This morning's LATimes features a "news" story that represents what we're up against, if we intend to implement first-world, civilized health insurance in this country. It also shows what kind of coverage Michael Moore, and the American people, can expect to get from the sober, responsible mainsteam media in the United States, when it comes to the topic of health care.
In other words, it's a hit piece.
'Sicko' leaves top Democrats ill at ease
Leading candidates are sidestepping direct comment on filmmaker Michael Moore's proposals for universal healthcare.
By Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, Times Staff Writer
June 22, 2007
If you didn't read the story carefully you'd think it was fair and balanced.
LA Times covers, or rather doesn't cover, but only purports to cover, a "special screening" of SiCKO in Washington this week. Democratic candidates for President, we're told, did not greet the film with either effusive praise or direct criticism, but rather "side-stepped" comment on Moore's proposals for a national health care system.
No quotes from candidates or their staffs are provided.
The LA Times does, though, explain the asserted "side-step"ing. It presents Moore's film as a dilemma for Democrats:
Rejecting Moore's prescription on healthcare could alienate liberal activists, who will play a big role in choosing the party's next standard-bearer. However, his proposal — wiping out private health insurance and replacing it with a massive federal program — could be political poison with the larger electorate.
So now begins the spin, the smear, the blinders from the mainstream media. All provided in an alleged "news" piece about . . . well, about something.
The article asserts that Democratic candidates feel trapped between, on the one hand, Moore's message, which inflames their activist base, and on the other hand the American public at large, who would regard as (to quote the LA Times) "poison" any "massive federal progam". End quote.
So, we might wonder, where in the news story are the polling data to back up this assertion? Where are the data that say Americans are averse to fundamental changes in the American health care system? None are provided. Guess why.
This New York Times poll from March 2 will help explain:
Most Support U.S. Guarantee Of Health Care
By ROBIN TONER AND JANET ELDER; MEGAN THEE, MARINA STEFAN AND MARJORIE CONNELLY CONTRIBUTED REPORTING.
Published: March 2, 2007
A majority of Americans say the federal government should guarantee health insurance to every American, especially children, and are willing to pay higher taxes to do it, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
Nearly 8 in 10 said they thought it was more important to provide universal access to health insurance than to extend the tax cuts of recent years; 18 percent said the tax cuts were more important.
-- snip --
Moreover, an overwhelming majority in the current poll said the health care system needed fundamental change or total reorganization, just as they did in the early 1990s, when a deep recession and soaring health care costs galvanized the public and spurred the Clinton drive.
By the way, what did the New York Times mean when it said that an "overwhelming majority" are in favor of fundamental change or total reorganization? They meant 90%. Check question 18 on the PDF of the poll results.
So, then, who are the people who are so rabidly opposed to Moore's ideas? Who, in America, is going to provide the "poison" that would give Democratic presidential candidates stomach cramps, if the candidates played to their activist base on this issue?
Who, that is, accepts the opposing "ideology" of private insurance? Let's go back to the LA Times story to find out!
"To presume that the private sector is going to sit idly by to see the destruction of private coverage I think is a misreading of reality," said Ron Pollack of the advocacy group Families USA. "I think the presidential candidates understand that if healthcare reform is going to have a chance of success, it will require bipartisanship and a balance of public and private coverage. It cannot be the triumph of one ideology over the other."
That's it. That's the only opposition ever mentioned in the piece. The opposing "ideology" of something called "the private sector" . . . which I assume means, here, private insurance companies.
Private insurance companies have an "ideology", you see. And it deserves equal time to the "ideology" of the rabid Democratic base. Here it is: "'Whatever mix of private and public sources will increase the number of people with coverage, the insurance companies would like it to be managed by them,' [UC Berkeley economist James] Robinson said in a recent interview."
Quite an amazing ideology.
So, on the one hand, we have Democratic "party activists" who will feel drawn to Moore's "fire-breathing". On the other hand, we have insurance companies who would "like" to control the nation's health insurance. Ah, the conundrum. You can see how the LA Times finds all of this hopelessly complicated, and a trap for Democratic candidates.
But, storms the LA Times, "There's little room for such nuanced partnerships in 'Sicko'."
SiCKO just doesn't play fair.
"It's quite effective, [but] it's not a documentary," Robert D. Reischauer, one of Washington's leading health policy experts and a supporter of coverage for all, said after viewing the movie.
"Policy propaganda," he called it.
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Oct. 20 [2003] — Americans express broad, and in some cases growing, discontent with the U.S. health care system, based on its costs, structure and direction alike — fueling cautious support for a government-run, taxpayer-funded universal health system modeled on Medicare.
In an extensive ABCNEWS/Washington Post poll, Americans by a 2-1 margin, 62-32 percent, prefer a universal health insurance program over the current employer-based system.
30. If you had to choose, which do you think is more important for the country to do right now, maintain the tax cuts enacted in recent years or make sure all Americans have access to health care?
Cutting taxes: 18%
Access to health insurance: 76%