Obama Calls Out Fox News For ACA Myths, Fox News Wonders Why

On the October 2 edition of Fox News' The Real Story, host Gretchen Carlson was surprised to find out that President Obama called out Fox News' Obamacare coverage during a speech. Carlson asked reporter Ed Henry “Why? My question to you, Mr. Henry, is why would he do this?”

President Obama delivered a speech on the economy at Northwestern University today, during which he brought up the Republican party's inability to focus their campaigns on attacking the Affordable Care Act (ACA), pointing out that contrary to Fox News' coverage, the health care law is working well:

So I laid out what I know has happened over the six years of my presidency so far, and I've laid out an agenda for what I think should happen to make us grow even better, grow even faster.  A true opposition party should now have the courage to lay out their agenda, hopefully also grounded in facts.

There's a reason fewer Republicans are preaching doom on deficits -- it's because the deficits have come down at almost a record pace, and they're now manageable.  There's a reason fewer Republicans you hear them running about Obamacare -- because while good, affordable health care might seem like a fanged threat to the freedom of the American people on Fox News -- (laughter) -- it's turns out it's working pretty well in the real world.

Carlson was confused as to why the president called out Fox News, but perhaps the reason is that just last week the network revived the debunked death panel myth amid news that Obamacare was working. As Vox reported, although the health care law is working “in the real world,” in conservative media it's a disaster:

[C]osts are lower than expected, enrollment is higher than expected, the number of insurers participating in the exchanges is increasing, and more states are joining the Medicaid expansion. Millions of people have insurance who didn't have it before. The law is working. But a lot of the people who are convinced Obamacare is a disaster will never know that, because the voices they trust will never tell them.

This post has been updated for accuracy.