A Modest Proposal about News Coverage of Healthcare Reform
Make news reporters and TV anchors buy their own health insurance? We would have healthcare reform, and a public option already!
As news anchors intone ‘on the one hand, on the other hand’ about the ‘controversial’ proposals to reform healthcare, one thing is clear. If those well-heeled messengers of the day’s news were required to enter the open market and buy their own health insurance, we’d have long ago gone to universal health care, or at the very least, healthcare reform with a very real public option.
The press operates best when it is hungry, not overfed, a little bit mean. We have none of this at the higher levels of the USA’s chattering class at present. Get Lou Dobbs bargaining with Blue Cross/Blue Shield for his family’s coverage and we’d see him drop that fake Obama birth certificate sneer in a heartbeat. He would be howling for ‘fair and honest healthcare for all Americans’.
Take away Fox News’ Neil Cavuto’s free coverage and low copayments and he’d think twice about dissing efforts to level the playing field for working Americans who can get no insurance. He’d probably be holding the Canadian system up as an approach we should emulate.
Finally, make our Senators and Congressmen pay for their own health insurance. If we’d done that 20 years ago, Canada would probably be looking to emulate us!
Paying for Universal Health Care would be no problem if we’d pare back our gigantic Defense budget, cut our heavy spending on foreign aid and re-instate a reasonable tax on millionaires and billionaires. Heck, Warren Buffet even claims he’d be willing to pay a higher percentage of his income in taxes than his secretary pays. What a guy!
So when you read a headline about the ‘controversial’ proposals to reform healthcare, ask yourself, ‘controversial to who?” To corporate fatcats in Insurance company front offices, that’s who.
