FAIR busts the media - including NPR - for its lockdown against reporting on a single-payer health plan for the US. So it was rich to hear Maura Liasson covering President Obama's Forum on Health Reform. Liasson feels no irony in stating "even the White House is careful to say it's open to ANY ideas that meet its goals of controlling costs" while never mentioning the single-payer option. Not only does this idea get no mention, Liasson's whole report is a shameless spin operation by two major players for the Hospital and Health Insurance Industry.
We hear a lot from Chip Kahn who's biography notes that
"Prior to joining the Federation of American Hospitals, he was one of the nation's foremost leaders of the health insurance industry. From 1998 to 2001, while serving as President of the Health Insurance Association of America."Liasson's report also leans heavily on the comments of Karen Ignagni - president and CEO of - what do you know - the America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP). We get to hear Ignani explain how she helped wreck the 1994 Clinton attempt at health care reform because her group was "very concerned about the role of government in that plan" but now - according to Liasson - AHIP "wants to help craft not kill a health reform bill." Isn't that sweet?
Liasson also lets us hear from Rahm Emmanuel who claims that the White House approach puts "everyone at the starting gate together." Seems like it would have been a good time to ask why single-payer representatives were only allowed in at the last minute, and why single-payer has been essentially eliminated from consideration by the administration (and by NPR too).
The one story NPR did on single-payer recently (Dec. 24, 2008) was interesting for how much time it spent trying to distort and dismantle the accepted fact that single-payer is viewed rather favorably by most people in the US. A good deal of that Christmas Eve program was turned over to Robert Blendon who tries to spin one poll into a rejection of single payer. NPR cleverly identified Bob Blendon as "an expert in health care public opinion at the Harvard School of Public HealthHarvard School of Public Health." What they failed to mention is that he's on the board of directors of Assurant, Inc., a corporate powerhouse which provides, among other things, "individual health and small employer group health insurance; group dental insurance." An honest oversight, I'm sure...
6 comments:
I've been railing against NPR for years now - I hate the way they tell "liberals" what opinions are ok - and I'm super glad to find nprcheck. Thanks. I've written my House rep (one shameless Bono-Mack automaton R) and not gotten a reply. Single payer is just so bloody obvious unless you've got an ox that'd be gored on the altar of public health.
great picture!
npr does the health debate: malpractice guaranteed!
-pardon my crimes
Photoshopped to perfection!
The extent by which you may gauge the depths of failure of the "Pope of Hope's" health plan to actually help people will be by how 'happy' the insurance parasitez are with the result.
I cannot believe I usta eagerly await NPR broadcasts...
Not for the last 10 years, actually, but once upon a time...
Thanks for this! I seem to recall this being the second time a new Dem Administration came in promising some real stuff on health care, only to shut out the only real solutions in favor of the h.i. industry controllers, no?
If we can spend all that dough on a trumped up war, we can certainly provide a Cadillac health care program free of charge for all of America. Obama is dropping the ball. I want the same health care that Congress has....looks like the insurance lobby is still winning this fight and the American people are losing the battle. Who does Congress serve ??
Obama is striking out on health care reform and he is also striking out on the economy.
The people he has appointed are ideologues, just like the ones who ran the Bush admin.
Just as they oppose certain forms of national health care, they also oppose certain "solutions" to the bank bankruptcy problem (ie, nationalization)
nobel econ laureate Paul krugman thinks Obama is already behind the curve on the economy and is afraid that he may not catch up.
if Obama does not jettison the ideologues (inlcuding Summers, geithner, and yes, Rahm Emanuel) soon, he will lamost certainly go down in history as another Herbert hoover.
I voted for Obama based on his promise of change.
All I have seen since is more of the same.
looks like another herbert hoover.
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