PBS NewsHour host Judy Woodruff introduced a panel discussion on the Supreme Court’s Affordable Care Act decision (6/28/12) as a chance to get “some reaction and assessment from those who will deal with the law or had worked to overturn it.” That set-up sounded like it a pretty narrow discussion was to follow—and it did.
At the table was Karen Ignani, president of the insurance industry lobby America’s Health Insurance Plans. So was former Republican Florida attorney general Bill McCollum, who sued the White House over the law. There was one advocate of Obamacare—Ron Pollack of Families USA, a group that has often worked closely with major player in the health business. And then there was a conservative doctor, Donald Palmisano, whom PBS host Ray Suarez described as “both a physician and an attorney, he is a general and vascular surgeon who teaches at Tulane Medical School.”
That’s just part of the story: Palmisano was also been very active in Astroturf-style efforts to opposed the Affordable Care Act. As Lee Fang reported for Think Progress (7/28/09), Palmisano was spokesman for the Coalition to Protect Patients’ Rights and has been active in efforts to promote so-called “tort reform,” which typically involve capping damages plaintiffs can seek in malpractice trials.
So—a right-wing doctor/advocate, a Republican who tried to block Obamacare in court, the main spokesperson for the insurance industry lobby in Washington, and the head of an advocacy group that has been criticized for being too cozy with the industry. (Pollak now heads a nonprofit that is designed to help enroll people in private health plans.)
Public television, as we’ve said countless times before, should give some of what is missing from the commercial media. How about including one of thousands of doctors who advocate a single-payer, Medicare for All system? If the conversation is intended to explain how the law affects people—particularly those who cannot afford private insurance—why not include such voices in a panel like this? I guess that’s what Democracy Now! is for.
The ACA has profound issues with access.
And so does PBS.
PBS is a slave to corporate America just like the rest of the news media Too many corporate sponsors, just fewer commercials so you don’t know who is paying for what.
We need Universal Health Care for ALL. I am not unhappy with this decision because the ACA will give many more options, but it is/was a dead giveaway to the insurance industry. The Republicans will use their anti-TAX rhetoric to turn folks from Obama. I would never trust John Roberts NOT to have some hidden motives with his vote. He is a partisan and his ruling does have some hidden issues for us to find.
Could not FAIR and other liberal outlets stop using the term ObamaCare to refer to the ACA. That pejorative was invented by opponents of the law and the use of it by supporters only feeds the frenzy of those who want to get rid of it.
I agree with Mr. Morgan re recurring to the ACA as Obamacare. And while I believe in fair and balanced reporting I don’t believe that PBS is a corporate pawn. I also don’t want to see it disappear because the caustic and bizarrely narrow-minded congress deems it too liberal or leftist. If PBS disappears so does Bill Moyers, Travis Smiley Gwen Eiffel et al. So by all means let’s fill people in through Fair& Democracy now until the moribund political climate changes.
Headline today from HUFFPOST: “Obama Campaign Celebrates ‘Romneycare’ Anniversary”
So I guess it’s OK for Democrats to refer to Romneycare, but nobody better refer to Obamacare.
Am I the only one who remembers the PBS report during the Supreme Court debate when Justice Roberts said if not ACA then the only option is Single Payer? So Roberts voted for what was, for him, the best of two bad alternatives.
I filled in the required fields. What’s going on??
“website” does not have a red asteric. What’s going on here??
Yeah, present Single-Payer proponents, As ILL: e.g., http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpAyan1fXCE for Obama v. Zer0bama PBS’ “balance”!
PBS appears to be a snooty gang that condescends to tell the truth on occasion. Your observations confirm the network as a class instrument for distorting issues to order. Injustice is messy and we can’t have large numbers of Americans losing confidence in the status quo or being presented with problems they can actually solve. Even Fair would serve better if it could provide target and method training.
The reason for the name Obamacare is because the American people are getting what they want from the media; an echo of the 1% … the ins … the wealthy … the powerful which comes in the form of bumper sticker journalism … “which repeats and repeats in my ear “… the American people are also getting the government they want; small, short winded and inoffensive which retreats and retreats when their budget is threatened (like PBS)
Can’t trust them anymore for sure. Yes, they’re in bed with corporate America just as FAUX news and hate radio are. Sounds more like Nazi Germany everyday right here in America. What a shame!
Long gone are the days of my youth when Robin MacNeil and Jim Lehrer would invite eight or ten people from all points of view around a table to hash out an issue of the day. I miss my dad who introduced me to PBS news, but sometimes I miss PBS news even more…
Last week Judy Woodruff used John McCain in a “Newsmaker” interview on campaign finance reform. Her excuse, from her blog, was that among other things, he was the author of the McCain-Feingold bill.
Wooddruff is also the spouse of Al Hunt, a senior editor of Bloomberg News, and good friends with Charlie Rose.
Need I say more?
PBS is PureBS and leaves me disgusted by what it has become.
I don’t have any problem with the ACA being referred to as “Obamacare.” Even as bad as it is, it may turn out to be a first nail in the coffin of for-profit health-care. The worst thing about all of this is that a disturbing amount of Americans don’t have the slightest idea of what’s in the Act. As more Americans actually understand what’s in it for them (through direct effect–they will get tangible things, like actual care or adult children on their plans until the age of 26), the alleged perjorative will start looking pretty good from most people’s point of view. Typically, the ‘Cons are going to wildly over-reach on this. I say go ahead, dummies: try taking away the goods, from Medicare to Social Security to new-found health benefits and see what happens.
oberts on order tohead off single payer andavoid thechaos that invalifation of obamacare would cause,justgave hisclients in the insurance industry millions ofnew paying customers.
PBS should get some credit, althought this is PBS or almost 8 years ago I am thinking of. When Liberals fail to support PBS then the Conservatives can take it over or gain influence.
When the health care debate was first on with Obama Bill Moyers did many shows that really cut to the heart of the issue, and without that I would have never been so informed on this issue. Particularly with Wendel Potter and the guy who did the documentaries “Sick Around the [Country/World]”.
PBS gets enough **** from the Conservative nuts, if you do not like it, then write letters, email and petition for these right wing hacks to be kicked out because that is what is happening. PBS may not be perfect and sometimes it is even a parody of itself, but it is by far the biggest and best thing in terms of news media.
It also is missing the absurd anti-Israel bias of FAIR, or the over the top radicalism of Democracy Now, both of which I otherwise think are really great.
Sponsorship is censorship. In aggregate it acts as a filter and means that representation requires masses of money. Its self reinforcing. Its also a kind of theft. Our attention over time defines us. When our attention is stolen, as it is when one party pays another (not us) to interrupt us with ads, we lose all of our power. Attention is the final currency and when our time and attention are stolen we are lost. We need new rules that insiste all sponsorship monies be paid the target and it be on an opt in basis with strong privacy protection. Again if they control peoples attention with totalitarian media systems people lose self defintion, self determination and their politcal voice. The get driven into involuntary unconscious lives.
THIS IS A TAX RAISE ON ANYONE WHO ITEMIZES MEDICAL DEDUCTIONS:
1. Raise “Haircut” for Medical Itemized Deduction from 7.5% to 10% of AGI ($15.2 bil/Jan 2013): Currently, those facing high medical expenses are allowed a deduction for medical expenses to the extent that those expenses exceed 7.5 percent of adjusted gross income (AGI). The new provision imposes a threshold of 10 percent of AGI. Waived for 65+ taxpayers in 2013-2016 only. Bill: PPACA; Page: 1,994-1,995
2. What’s going to happen to the quality of care of seniors who have Medicare and Medicaid health insurance when the ObamaCare plan to cut $500 BILLION from Medicare and $200 BILLION from Medicaid?
Barb: With regard to #2: I’m not an expert on this new law and I could be mistaken, but I think that, starting in 2013, single people earning more than $200,000 and married couples earning more than $250,000 will be taxed at an additional 0.9% beyond what the curent Medicare tax is.
Medicaid is supposed to be expanded to cover more people but several states (with Republican governors) say they won’t extend the expansion, even if the government picks up the tab or most of it.
A very knowledgeable woman, GOP leaning, who helped draft the AFC, pointed out that she would be surprised if all the GOP governors who claim they will not take the funds, really do so when they find out that there are hidden goodies in the law that will help them in other areas. Also we can hope that as people really come to experience the law in their own lives, guys like Jindal will be wondering what hit them.
Folks who stayed (were allowed to stay) at PBS after public funding shriveled spouted optimism that private funding would “actually allow us to do more.” Look up everyone who said that; he or she is a troll!
@barb
abc news
So does the ACA “cut” Medicare by $500 billion?
Medicare spending will continue to grow, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), but ACA will slow that growth. According to a report from the Kaiser Family Health Foundation over the next 10 years, the federal government will devote about $500 billion less to Medicare than it would have without ACA.
CMS and the Kaiser Family Foundation tell ABC News that there will be no benefit cuts to Medicare. They say instead of Medicare being cut, there will be much more spending at the end of a 10-year window, but it does slow the rate of that growth.
————
bloomberg news
“There are no reductions in the Medicare benefits promised in law,” said Gail Wilensky, who served as administrator of the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare under President George H.W. Bush and is a senior fellow at Project Hope, a health-research organization in Virginia.
The nonpartisan Concord Coalition, a budget research group, says the $500 billion number assumes insurers will cut Medicare benefits to comply with President Barack Obama’s 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which scales back payments to Medicare Advantage plans, an alternative to traditional Medicare.
——————–
i can’t find any source for the $200 billion cuts to medicade claim.
on a related subject…npr interviewed a well known astroturfer yesterday thinking he was just some regular joe
http://maddowblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/06/29/12485075-why-joe-olivos-name-sounds-familiar?lite
woodword: Wow! Great catch! I saw that segment on the nightly news and was wondering who this guy was. Somebody picked at random? Obviously, not. His background in all of this was never revealed by the news commentator.
PBS was taken over by the right wing years ago when Bill Moyers was knocked off the air.
The government would like to phase out Medicare Advantage plans (introduced by Nixon, I believe) because they charge Medicare more money. People join them because the monthly premiums can be considerably lower but there are usually more out-of-pocket costs and you usually must stay within a network of hospitals or doctors or end up paying a percentage of their costs, too.
First, traditional Medicare is not cheap, or at least not in my opinion, and I am not advocating for Medicare Advantage, by the way because that has its problems, too.
Medicare pays 80% of a bill, not the whole bill (doctor/hospital). Therefore, a Medicare recipient must buy supplemental insurance to cover the other 20%, unless one wants to pay the other 20%.
In traditional Medicare, one has about 10 different supplemental plans to choose from to pay that 20%, with some offering more frills than others, at a higher cost. There is also discrimination, based on age. A 75 year old man/woman will pay more in a monthly premium (to cover that 20%) than a 65 year old man/woman. ( I’m not sure if there is discrimination based on gender as well).
How much are Medicare premiums to cover the supplemental insurance? I can only speak to my area and here they are about $225-$230 a month per person, which includes a basic drug plan. For two people that is $450-$460 per month.
It doesn’t stop there. Everyone who has Medicare (or Medicare Advantage) must pay Medicare, Part B (for doctors) which is based on income. It comes out of one’s Social Security check.The standard cost is $110.50 per person so for two (if a couple each gets S.S.), it’s $221.00 per month. We are up to $671-$681 per month, for two, when the $450-$460 is added.
The gov’t. defines “wealthy seniors” differently. If a couple declares $170,000.01 per year income (not $250,000 as it is for non-seniors), you pay another $44.20 per person for Part B and it goes up from there, based on income. If two are married but file separately, the cut-off is $85,000.01. Under that scenario, one pays $176.80 per month for Part B. If one is single, the higher Part B starts at $160,000.01 and that would be $176.80 (vs. the standard $110.50). In addition, a drug tax has been added for higher income seniors.
Why am I going into this detail? To let you know that Medicare is not free, that there must be cost controls in all of health care which, from what I can see, hardly exist, and that Medicare should be able to negotiate drug prices and bring down the costs for all.
If you are thinking about retiring, know what the costs are before you do, because they only go up. Some companies offer a supplemental plan for retired seniors but that might be going the way of high-button shoes.
I think I have the above info correct. There is also a deductible but for traditional Medicare it’s cheap: $250, as I recall, and some plans will absorb that cost.
Did I shut down this conversation or what? Didn’t mean to. One can get a Medicare Advantage policy (which are HMOs and PPOs) usually at much cheaper monthly rates but you get what you pay for. Be prepared for higher out-of-pocket expenses if the need arises. It’s hard to offer exact information because there’s so much out there.
If you were to take a look at all the Medigap policies out there (called Medigap because it covers the “gap” in Medicare), it would make your head spin. Start looking if you think you should and you’ll see what I mean. When you see a plan that costs only $50 a month, for example, start reading the fine detail.
Ballooon Juice was the first to spot the NPR astroturf I believe, but with their website created from a Republican blog that defected I am not surprised they don’t have FAIR’s documentation for years of public media’s, both NPR and PBS, conservative media bias. Nice Polite Republican radio and PBS are socially moderate and economically conservative media networks, which is obvious depending as they do on support from the business community. When is FAIR’s next study on guest political leanings due? My listening continues to observe their economic and foreign and military affairs stories always have at least a 2-1 bias in favor of conservatives over liberals. The mainstream media falls for the continued Republican attacks on the “liberal” public media to shape its perception of PBS and NPR.
Liberals and neutral people are referring to the ACA as “ObamaCare” because a couple months ago, the Obama administration said they were embracing the term and would start using it themselves. I thought that was a bad idea. Other people and groups have done that (many lesbians and gay men embracing “dyke,” and “faggot,” many black people using the N-word, etc.), but it doesn’t change the pejorative nature of the terms for MOST people, certainly not for the hateful people who first used or even coined the terms.
How about “Obama Cares” as some have chosen to call it. You’d think that Americans would be pleased that another 50 million of us can have access to health care like other civilized countries but, in the U.S. it turns into another devisive argument. Interesting that we don’t hear arguments about Ryan’s plan to voucherize Medicare or to weaken (gut) virtually every program that benefits ordinary middle/low income Americans while fighting to preserve tax cuts for the rich and increase military spending. As I recall, most, if not all House Republicans voted for it.
Republicans have now filed a suit over Fast and Furious. This is the way they prefer to spend taxpayers’ dollars.
Apart from the discussion of the term “Obama Care,” I for one am grateful for the many well-considered comments above, but unfortunately, they are a bit diffuse because this particular FAIR posting deals with the gradual corruption of not one but two once-great American institutions, PBS and the Supreme Court. What we are discussing here, of course, is plutocracy in action, nothing less, or as R Morris put it above: “Sounds more like Nazi Germany every day right here in America.”
Comparisons to German politics in the 1930s are taboo in some blog discussions, yet it’s all there for anyone to see. Wikipedia provides a thorough summary under “Nazi Germany,” and several excellent books on the subject include William L. Shirer’s 1960 classic: “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,” and Karl Dietrich Bracher’s 1970 opus: “The German Dictatorship: The Origins, Structure, and Effects of National Socialism.”
The notion that we shouldn’t insult our German allies by bringing up their past may account for some of the current unwillingness to consider Nazi Germany. On the contrary, as Walt Kelly’s Pogo put it on Earth Day, April 22, 1971: “”yep, son, we have met the enemy and he is us.”
The semantic complaint about obamacare seems odd to me. Pejorative terms are often embraced by the target. It changes perception, not just of the demeaned, but of the demeaner. I grew up thinking “punk” was “rock” not “anti-social”. In my own experience, in junior high, I bragged about being the computer nerd (before everyone had a computer) and embracing the label of “proud-other” and found I could jump from clique to clique like no one else in my class.
I thought this was a well accepted social phenomenon…. with some notable exceptions admittedly, but exceptions none the less.
PBS is a waste of time and money; let it die.
I watch Democracy Now! on Link TV or listen to it on the Pacifica network; it works for me.
For those who cite “the absurd anti-Israel bias of FAIR, or the over the top radicalism of Democracy Now,” they can continue to drink of the kool-aid that is “public broadcasting.”
Steve , did i just see that you wrote there is no anti Israeli bias in FAIR?I have NEVER seen an article on fair that takes Israel’s side in ANYTHING.95% of people writing in have the same views.If that is not bias what is it?
As for democracy now -I love it.Best comedy show on TV.Love that old(40?) grey haired lady talking head with the dour hound dog look.Serious, serious countenance that proves she is “serious”…. about the news.Reminds me of Kanye West saying “George Bush hates black people”.It has that same feel.Terrible production values.As a recovering Dem and a tea party conservative, I do enjoy the way they view things.
michael e
If you saw that I wrote that “there is no anti Israeli bias in FAIR,” you are in error. Nor did you read that those who go to websites to drop nasty ad hominem comments are people who are so pathetically lonely, ignored and disliked that the only place they can make human contact is via the internet.
If you do know of something praiseworthy that the Israeli government has done in the last twenty years, why not cite that event so the rest of us can understand your position?
“As for democracy now -I love it.Best comedy show on TV.Love that old(40?) grey haired lady talking head with the dour hound dog look.Serious, serious countenance that proves she is “serious”…. about the news.”
sexist troll is sexist….
The name should describe exactly what this is……THE OBAMA HEALTHCARE TAX.Read above what Tim said at the end of his comments.He said “go ahead dummies see what happens if you try to take away peoples goods(goodies)That is a socialist talking perfect socialism.Nanny state industry.But he has a point.A sick, twisted, perverted un American point.A point he made better than I ever could.Get enough people on the government tit and he is absolutely right….it is hard to EVER get them self reliant again.And this is his/their goal!!!!!Everyone dependent on the rich,and those who produce.Their wealth taken and redistributed by a loving, fatherly government.A government who will support you.Take care of all your basic needs.Free of charge.The frightening thing is as I say these horrific words,some are lulled to sleep.True Americans of course bristle with righteous indignation and anger.We truly decide in November who we shall be.Lulled by the hissing snake.Or prepared to fly to new heights like our national symbol.
True Americans of course bristle with righteous indignation and anger.
Quit peddling bullshit.
Village idiot says what?
Embracing a pejorative takes the wind out of its sails. Let the opposition keep using it. Like a cliche, it is so commonplace now, it has become just a term with no negative effect.
The PBS has always disseminated mainstream media’s message in highbrow packaging. As Chomsky so aptly put it in Manufacturing Consent, the #1 target for intellectural consent is people in upper 20 percentile of education. The fact that so many educated people still identify with the Democratic Party (the good cop side of our plutocratic empire) is a testament to this PR campaign’s success.
Freespirit….God that is soooo elitist .”The fact that so many educated people”……Better put you could of said ,”it is amazing that so many educated people still identify with the democratic party.A party that strives to penalize success while it subsidizes failure.But lets put aside for the sake of stupid argument that either side holds the cards in smart or educated people.By the way not mutually exclusive roles.My personal feeling is there are a lot of smart people making dumb calls voting Dem.The truly lost or dumb people probably belong there.Sorry
William Morgan writes: “Could not FAIR and other liberal outlets stop using the term ObamaCare to refer to the ACA. That pejorative was invented by opponents of the law and the use of it by supporters only feeds the frenzy of those who want to get rid of it.”
I tend to disagree. Now that it is going to be implemented, and people are going to recognize the many popular elements to the law, I think tying it to Obama may be a plus and may end up marginalizing the opposition to the president on this matter.
Tishado that boat has done sailed.It will now be called the” Obama healthcare tax” per the supreme court designating it as such.Of course people will be free to judge its benefits ,and its negatives- beyond its moniker.
The Affordable Care Act will be replaced with medicare for all and federally regulated health-care systems. Thus ending the thief by private insurance, hospitals, and financial pirates, when we are sick and dieing! The change can’t come soon enough as honest citizens are being defrauded every day.