On Tuesday, Mediaite White House correspondent Tommy Christopher added another chapter to his ongoing self-promotional crusade masquerading as a career in journalism.
And this time, it didn’t involve a shameless ploy to be an invited guest on whatever incarnation of Chris Hayes’ show MSNBC is currently airing.
During Tuesday’s White House briefing on Tuesday, Christopher, whose name isn’t really “Tommy Christopher,” asked a question about President Barack Obama’s health-care reform law that incorporated his personal experiences with health insurance after his 2010 heart attack.
“First of all, I don’t if you’re aware of this, but when I had a heart attack three years ago, I was uninsured, and I haven’t been able to get insurance ever since then,” Christopher said. “Listening to all the pressure on the president to negotiate, a lot of it from inside this room, it made me think, is there a chance the president would be willing to delay Obamacare for a year if Republicans were to agree to delay heart attacks for a year?”
White House press secretary Jay Carney offered the obligatory Obama administration response.
“Tommy, you know the president’s position is that we need to implement the Affordable Care Act, and that when it comes to the millions of Americans across the country who have had a very hard time getting access to affordable health insurance, we need to focus on those folks and continue the business of implementing the Affordable Care Act so that on Jan. 1 those Americans will be able to purchase insurance, quality insurance at affordable rates for the first time,” Carney replied.
Carney went on to ask Christopher if his question had been answered, to which Christopher replied with yet another personal anecdote about Obamacare.
“Just for what it’s worth, I was able to enroll in the exchange about a week and a half ago,” Christopher said. “I haven’t picked a plan yet, though.”
Christopher later told Politico’s Hadas Gold what inspired his question, which he said was “trivial way some of the White House reporters have handled” their reporting on Obamacare and potential for a one-year delay in its implementation for the sake of overcoming the current budget stalemate between the White House and the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.
