Carolyn Lochhead, The SF Chronicle's Washington Bureau person has a history of articles that slant slyly to the right. Her article on health care reform is no different except that it is all the more apparent. It contains a number of misleading and inaccurate statements.
Her articles regularly appear on the front page of the SF Chronicle. As the only daily paper of a large city as San Francisco, her unfair digs are even more troubling
More below.
Here is a link to the full front page article. I'm not going to past the whole thing as it's too big and you can read it over there.
http://www.sfgate.com/...
She makes blithe statements that consistently imply things that simply aren't the case and not surprisingly, these statements all slant against the President.
I'm going to take each misleading thing is turn.
With deepening public skepticism stalling health care overhauls in Congress
Carolyn, the American public favors health care reform. A Kaiser poll in July puts it at 59%. The stalling is due to a group of 7 Conservative Democrats known as Blue Dogs and you admit as much later in your own article. I hasten to add it's misleading articles like yours which give them the cover to do so.
Under assault from businesses large and small, which could face steep tax increases and mandates, and fiscal conservatives and experts who fear the changes could speed the nation's course toward fiscal ruin, Obama posed health care reform as central to reducing soaring federal debt.
Business Week, not known for particularly progressive writing, didn't mention any steep tax increases when it covered the effects of the House and Senate bill on large and small businesses. http://www.businessweek.com/...
Under both bills, small businesses are given tax credits to help pay for health insurance. Insurance that will be more predictable to start with. There are no direct taxes on businesses to finance either bill.
In the Senate bill, a company that refuses to cover an employee is subject to a $750 a year fine. Considering employer's group plans costs them $466/month, that's a minor slap on the wrist. In the House bill, companies with payrolls under $250,000 avoid the mandate completely, the Senate bill exempts companies under 25 employees.
Where are the steep tax increases ?
As for the experts, your article takes up 25.5 inches of column space, and you can't manage to mention a single expert or quote that you are referring to. Instead you rely on the ever usefully vague "experts say" to get your point across. Desperate high school debaters use that tactic, professional journalists should not.
The rapid rise in U.S. debt has grown from a soft bruise in his poll numbers to a canker threatening to consume his political capital.
Again, you're assigning a cause that's just not there. As one of the pollsters that actually does those polls points out. His drop is from a drop in support from Conservative and Moderate Republicans. http://publicpolicypolling.blogspot....
A group that's hardly going to agree with him anyways.
The rigorous polling blog 538, has a number of articles on how every president's ratings drops to an extent simply due to the end of a honeymoon period and not tied to any specific policy.
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/...
Even given that, his ratings is still at 59% -61%. That's more then he won the election with.
To reach that goal, Obama said Americans might have to give up some expensive care.
"They're going to have to give up paying for things that don't make them healthier," such as duplicative tests, he said. "I think that's the kind of change you want."
Lastly you attempt to confuse a point invoking the fear that Americans may not get 'expensive care.' When the quote you use actually talks about tests being done twice when once will suffice (ie duplicative), if your general doctor does a test, then a specialist doesn't need to repeat it the next day, it's done not to further the patient's health rather that under the current system, it's more profitable to do so, since the hospital/medical group makes profit from two tests rather than one. I imagine the Chronicle loves it when a commuters buys a paper in the morning, and then again in the evening as they lost the morning (as I have done from time to time). Only with the tests, you're not talking $0.75 a pop. Examples of unnecessary tests are detailed in the New Yorker article about McAllen,Texas, among the most expensive places for medical care in the US.
http://www.newyorker.com/...
"Come on," the general surgeon finally said. ... There is overutilization here, pure and simple." Doctors, he said, were racking up charges with extra tests, services, and procedures."
Numerous examples can be found in the article.
"Seeing a patient who has had uncomplicated, first-time gallstone pain requires some judgment. A surgeon has to provide reassurance (people are often scared and want to go straight to surgery), some education about gallstone disease and diet, perhaps a prescription for pain; in a few weeks, the surgeon might follow up. But increasingly, I was told, McAllen surgeons simply operate. The patient wasn’t going to moderate her diet, they tell themselves. The pain was just going to come back. And by operating they happen to make an extra seven hundred dollars."
Going straight for expensive surgery, instead of trying to modify diet, not because surgery was better, simply because, from the surgeon's view it was less of a hassle and happen to be more profitable as well.
Not the boogey man of denied services (which private insurance companies actually do Today)but procedures that may not be necessary.
If Carolyn Lochhead is the SF Chronicle's eyes in Washington, it behooves her to look at things with a less biased look.