morning news shows, former Mississippi Republican Sen. Trent Lott appeared on Good Day Chicago this morning to give his two cents on health care reform. We watch the show regularly and have seen the often under-informed anchor Jan Jeffcoat let her guests get away with some tall tales. Unfortunately, today was no different. Instead of calling Lott -- who's now a lobbyist for the pharmaceutical industry -- on his false claim that health care reform will cut Medicare benefits for senior citizens, Jeffcoat reaffirmed it. Watch:

JAN: You mentioned that there will be cuts in Medicare and for the elderly. So are we taking away health care from one group to fulfill another group?

LOTT: That's what this bill and other bills would do. And I just don't think fundamentally that it's fair or that it will happen. It does in effect tell doctors that they're not going to get increases based on inflation. It tells seniors that you're not going to have some of the coverage that you might have had. They say they are going to do it by eliminate waste and fraud in Medicare. Well goodness gracious, if that were something easy or could be done, why haven't we done it sooner? I do think that there's a little bit of a mentality ... that we're going to be taking from older generations and passing it on to future generations. I don't think it's fair and that's one of the problems that they have.

While Lott scoffs at eliminating waste in Medicare program, the largest cut -- Medicare Advantage -- would actually do just that. As we've pointed out before, the corporate-run Medicare Advantage program has become the single most expensive plan, largely because the government has been subsidizing insurance company profits. As the New York Times editorial board recently pointed out "coverage for a vast majority of Medicare recipients, those in traditional Medicare, should actually improve under health care reform." Like fellow Republican Mark Kirk, who is also fighting the reform effort using those dubious arguments, it's not surprising that Lott would stoop so low. What's frustrating is the spin that Jeffcoat lets her guests get away with because she's unprepared.