MEDIA BLACKOUT ON SINGLE-PAYER HEALTHCARE Major newspaper, broadcast and cable stories mentioning healthcare reform in the week leading up to President Obama's March 5 healthcare summit rarely mentioned the idea of a single-payer national health insurance program, according to a new study by Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR.org). And advocates of such a system—two of whom participated in the White House summit—were almost entirely shut out, FAIR found.
Single-payer—a model in which healthcare delivery would remain largely private, but would be paid for by a single federal health insurance fund (much like Medicare provides for seniors, and comparable to Canada's current system)—polls well with the public, who preferred it two-to-one over a privatized system in a recent survey (New York Times/CBS, 1/11-15). But a media consumer in the week leading up to the summit was more likely to read about single-payer from the hostile perspective of conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer than see an op-ed by a single-payer advocate in a major US newspaper. Hundreds of stories in major newspapers and on NBC News, ABC News, CBS News, Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, NPR and PBS's NewsHour mentioned healthcare reform, according to a search of the Nexis database (2/25-3/4). Yet all but 18 of these stories made no mention of "single-payer" (or synonyms commonly used by its proponents, such as "Medicare for all," or the proposed single-payer bill, HR 676 ), and only five included the views of advocates of single-payer—none of which appeared on television. HR 676, sponsored by Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., has more than 60 co-sponsors and support from most AFL-CIO unions. Of a total of 10 newspaper columns FAIR found that mentioned single-payer, Krauthammer's column critical of the concept, published in the Washington Post (2/27) and reprinted in four other daily newspapers, accounted for five instances. Only three columns in the study period advocated for a single-payer system (San Diego Union-Tribune, 2/26; Boston Globe, 3/1; St. Petersburg Times, 3/3). The FAIR study turned up only three mentions of single-payer on TV outlets surveyed, and two of those references were by TV guests who expressed strong disapproval of it: conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks (NewsHour, 2/27) and Republican congressman Darrell Issa (MSNBC's Hardball, 2/26). In many newspapers, the only argument in favor of the policy has been made in letters to the editor (Oregonian, 2/28; USA Today, 2/26; Washington Post, 3/4; Philadelphia Inquirer, 2/27; Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 2/26). In contrast, the terminology of choice for detractors of any greater public-sector role in healthcare—such as "socialized medicine" and "government-run" healthcare—turned up seven times on TV, including once on ABC News's This Week (3/1) and five times on CNN. CNN senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen has herself adopted this terminology in discussing healthcare reform, stating (CNN Newsroom, 2/26) that "if in time, Americans start to think what President Obama is proposing is some kind of government-run health system—a la Canada, a la England—he will get resistance in the same way that Hillary Clinton got resistance when she tried to do tried to do this in the '90s." That despite polling that suggests the public would actually favor single-payer. Saul Friedman, columnist for Newsday, noted (2/21) that only Congressional Quarterly covered a 1/28 news conference on a study done by a coalition of advocacy groups representing 15,000 doctors and more than 50,000 nurses that found CONYERS' BILL COULD CREATE 2.6 MILLION NEW JOBS AND WOULD COST FAR LESS THAN THE PRIVATE INSURANCE CURRENTLY PAID BY INDIVIDUALS AND EMPLOYERS. John Rother, chief lobbyist for AARP, told Friedman that he is in favor of a single-payer system, but he is not encouraging such proposals because they're outside the mainstream and are not likely to pass. "This is simply a matter of pragmatism," Rother said. "Single-payer advocates could play a destructive role in the coming debate." But Elaine Fox, a physician and health-care activist from Long Island, argues, "There cannot be a credible debate when one side disappears." http://populist.com/dispatches --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "WebTV Dawgs/Dittos" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/WebTV-Pals -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
