Over the weekend, Talking Points Memo called out the Associated Press for “demonstrably false reporting” in support of McCain campaign talking points about Iraq.
Now the bias appears to extend to health care.
Yesterday, the AP’s analysis of McCain’s health care plan gave the false impression that liberal health experts believe McCain’s health care plan would have only a mild and “mixed” impact on the health care system:
McCain’s Democratic rival, Barack Obama, says the plan would “shred” the employer-based system that provides health insurance to about 158 million workers.
Most health analysts won’t go that far, but both liberals and conservatives say McCain’s approach would strengthen the individual and small-group insurance market. And by strengthening that market, it will pull in workers now covered through their jobs.
Not exactly.
The analysis of McCain’s health plan, shared by liberals and non-ideological health experts, is not that it would “strengthen the individual and small-group insurance market,” but it would shove consumers into an expensive, unregulated individual and small-group insurance market where many would pay more and get less.
But you wouldn’t know that from the rest of the AP piece, because it doesn’t quote any actual liberal experts.
Of course, Joseph Antos from the conservative American Enterprise Institute gets ample space to make his case (without much evidence) that “We’re not going to see employers drop coverage en masse.” To “balance” Antos, the AP quotes Len Burman from the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution. But Burman has in the past given qualified support for President Bush’s health insurance plan, which is similar to McCain’s. Predictably, he limply says McCain’s plan is a “mixed bag.”
You don’t see in the AP piece the searing criticism from liberal and non-ideological experts such as:
Our own Roger Hickey:
…they have adopted the most extreme right-wing ideological approach, premised on the idea that the big problem in health care is that Americans have too much insurance – in their words, we don’t have enough “skin in the game” – and that only when we have to buy health care with money that comes directly out of our own pockets will consumers force doctors, hospitals and insurance companies to become more efficient.
So that’s the theory. But it is contradicted by the facts. Most of us already pay part of our premiums out of our own pockets, and we increasingly have to shell out for co-pays in order to get to see a doctor. The result—in practice—is that most people, even those with good insurance, now think twice or three times about even getting regular preventive health checkups. Having lots of “skin in the game” has meant that millions of Americans don’t get health care they need—and that’s one of the big problems in U.S. health care driving costs up, not down.
Ezra Klein of The American Prospect.
The drawbacks are … clear: very high deductibles, lots of personal financial risk, and relatively sparse coverage. “These accounts put the family in charge of what they pay for,” enthuses McCain. But that’s not quite accurate. Individuals have no more autonomy under these accounts than in a traditional sense. They are just more acutely sensitive to the price of their care, which means they’ll purchase less of it, and overall health spending will fall.
If you’re young and unlikely to get sick, these accounts are a good deal, as you’ll pay lower premiums. If you’re not as demographically and genetically blessed, they’re a bad deal, as you’ll pay much more out of pocket for your care. They are, in other words, the logical extension of the modern health coverage marketplace: They’re health insurance for people who don’t need health care.
Jonathan Cohn, from The New Republic and the book “Sick.”
A big problem with this scheme, as critics like me pointed out, was that it wouldn’t do much for people who were already sick. Insurance companies generally won’t offer coverage directly to people with “pre-existing conditions,” since they represent such bad financial risks. (It turns out people with medical problems need medical care!) So buying insurance on their own really isn’t an option.
Jeanne Lambrew of the Center for American Progress.
The health plan proposed by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) would, by design, replace employer-based health insurance with individual-market insurance—a concern for people with chronic disease. Employers do not charge workers or their families different premiums based on their age, gender, health status, or health history. They also offer equal benefits and choices of plans. The individual market, however, plays by different rules. Individual insurers in most states can exclude people with pre-existing conditions directly by denying them coverage or indirectly by charging them exorbitant premiums.
This could be remedied with stronger rules for insurers—but the McCain plan moves in the opposite direction. It would allow insurers to play by the rules in any state—including the one that has the least protection for people with chronic diseases.
Dr. Robert Blendon of the Harvard School of Public Health, paraphrased by Time’s Karen Tumulty:
Under McCain’s approach, employers (who might be able to drop their coverage) would benefit, as might younger and healthier people, and those who live in states where health coverage is relatively inexpensive, like Minnesota. Those who would find their situation worse under the McCain plan include people living in high-cost areas, like New York and Massachusetts, as well as those who are already sick. For the sick and others who are hard to insure, McCain proposes high-risk pools. But Blendon notes that where this approach has been tried, both for health care and for auto coverage, it hasn’t worked all that well, because people end up paying a lot more money for policies that are a lot skimpier. He also notes that McCain’s proposed a refundable $5,000 family tax credit would fall far short of the $12,000 or more that it now costs a family to buy a “reasonably decent” health policy.
Robert Laszewski of Health Care Policy and Marketplace Review:
First, [McCain] is simply shunting the problem off to the states.
Second, he implies that one or more states have figured out what to do with people who can’t get health insurance because of preexisting conditions. Just which state is that? I don’t know of a single state that has been able to provide widely available access to health insurance for people who cannot get it.
Third, just who would finance this pool? States have tried so called high risk pools before. Time and again they are swamped by people trying to get in and there is never enough money. Since they have never worked before, how would they work this time?
As I flagged back in May, the Columbia Journalism Review warned media outlets that “The tax part of McCain’s health proposal is radical, far more radical than his rivals’ plans … The media need to begin asking the hard questions, and soon.”
The AP didn’t take the advice, instead taking the opposite approach: downplay the radical nature of the plan and suppress the hard questions.
