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What was the public to make yesterday of the health care repartee between Governors Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota and Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania and Senators Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Mel Martinez of Florida on ABCâs This Week with George Stephanopoulos? Probably not much. The discussion was he said/she said journalism at its very bestâunfortunately on a complex issue that needs some neutral journalist to serve up the context and perhaps the truth. But it was almost as if Stephanopoulos deliberately set up his guests to go at each other, with charges and counter-charges flying hither and yon. If Stephanopoulos wanted a shouting match a la The McLaughlin Group, he got it. What the public got was another story.
Stephanopoulos showed a campaign clip in which Barack Obama attacked the central premise of John McCainâs health planâtaxing the value of employer-provided health insurance and giving everyone a tax credit to buy their own insurance, as an inducement to jump out of their employersâ health plan. Said Obama: âHe gives you a tax credit with one hand and raises your taxes with the other.â
Martinez landed the first punch, proclaiming that Obamaâs âplan is to turn over the health system to the government,â a gross error that Stephanopoulos invited Rendell to counter. He did, and then added his own misleading statement to the mix: that Obamaâs cost-cutting ideas will reduce premiums. Too bad Stephanopoulos didnât interject that health experts believe Obamaâs cost-cutting proposals wonât do much to reduce costs and, therefore, premiums that reflect those costs.
Things got testy when Rendell said McCainâs $5000 tax credit for families would not buy much coverage in his state: âFor a family of four in Pennsylvania you canât buy health care worth a damn for $5000 a year; itâs got to be at least $12,000 and thatâs for a stripped down plan. Itâs a farce.â Enter Martinez, who insisted that, in his state, a family could buy a policy for $5000, which prompted Rendell to ask him to name one company that sold one. âThe people out there know thatâs complete bull,â Rendell went on to say. Another missed opportunity for Stephanopoulos. He might have informed his viewers that the Kaiser Family Foundationâs latest survey found that the average premium for a family is now $12,680, five percent higher than last year and 119 percent higher than in 1999. Or Stephanopoulos could have pointed out that while families might be able to buy a cheap policy, it often comes with a sky-high deductibleâsometimes in the neighborhood of $10,000 or moreâand might not cover important services like maternity care.
Stephanopoulos really blew it when he failed to show that all this who-ha is meaningless anyway to someone with a pre-existing health condition. For too many people, a million dollar credit couldnât even buy them a policy. Whether these people get can get coverage is the test of true reform, no matter who is president.
As the health segment wound down, Stephanopoulos urged Gov. Pawlenty to âget in here.â Pawlenty did, offering an utterly confusing discussion of the differences between tax credits and tax deductions as they applied to health insurance. Then he added a new dimension to the discussionâone we havenât heard much about so far.
Obama would require employers to either provide insurance for their workers or pay into a fund that helps people with low incomes buy their own coverageâthe so-called pay or play scheme that doomed the Clinton plan over a decade ago. Pawlenty argued that pay or play burdens employers, leaving the impression this strategy was not such a good idea; Stephanopoulos provided no context about various options for financing reform. Then Pawlenty mentioned âthird party groupsâ that, apparently, have done studies showing that McCainâs plan buys more coverage than Obamaâs. What third party groups? Neutral ones or those with an ideological bent? Stephanopoulos didnât ask.
So what did the public learn? The Republicans said Obama was turning over health care to the government. The Democrats said he wasnât. The Republicans said families could get insurance for $5000. The Democrats said they couldnât, and each side missed a major pointâno one can get coverage if theyâre already sick. Republicans said that some unnamed third parties found that McCainâs plan had more purchasing power. The Democrats said McCainâs $5000 credit will not get you coverage. Stephanopoulos moved on.
We know health care is tough to understand sometimes, but thatâs no excuse for Stephanopoulosâthe moderator of a show watched by millionsâto take a pass on doing his homework, in effect turning a health care discussion into a form of theater, or banal journalism. Take your pick.
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