A recent Frontline documentary (3/31/09) presented mandatory for-profit healthcare as the only alternative to the current U.S. healthcare system, suggesting that this was the system all other developed nations use–even though the documentary was a sequel to an earlier Frontline report (4/15/08) that examined a wide range of international options, including Taiwan’s single-payer model.
If you’d like to ask Frontline why it distorted the healthcare policy options, you can take part in FAIR’s Action Alert here. And you can leave copies of letters you send to Frontline in the comments of this post.
It is cynicism, not pragmatism, that would disregard a full discussion of health care alternatives in the United States. Our friends, families, and co-workers are becoming ill and dying as a result of an insurance industry that sees basic health and preventative care as its private profit engine.
Please, explain why Frontline’s March 31st Sick Around America episode would treat mandatory for-profit insurance coverage as the only alternative to the current U.S. healthcare system? Surely it wasn’t an inadvertent decision on your part, given that T.R. Reid stepped away from your program as a consequence of the decision.
It is vital that you explain your thinking in detail, or if you cannot, to invent the equivalent of a retraction for a Frontline documentary. We can hardly afford to loose faith in one of the few remaining bastions of investigative mainstream journalism.
Thank you,
JDecker
SF, CA
What bug did “Sick Around the World” catch to become “Sick Around America?”
Frontline
First off, I’m a long-time fan of the show, since the late-80s at least.
I have remained a fan of Frontline for so long because I am skeptical
about media. Frontline has been for me an excellent source of in-depth
information and “wonkish” analysis of many important public policy
issues and debates.
However, recently, Frontline has failed to be so awesome or wonderful.
Maybe I’ve gone soft and uncritical or maybe Frontline has caught a
24-hour corporate sponsorship bug or something, but the interview with
T.R. Reid over at Corporate Crime Reporter has me spooked:
Something Is Rotten at PBS
http://www.corporatecrimereporter.com/sickaroundtheworld040209.htm
Specifically:
“That’s what other developed countries do. They make insurers cover
everyone, and they make all citizens buy insurance. And the poor are
subsidized.”
This is not true. This is not how other industrialized nations address
health care and health insurance policy.
What gives? Why is Frontline towing this line?
I’m easy, as long as you don’t try to slip me a mickey.
To the producers of Frontline:
I looked forward to your documentary Sick Around America with great interest, and had told friends and family that they should watch it. But I ended up being very disappointed.
While the stories about Americans’ plights were compelling, the answer to their problemsâ┚¬”Âwhich to me is very obviousâ┚¬”Âwas missing. You seem to have avoided discussing single-payer health care deliberately.
It’s been made very apparent that, while well meaning, the Massachusetts health care plan has turned out to be a qualified failure. Yet your program implied that this kind of plan is the only alternative to the current, profit-driven health care system. And this is completely untrue.
I really hate to suspect the motives behind your omitting single-payer health care in your documentary, but the omission is as glaring as the deliberate attempts made to exclude Rep. John Conyers and single-payer advocates from President Obama’s health care forum in Washington, DC, last month. I know that Representative Conyers is a threat to the for-profit private health insurers, because his bill H.R. 676 answers the needs of Americans for health care and cuts off the private insurers’ control over Americans’ access to equitable health care. It took pressure from the public to get Representative Conyers and Dr. Oliver Fein included in the forum.
Can the journalistic integrity of Frontline, for years the reliable messenger of hard truths, have been influenced by the health care insurance industry? I cannot see what other reason there could be for the finished product you presented in Sick Around America.
Sincerely,
Roberta McNair
Gig Harbor, WA
Here is the email that I just sent about Sick Around America:
Like most of the mainstream media, PBS’s documentary Sick Around America offered a one-sided discussion of healthcare reform, skewed in favor of the for-profit insurance industry. Contrary to the claims of this documentary, mandatory for-profit insurance is not the only alternative to our current healthcare system; there is also the single-payer, Medicare for All approach. Of course, most viewers of this documentary would never know that because it failed even to discuss this option or to include even one single-payer supporter. As usual, it was the for-profit industry that got the megaphone to frame the parameters the discussion of healthcare. The coverage was misleading and therefore extremely disappointing.
Donna Palermino
Cambridge, MA
Here’s what I sent PBS today: “Why did your March 31 Frontline documentary Sick Around America misrepresent your network’s own previous findings of Sick Around the World by treating mandatory for-profit insurance coverage as the only alternative to the current U.S. healthcare system? The prior (4/15/2008) Frontline documentary clearly stated that none of the healthcare systems featured from developed countries are based on mandatory purchase of for-profit insurance. A follow-up is clearly necessary to address the new documentary’s omission of the funding alternatives described in Sick Around the World.”
Dear Sir/Madam:
I saw your March 31 documentary Sick Around America. Why did you treat for-profit insurance as the only alternative for our healthcare system? This contradicts Frontline’s own previous documentary Sick Around the World, where none of the examples of health coverage used for-profit insurance … I’m very confused by this. It seems to me that Frontline has bought into the insurance industry’s spin on this matter, and that is a very bad thing.
Hugh Caley
Albany, California
What you aired on your program sick around America, the sequel to sick around world, not only contradicts the original program, it is obviously one sided. This program ignores the existing health care systems of 90% of the worlds developed nations. 35-40 of which (at least, depending your source) ARE BETTER THAN OURS!!!! On top of that our government and our people BOTH spend more money than any other nation on health care!!!! Why would you insult Americans by airing something so misleading!!!!! You should be ashamed of yourselves!!!!! Do you get a lot more funding for publishing in the interests of someone else? Do you really believe what you air?? How are Americans supposed to make an accurate decision when you put this type of stuff out there?? I do not think they can. On top of that your “secretary” out and out told me that a fact was my opinion. T. R. has more integrity than your whole station.
Dear person-who- reads-letters:
I’m sure you’re aware that FAIR has an action alert around the heavily distorted coverage of your Sick Around America/the World pieces, and I’m equally sure you’re fully aware that the piece was slantedâ┚¬”Âbut you all had to produce the last part with the conclusions you did, because in one way or another you are forced to toe the corporate line. An honest weighing of healthcare options leads directly to the conclusion that insurance companies are siphoning off a large part of our healthcare dollars and adding unnecessary complexity (inefficiency) while delivering no healthcare. Thus the first step to fixing what has made ours by far the most expensive system in the world, and simultaneously among the least effective for a developed country, is to eliminate this parasite. But you cannot say that, because it would offend a powerful industry which has some kind of control on PBS, as on the overtly commercial news corporations.
I simply want to point out that when this situation means we can never have a functioning healthcare system, we must have constant useless and dangerous wars, and our treasury must be handed over to Wall Street at their will, the country will collapse. To keep fighting for corporate rule even as the harms pile upâ┚¬”Âwell, that way lie the pitchforks and torches, and they’re not very far down the road. I ask that you point this out to those who have told you that you must substitute Ignati’s illogical and dishonest conclusion for the obvious one reached by Reid.
Mary Wildfire in West Virginia
Maybe insurance driven “mandatory for profit health insurance” looks like the only option for Americans if you depend on corporate money to run PBS and Frontline.
How sad to see PBS brought so low.
As someone who has actually helped host producers of Frontline’s “Sick Around the World” at our recent community forum on healthcare, I looked forward to Frontline’s take on the current real-world crisis situation in America.
But “Sick Around America” is a slick triumphal failure to connect generational symptoms to a fair discussion of the cure.
It shows in fact how sick our system is: not one mention of “single-payer” solutions
or what expanding existing systems like Medicare or the VA can do
to solve access, costs or declining quality of care.
The Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz said that single-payer is the “only alternative.”
Totally ignored…and a hundred other experts, doctors, and economists like him…
Frontline should take retake “Ethics in Journalism” 101 and ask themselves why they dodged the issue.
–any sophomore journalism student can find “hard-luck” stories…
Meanwhile your editing left something on the floor —
–the most viable solution in America,
–one that has been with us since 1965,
–an expanded and improved Medicare “single-payer” solution —
while you gave air to the calculated insurance industry lip-service that
claims it is ready to take these issues on…
…if only we force Americans to buy into a mandated private insurance system
….that has repeatedly, increasingly and systematically failed us.
Some will ask you for a real program, a second change…but I’ve seen enough.
Go wash your hands…go back to film school….
…and in the words of Patricia Lynch – vice president of state government relations services at Kaiser Permanente–
…go back to the calculated model the insurance industry has used for years:
…”avoiding risk.”
Rand Dawson Florence Oregon
To Whom This May Reach at FRONTLINE:
I am an Academy Award nominated and Emmy winning documentary filmmaker, and I am APPALLED at what I’ve been told you did with the work of T.R. Reid and â┚¬Ã…“Sick Around Americaâ┚¬Ã‚Â. It is almost inconceivable to me that you would exploit, usurp and distort his good work in the manner it has been described by FAIR (https://fair.org/index.php?page=3756). Your actions reek of politics, of corporate influence, and of general disregard and disrespect for both this man’s work, and the truth. Let me guess: Big Pharma sponsors a LOT of PBS shows. Am I right? I’ll bet I am. Just can’t piss-off those for-profit mega-med corps now, can we?
Words do not express my disappointment and disgust- mainly because I have always had such respect for the work Frontline has done. Your webpage of â┚¬Ã…“Guidelines on Journalistic Styles and Practicesâ┚¬Ã‚ (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/us/guidelines.html) states that â┚¬Ã…“We ask for the viewer’s trust.â┚¬Ã‚ Well, you’ve certainly lost mine.
Very Sincerely,
William Gazecki
http://www.williamgazecki.com
My comment to the Frontline people:
I’m amazed that you did not spend some time checking out the Canadian healthcare system when, in your Sick Around America piece, you seemed to put forth the proposal that mandated for-profit insurance is the only alternative for healthcare in the United States and skimmed past other alternatives. It places it contradicted and did not seem like a worthy follow-up to your Sick around the World presentation.
Generally, I respect PBS for often bypassing the propaganda that passes for news in the mainstream media. But someone at PBS Frontline dropped the ball on this one. I hope that private pressures have not overwhelmed producers.
It seemed like a strange contradiction: you did a good job chronicling individual woes people had with insurance companies to show that the system is not serving many people. But you needed to go further (and be more honest) when it comes to alternatives. Your narrative’s summary of private insurance spokeswoman, Karen Ignagni’s thoughts were confusing: â┚¬Ã…“That’s what other developed countries do. They make insurers cover everyone and they make all citizens buy insurance. And the poor are subsidized.â┚¬Ã‚Â
Huh? I live in Canada. I thought we were a developed country.
Simple solution: Give interviewees their say, but please give us the facts when they get it so wrong.
Here’s an extract from Health Affairs: â┚¬Ã…“In 2005 the United States spent $6,401 per capita on health careâ┚¬”Âmore than double the per capita spending in the median Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) country. Between 1970 and 2005, the United States had the largest increase (8.3 percent) in the percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) devoted to health care among all OECD countries. Despite having the third-highest level of spending from public sources, public insurance covered only 26.2 percent of the U.S. population in 2005. The United States was equally likely to be in the top and bottom halves for sixteen quality measures compiled by the OECD.â┚¬Ã‚Â
So the U.S. spends more than any other OECD country on healthcare. For their buck, they get poor service. In Canada, right-wing politicians, egged on by for-profit organizations, constantly pitch for a â┚¬Ã…“two-tierâ┚¬Ã‚ healthcare system and more private sector involvement. But Canadians love their system. Yes, we have long wait lines and we complain of poor service. The propaganda Canadians get from the south latches on these problems, often presenting a distorted picture that ignores the greater problems of the expensive U.S. system. The impression is that the Canadian system is in shambles.
It isn’t â┚¬” at least not as compared to the United States.
We spend very roughly half of what the U.S. spends on healthcare. Still, Canadians constantly hear from the south about its expensive healthcare system. Indeed, it is expensive. But it makes the U.S. system look like it’s closer to extortion.
Canadians have shown that they don’t want to mimic a healthcare system of a country like the U.S., which has shorter than average life expectancy and higher than average mortality rates than other developed countries. We don’t want to give valuable health dollars to for-profit insurance if this is the result. That’s why we’re constantly fighting off invasions by for-profit companies.
The fear in the U.S., I believe, stems from an ongoing myth: governments are inefficient and the private sector isn’t. It’s much more complex than that, but with all its imperfections (and there are many), our not-for-profit healthcare system serves everyone to a far greater extent than in the U.S. And it does it more efficiently. A buck is a buck whether it’s given to the government or to a private health insurance company. I’d rather give my healthcare bucks to the government, which spends it better than any private company could.
I appreciated you hard look at present healthcare woes in America. However, I sincerely hope your Frontline producers can come up with a more balanced report of alternatives in the future.
Sincerely,
Peter R. Snell
I did not find my letter to the Frontline Ombudsman posted on his web page a couple of days after I posted it, although many other reactions to “Sick Around America” were posted there. I was especially turned off by the shoulder-shrugging “oh, well, whatever” reply by the producer, Ms. Wright, that was posted by the Ombudsman in reply to the first few letters. Some of the points I made were:
1) To Ms. Wright’s “explanation” that she only had one hour to present the topic, I wondered why she wasted her limited time of one hour with misleading sound bites by the insurance industry without countering them with facts, and why she didn’t use her one hour to present facts and truth (the same points made by FAIR and others here).
2) The parts of the documentary showing the personal stories of people who suffer under the regime of the private health insurance industry was ground that was already covered by the documentary “Sicko”, and that it was unprofessional of her and the other people involved in this show not to credit “Sicko” and Michael Moore for their ideas.
3) I asked why all of the people interviewed for their stories were white and middle class, and whether that makes lack of healthcare coverage and underinsurance more of a “problem” in their eyes.
4) Although I have been an avid watcher of Frontline pieces because I believed their reporting was incisive and truthful, now they have lost my trust, and I feel like I have to fact-check their pieces in the future.
I should have said “the PBS Ombudsman”, not “the Frontline Ombudsman”.
I usually love Frontline enormously, but I am just curious why you chose to eliminate all talk of single-payer options for health care insurance in your last episode, Sick Around America?
Apparently there is actually a lot of support for such a system, but the if you listen to the mass media (of which PBS is a part, and as of late is starting to resemble other corporate-oriented programming on other channels), you would think that “it’s just not politically feasible”, as if it were a non-starter. But a single-payer system of health insurance is a serious and viable alternative to the costly inefficiency of our current (or any future) for-profit system. That costly inefficiency takes dollars away from saving and improving lives and instead puts them in the profit-hungry pockets of red-tape obsessed bureaucrats and executives. That’s fine if you want to sell widgets to idiots who don’t really need themâ┚¬”Âlet the market separate the bucks from the suckersâ┚¬”Âbut for such an existential and universal need like health, you err profoundly when you needlessly deem some more worthy of care than others, even if such inequality is only incidental.
Contrary to what some would believe, political rights are not magically omnipresent and just waiting to be finally recognized and realized by some clued-in group of founding fathers. Political rights are chosen by those in power. In America, the People are ostensibly in power. The people therefore can determine what is and isn’t a political right. It is time that adequate health care became a political right of every U.S. citizen. If we can all chip in to buy roads and highways, bridges, a half-a-trillion-dollar-a-year military and nebulous bail-outs for irresponsible finance illusionists, we can all chip in to invest in the HEALTH and VITALITY of our own human population. What better investment could there be if we want to remain a competitive force in the world?
Please do not perpetuate the myth that a for-profit system of health care insurance is the only viable option.
Hello Frontline,
Along with Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, I would like to comment on your recent documentary called Sick Around America.
I’m afraid the documentary will only confuse the American public about the health insurance debate, since some important information was not clarified. After a quite good explanation of other systems in your Sick Around the World program, you put the Massachusetts system up as our alternative. There is a bill going through Congress, to which my congressman is a signer, H.R. 676, that takes aspects of the Medicare system – not British-type “socialized medicine – and expands it to the whole country. Why wasn’t this alternative part of the debate????
I am a decades-long contributor to PBS, I turn to PBS for unbiased reportingâ┚¬”Âthe kind of reporting that the corporate-owned networks do not provide. I particularly look forward to Frontline as one of the best news analysis shows on TV. But I was very disappointed at last week’s documentary on the problems of the U.S.’s health care non-system. You did a fine job of pointing out the problems that people face when trying to navigate the complex and difficult-to-understand fine print put into insurance policies. Who reads or understands them? I don’t. And clearly the woman whose insurance was canceled by Blue Cross didn’t either.
The problem with your documentary–as i am sure you knew when you put the show together–is that you presented the insurance industry as the only alternative to the present non-system. If only everyone were required to buy insurance (and thus guarantee that insuring people would be profitable for the insurance industry) then the Good Old Boys and Girls of the insurance industry would so glad to help us out and provide “health security.”
Come on! You know better than to present private insurance as the only alternative. If I remember correctly, you even produced a Frontline episode on the subject some months ago which presented single-payer (the forbidden word you dared not utter last week) as an alternative. And why did your report not even mention Representative Conyers’ HR 676 which offers a sensible solution to our health care crisis?
You also failed to separate HEALTH CARE from HEALTH INSURANCE, implying that health care is available only through the insurance industryâ┚¬”Âwhich is the kind of nonsense the insurance industry mouths in their self-serving way. And you did not mention the unneeded complexity of having many different policies, each of which requires special forms and offers a unique menu of covered services. All this requires the creation of unneeded job classification–people to be familiar with all the different policies and fill out the forms so that the non-system can grind on.
So what are we to make of all that Frontline left out? Are you also beholden to the insurance industry for funding? And did you accept funds from the insurance industry to produce this show? Or others? Almost no mainstream media outlets discuss single-payer these days, or analyze the parasitic nature of the health insurance industry which siphons off funding which ought to go towards producing the social good of health care, and instead uses its ill-gotten money to buy off elected officials and ensure that the news media presents the bloodsucking insurance industry as the only avenue of delivering health care.
Last night I watched Frontline’s report on the corrupt practices of multinational corporations that bribe potential customers in order to get business. Your report was very clear on the corrosive effects that corporate bribery leads to. I wish you would be more upfront about the corruption of news outlets by funders who offer money with strings attached (i.e., bribery) or threaten to withhold money if the reporting is not to the funder’s liking (the other side of the same coin).
Shame on Frontline! Shame on PBS! I expect better of you.
Just thought I’d pass this along:
PBS Lashes Back over Single Payer Dustup
by Russell Mokhiber
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/04/08-0
The cynical and nauseating immorality expressed in this editorial about how the special interests were flat excluded when it came to the EVIL corrupt Max Baccus et al actions to suffocate single payer option. Yes I say EVIL because profiteering on a monopoly hold of peoples solice from suffering is EVIL.
As Bernie Sanders said, the only way for a corporation to make a profit on “health insurance” is to deny someone treatment when they need it. If that is going to be how it is, let’s just eliminate all medical licensure and allow everyone free market access to all goods and services – including making all testing labs and all medicines ‘over the counter’, and let we the people figure it out ourselves like we did a century or two ago.
By soft peddling corruption you are feeding the potential for violent insurrection, like we saw recently at John Hopkins. You appear to be part of the solution. But really you are part of the problem! Even smart aleck medical doctors who are more interested in fame and fortune than in relieving suffering of their charges are doing more harm than good. And if the medical system drives the government into irreversable insolvency – it will be a failure rather than anything anyone can be proud of.
You are turning a deaf ear. And you are doing more harm than good. Read FAIR: