REALITY CHECK: THE FAKE DEBATE OVER HEALTHCARE

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FAIR - At the end of an unusually long editorial headlined "The High
Cost of Healthcare," the November 25 New York Times dismissed the idea
of publicly funded universal healthcare, which all other industrialized
countries use to provide medical treatment to all of their citizens
while spending much less per capita than the U.S.

Framing a public health insurance system as a sentimental lefty dream,
the paper's editorialists wrote that "deep in their hearts, many
liberals yearn for a single-payer system." But single-payer, the paper
assures us, is "no panacea for the cost problem" and has "limited
political support."

Knocking down the straw man that single-payer would solve all healthcare
problems isn't much of an achievement; while advocates point out that
single-payer systems in other countries cost far less than the U.S.'s
profit-dominated healthcare industry, the main benefit they point to of
universal health coverage is that it would provide everyone with
healthcare.

But the idea of "limited political support" is worth examining, because
readers might be misled into thinking that means that single-payer is
unpopular. To the contrary. On the rare occasions when they're
questioned about it, the public seems to like it; asked in a September
2007 CBS poll, 55 percent of Americans preferred a single-payer system
that would be administered by the government, with taxpayers footing the
bill. Just 29 percent would keep things the way they are. So when the
Times says single-payer lacks "political support," they actually mean it
lacks "elite support"-too bad they don't say what they mean.

Actually, on healthcare, corporate media often say what they don't mean.
When Massachusetts announced a plan to mandate health insurance for its
citizens, this was widely described as a "universal" program. But the
Massachusetts plan enacted by then-Gov. Mitt Romney was a requirement
that all citizens (with some exemptions) obtain health insurance or face
penalties, based on "the false assumption that uninsured people will be
able to find affordable health plans," as critics Steffie Woolhandler
and David Himmelstein noted. "A typical group policy in Massachusetts
costs about $4,500 annually for an individual and more than $11,000 for
family coverage. A wealthy uninsured person could afford that-but few of
the uninsured are wealthy."

That requiring coverage is not the same as providing it ought to be
obvious. But media have so muddied the conversation with indiscriminate
use of the term "universal" that such basic facts are obscured. Thus a
December 5 New York Times article, which commendably explained that
"mandates rarely achieve 100 percent compliance," could still refer to
Massachusetts having "enacted universal coverage," before noting, in the
next sentence, that a substantial portion of the public remains
uninsured. If a plan that leaves many without healthcare can be
described as "universal," perhaps the Times believes the country already
has one?

Advocates of publicly funded healthcare, despite their numbers, have
always faced an uphill fight in elite media where obeisance to the
for-profit insurance industry is an unspoken given. The resulting
"debate" resembles the old joke about the man who looks for his keys
under the lamppost - not because he dropped them there, but because
that's where the light's better.

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3261

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