The All Clear Has Sounded

Yesterday, I heard for the first time on NPR about how the public option has "widespread public support." Here's Melissa Block on Tuesday's ATC:

"Senators on the finance committee defeated attempts to add the government run option to health care legislation - that's despite the fact that it has widespread public support beyond Capitol Hill."

Talk about too little, too late. All summer while rabies was sweeping townhalls and tea parties, NPR never mentioned "widespread public support." I guess once the Insurocrats have passed their pharma/insurance industry overhall and Pres. Obama has signed it, NPR will also mention that other thingy that has wide public support...uh...what do you call that...oh, yeah, single payer.

NPR Does Health Care Right - Far Right That Is

A few days ago a reader (h/t to Masbrow) mentioned an interesting article by Felice Pace in CounterPunch. Pace does a little exploring with the NPR search engine to see how poor, old single payer fares there. He notes that "...stories mention single payer. [but] I can find no NPR news reports or other shows which actually focused on single payer or on the movement to achieve it."*** This prompts him to ask, "Why is NPR refusing to report on what 60% of US citizens and the majority of health professionals want?" To answer that question he did a little more digging at NPR and found that (as of 2006) NPR's financial health care was mighty dependent on some heavy hitters in insurance industry:

• $1 million+: Farmers Insurance Group of Companies, Prudential Financial
• $500,000 - $999,999: Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America, Allstate Insurance Company, Northwestern Mutual Foundation
• $250,000 - $499,999: AARP, The Hartford Financial Services Group, UnumProvident
• $100,000 – $249,999: Liberty Mutual Insurance Company

Single payer may be off the table, but when money sets the table, public radio isn't so different from our trusty public servants.

***A slight correction: I found that by searching "Physicians for a National Health Program" there was one relatively recent (Dec. 24, 2008) report that focused on the single-payer plan; however, the whole point of that Christmas Eve coal-in-the-stocking from NPR was how single-payer is neither as popular nor realistic as supporters claim. It featured Baucus and Rep. Pete Stark poo-pooing single-payer and Rovner relying on one dud poll to claim that "while single-payer has won big majorities in many polls, in this one it came in dead last" (How's that for unbiased?).

Now that Obama and the Dem's sadly watered-down health care proposal is working its way through the bowels of Congress [and still facing attacks from the GOP, PhRMA, and insurance industry because of the public option] I thought it might be worthwhile to put NPR's most recent health care stories into perspective and see whose viewpoints (i.e. $$$) hold sway.

My poor little post of last Friday - noting how TWO features on Morning Edition flogged the public option - had barely seen the light of cyberspace when the next morning NPR felt obliged to give oft-consulted Karen Ignagni of AHIP ("enemy number one" of single payer) unchallenged airtime to denounce the public option with the help of Scott Simon. Instead of responding here - I dropped a comment (reprinted at the end of this post) on NPR's site.

Since then things have only gotten worse. On Sunday morning Rovner claimed that "the bill coming up this week is going to be the most left-leaning if you will...could provide subsidies to people earning up to 5 times the poverty level...so this may be the farthest to the left of all." With that salvo, is it any wonder that on Tuesday morning Steve Inskeep was all over Kathleen Sebelius with the Republican talking points about the public option and denouncing single-payer:

• "I want to understand this number because...Republicans have said, quoted a study, way over a hundred million Americans...so what's your number?"
• "Just the numbers you mention...this option, this public option, if it passes as you imagine is going to be vast."
• "....people in Congress are talking about putting some kind of limit on this public plan...what kind of limits are you prepared to expect..."
• "...would you accept a limit that would say this is just not going to be a national health insurance at some point in the future...?"
• "Can you say flat out it's just never going to be single-player health insurance....?"

This morning Inskeep was at it again in a chat with Juan Williams. After Williams claimed "what the government's doing may in fact drive up the cost of health care" and touted a CBO report alleging that the Dem/Obama plan would "cause some people to lose their insurance" - Inskeep played a clip of the Sebelius interview in which she calls the potential for single-payer insurance a "draconian scenario." He then asks Williams, "Has the White House found any effective way to prove a negative here; to say this is not going to become creeping socialism?" [I swear to God, I'm not making this stuff up.]

You might think I'm selectively picking only the anti-public plan stories or the anti-single player reports. If you can find any featuring a positive tilt on either the public-plan or single-player, let me know; when I searched NPR to see if even a few of the major proponents of progressive health care reform have been featured in the last two weeks, here's what I found:

• Progressive Democrats of America - nothing
• California Nurses Association -nada
• Physicians for a National Health Plan - zilch

Alas, seems that real health care reform at NPR is DOA...

[My comment left at NPR below Scott Simon's schmooze with Karen Ignani]:

Congratulations NPR - as a "public" news station you have done a great service by providing a voice to the voiceless: the health insurance industry which lacks the funds and connections to get it's message out. After yesterday's Republican slant on the public plan from Liasson, Rovner, and Inskeep - you showed a brave commitment to your mission statement ["'Fair' means that we present all important views on a subject."] by giving yet more airtime to the insurance lobby this morning.

Methinks it's time to tell your member stations to stop begging for support from the public (whose opinions don't seem to amount to much on NPR) and to just plug into the money stream from the insurance industry that you are so loyal to.

NPR and the Biggest Obstacle to Health Care Legislation

Guess what the biggest obstacle to health care legislation is?

Could it be the mountains of cash being being poured into Congress by the pharmaceutical and health insurance companies so that they can override public opinion [and physician opinion] favoring government run health insurance? Or might it be obstructionists like Senator Baucus and "moderate" Democrat, Senator Kent Conrad? (or Evan Byah or Ben Nelson or ...)

According to NPR and Mara Liasson (...and PhRMA) the option of a public (government-run) plan "has emerged as the biggest obstacle to health care legislation." And why is it an obstacle? Because, Liasson explains, "Republicans oppose a public plan, so does the American Medical Association...and even more perilous for the President, so do many moderate Democrats in Congress..."

As if Mara Liasson's Friday morning take on a public plan wasn't enough, NPR followed her report with Julie Rovner and Steve Inskeep providing their slant on the matter. Inskeep repeats the Republican argument about "this government plan [that] is going to offer a very nice service, which is good, but it's going to be cheaper than private insurers can manage" and is "actually going to damage, as Republicans say, damage my private insurance company." Neither Rovner nor Inskeep offers the most obvious response to this argument: if the government can offer a more efficient, cost-effective program than the private sector, what's the problem?

Inskeep is not done either. He then puts this question to Rovner: "We have Democrats here who are saying it's absolutely essential, if we don't have this public plan, we've got nothing, there's no health care reform, NOTHING. On the other side you have Republicans who say if you put this public plan in, your're right on the way to socialized medicine. Are law makers at all seeing a way between those two extremes."

Rover doesn't even acknowledge the fact that reform without a robust public plan is not reform at all, or as former Sec. of Labor Robert Reich notes:

"A public option large enough to have bargaining leverage to drive down drug prices and private-insurance premiums is the defining issue of universal health care. It's the only way to make health care affordable. It's the only way to prevent Medicare and Medicaid from eating up future federal budgets."

Instead, Rovner agrees with Inskeep, then goes on to claim that the reasonable way between the "extremes" will be a plan "having co-ops...regional buying groups...[or] a government plan but very limited."

NPR is really crafty in this coverage. In these two back-to-back Friday reports they've managed to take an option like the public plan [which is already a serious compromise from the single-payer model] and turn it into "the biggest obstacle" and one of "these extremes." Furthermore, they manage to tout the dismal co-op model as the reasonable compromise. I'll let Robert Reich have the final say about co-ops: "Kent Conrad came up with this bamboozle. Finance chair Baucus is impressed, and some Republicans -- even Grassley -- seem interested...."

Well, almost the final word: he could have added NPR to the list of those "interested."

Smooth Operators

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...

Health Care to Die For

In my previous post I noted NPRs championing of union concessions. They point out that a major problem for labor and management in the US is the skyrocketing price of health insurance. I know I pay $7000 a year for a mediocre 80/20 family, group plan with $20 office co-pays. Personally, I'd rather be paying that money in taxes for a single payer plan (Ooops, single payer plan is a bad word on NPR News) that would benefit everyone.

This morning NPR takes on the Health Care crisis, and as you might guess they focus on reform that would preserve the health insurance industry. I don't dispute that this is a position that one can argue for or against. What is incredible is that no serious attention is given to eliminating the insurance industry and going for a single payer national health care system.

The only person NPR sees fit to talk to is Len Nichols of the firmly pro-establishment New America Foundation. If you look at the Health Policy Program page of the NAF (which Nichols is the director of) you'll see that their recommendation is for

"the Program promotes a mandatory, citizen-based approach to health insurance that, combined with credible cost containment measures, can ensure universal coverage and enhance America’s long-term economic and social well-being."

"Mandatory" means you have to buy it just like car insurance. The way premiums have been going, I can just see those insurance executives rubbing their hands.

What's with NPR? Is it so hard to talk to articulate advocates for a single payer system. Maybe they are afraid it will kill them or the corporations that sponsor them...