Background:
1. The Last GOP Bill Condemned 28,600 Americans To Death (Approx), Media Ignores Story
2. Corporate Media's Iraq War Coverup: Incontrovertible Proof Of Network News & The Beltway Media Covering Facts About The Iraq War For Their GOP Masters
3. Talking About The Healthcare Bill Or ANY GOP Policy WITHOUT The Context Of The Koch Brothers Pulling The Strings Is Disingenuous At Best
I covered this problem of media silence that helps the GOP before (such as in the posts in the background). This post just brings more evidence together that "the GOP are killing people with thier policies" is an appropriate and necessary comment and fact for the country to focus on and talk about.
Lets begin with the simple fact that people are gonna die if the GOP passes a bill on their policies and not saying this makes the healthcare bill process seem alot more harmless than it actually is.
An example of how media gets the lead wrong;
Headline is wrong - lead should be "WAY More Than 28,600 People Are Estimated To Die Under Trumps Murder By Government Plan" or something like that.
CBO: New health care bill would leave 32 million uninsured The president threatens and cajoles Republican senators as the CBO says the new, repeal-only plan will leave 32 million people uninsured and double premiums. Duration: 6:38
This is what the stories should look like...
Donald Trump's Death Panel Before Obamacare, thousands of uninsured Americans died every year because they didn't receive timely care.
AMY GOODMAN: Tell us what you found.
A Study:
MEDICINE AND PUBLIC ISSUES |27 JUNE 2017 The Relationship of Health Insurance and Mortality: Is Lack of Insurance Deadly?
Abstract:
Rather than cover personal stories of people who might die if the GOP bill passes, the media is doing nothing... while the GOP gets stories from people who didn't a good deal from Obaamcare but are now gonna die but that part is left out. the hypocrisy of this silence is certainly deafening at this point. Here are some examples of please for the truth unheeded...
People have been pleading with the media to tell the whole truth by putting the facts of the GOP's policies in its proper context...
Media can't take their eyes off the ball on health care Trump and Secretary Price can (and probably will) work to destabilize the current health care system behind the scenes. Media must hold them accountable.
Cable and broadcast news still obsess over process, ignore personal stories in health care coverage
MSNBC also hosted Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, who pointed out that the bill negatively impacts state budgets, like in Virginia.
A step in the right direction...
Watch MSNBC's Ali Velshi call out a Republican’s lies on health care Velshi: “I’m wearing a big Santa Claus hat right now. That’s about as honest as what you just said.
What Jake Tapper should have been saying here is that "so a few less people are going to die... people are still going to die. How do you feel about voting to kill Americans?"..are the sorts of words and facts that will drive the point home. How do you think the American people would feel if they heard the truth? How long would the repeal process last if the American people heard the truth?
Watch Jake Tapper explain to a Republican senator that even "skinny repeal" means less Americans insured Tapper: Skinny repeal "would mean people being removed from the insurance pool"
Fox & Friends leaves out that Obamacare mother actually benefited from the law Hosts also pressure Republicans and deflect blame from Trump
1. The Last GOP Bill Condemned 28,600 Americans To Death (Approx), Media Ignores Story
2. Corporate Media's Iraq War Coverup: Incontrovertible Proof Of Network News & The Beltway Media Covering Facts About The Iraq War For Their GOP Masters
3. Talking About The Healthcare Bill Or ANY GOP Policy WITHOUT The Context Of The Koch Brothers Pulling The Strings Is Disingenuous At Best
I covered this problem of media silence that helps the GOP before (such as in the posts in the background). This post just brings more evidence together that "the GOP are killing people with thier policies" is an appropriate and necessary comment and fact for the country to focus on and talk about.
Lets begin with the simple fact that people are gonna die if the GOP passes a bill on their policies and not saying this makes the healthcare bill process seem alot more harmless than it actually is.
An example of how media gets the lead wrong;
Headline is wrong - lead should be "WAY More Than 28,600 People Are Estimated To Die Under Trumps Murder By Government Plan" or something like that.
CBO: New health care bill would leave 32 million uninsured The president threatens and cajoles Republican senators as the CBO says the new, repeal-only plan will leave 32 million people uninsured and double premiums. Duration: 6:38
This is what the stories should look like...
Donald Trump's Death Panel Before Obamacare, thousands of uninsured Americans died every year because they didn't receive timely care.
Not long ago, Americans learned that the average life expectancy for white people in this country—those most likely to have voted for Donald Trump—actually declined for the first time in many years. The pathologies and frustrations believed to have driven that decline may have motivated the tiny handful of votes that gave Trump his Electoral College victory.
But not long after their euphoria over his inauguration fades, they are going to learn why his administration is so likely to drive those statistics in the wrong direction. Despite his promises to protect Social Security and Medicare—and his vow to replace the Affordable Care Act with "something much better"—Trump's cabinet appointees and his allies in Congress plan ruinous changes to those programs. And that will mean ruin, and in thousands of cases death, for the mostly white and working-class people who depend so heavily on them.
Unless the Republicans come up with a plausible bill to replace Obamacare—a challenge that has eluded them since 2009—millions of their constituents will lose the health insurance they have only recently gained, and yes, thousands of those people will die next year.
Back when President Obama's health reform plan first passed, Republicans and their media echoes warned loudly about mythical "death panels" embedded in his legislation. The voters who believed that nonsense are about to meet the real death panels, led by House Speaker Paul Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and Rep. Tom Price, the Georgia Republican slated to head the Department of Health and Human Services.
This is not hyperbole: Before the advent of Obamacare, tens of thousands of uninsured Americans died every year because they didn't receive timely care. Ten years ago, one reputable study estimated that as many as 137,000 Americans had perished prematurely due to lack of health coverage between 2005 and 2010, or more than twice as many as died in the Vietnam War. The Institute of Medicine has estimated that uninsured adults are 25 percent more likely to die prematurely than those with coverage, with uninsured adults between 55 and 64 years old faring even worse. For them, being uninsured is the third most significant cause of death, behind only heart disease and cancer.
Those estimates don't include the victims of insurance company profiteering who will die if the repeal of Obamacare undoes its protection of patients suffering from "previously existing conditions." Exposed to the tender mercies of corporate actuaries, thousands of them will lose their coverage, watch their families driven to destitution, and many of them will die, too.
That isn't supposed to be what happens under President Trump, who declared in many interviews and debates his determination to provide better and cheaper health insurance "for everybody, let it be for everybody." But by appointing a far-right ideologue like Price to run health policy, Trump effectively violated that promise before even taking his oath of office. Working with Ryan and the Republican majority in both houses of Congress, Price means to destroy Obamacare, slash Medicare and decimate Medicaid.
The truth about the current incarnation of the Republican Party, which voters ought to have learned long ago, is that its attitudes toward working Americans of all descriptions range from careless to merciless. If not every Republican shares the "let 'em die" position on health care screamed by a GOP debate audience in 2012, all too many believe that government has no role in ensuring that every American is insured—even though that would save money as well as lives. However ridiculous Trump's promises may seem, his pledge to protect Americans who depend on Obamacare, Medicare and Medicaid is a matter of life or death. Unless he changes course now, we may see a lot of red caps at funerals for people who lost their insurance and died much too soon.
Senate GOP Healthcare Bill Estimated to Kill 28,600 More in U.S. Each Year & Drop 22M from InsuranceAnother example of a better lead for the healthcare MurderDeathKill story...
AMY GOODMAN: Tell us what you found.
DR. STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER: We reviewed the world’s scientific literature on the relationship between health insurance and mortality. And there is really now a scientific consensus that being uninsured raises the death rates. It raises your death rates by between 3 and 29 percent. And the math on that is that if you take health insurance away from 22 million people, about 29,000 of them will die every year, annually, as a result. That’s what we found by reviewing the literature. There was a similar review in New England Journal of Medicine. We punished our own study in the Annals of Internal Medicine, which is the official organ of the American College of Physicians, the nation’s largest medical specialty society. So, being uninsured raises your death rate. That is established scientific consensus. And many of the Republicans have been trying to say, "Oh, you can take away health insurance from 22 million people, and nothing will happen." That’s simply contradicted by the scientific consensus.
AMY GOODMAN: And explain how people die as a result.
DR. STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER: Well, people might have an acute illness, like major trauma. You get hit by a car, and you have to go to the hospital. If you’re uninsured and you have major trauma, your death rates are higher. You might have an illness like breast cancer. If you’re uninsured and you have breast cancer, your death rates are higher. But mostly this has to do with that routine medical care to treat high blood pressure, to treat diabetes, before they cause complications, and to prevent those serious complications and deaths. Seems like hypertension, high blood pressure, is probably the largest single contributor to deaths among uninsured people. You need to be taking medicines to control high blood pressure to prevent strokes and heart attacks and death.
AMY GOODMAN: So this number, 22 million people will lose their health insurance over the next 10 years, and then it only goes up from there.
DR. STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER: Well, according to the Congressional Budget Office, yes, it goes up from there, because the Medicaid cuts in the Senate bill are delayed, but then they’re very, very deep. They’re even deeper over the long run than what was in the House bill. So, Medicaid is going to be cut not just for poor people, but for people in nursing homes. You know, most people in a nursing home eventually have to rely on Medicaid to pay the bill, because nursing home care takes all your money, and you have to rely on Medicaid. If you have a disabled child, you have to rely on Medicaid. If you have a relative who has serious mental illness or substance abuse, they’re going to be relying on Medicaid. So it takes money from all of these people, not just the folks who are poor now, to give this giant tax cut to the top 1 percent of taxpayers.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to turn to a comment made by the Idaho Republican Congressman Raúl Labrador during a town hall meeting last month. He came under fire for his answer to this question from an audience member.
AUDIENCE MEMBER: You are mandating people on Medicaid accept dying. You are making a mandate that will kill people.
REP. RAÚL LABRADOR: No, no one wants anybody to die. You know, that line is so indefensible. Nobody dies because they don’t have access to healthcare.
AMY GOODMAN: "Nobody dies because they don’t have access to healthcare." Dr. Steffie Woolhandler?
DR. STEFFIE WOOLHANDLER: Well, Raúl Labrador said it. Senator Ted Cruz has said that. Marco Rubio has said that. Secretary Tom Price, the secretary of health and human services, has implied that, that you can be uninsured and nothing happens. That’s simply not true. The science is showing us that if you lack health insurance, you don’t get the care you need to stay healthy, and that people die earlier as a result. And I think it’s a—the Republicans recognize this is a very dangerous idea for them, that people are going to die because of their behavior. But that’s what the scientific consensus is saying.
A Study:
MEDICINE AND PUBLIC ISSUES |27 JUNE 2017 The Relationship of Health Insurance and Mortality: Is Lack of Insurance Deadly?
Abstract:
About 28 million Americans are currently uninsured, and millions more could lose coverage under policy reforms proposed in Congress. At the same time, a growing number of policy leaders have called for going beyond the Affordable Care Act to a single-payer national health insurance system that would cover every American. These policy debates lend particular salience to studies evaluating the health effects of insurance coverage. In 2002, an Institute of Medicine review concluded that lack of insurance increases mortality, but several relevant studies have appeared since that time. This article summarizes current evidence concerning the relationship of insurance and mortality. The evidence strengthens confidence in the Institute of Medicine's conclusion that health insurance saves lives: The odds of dying among the insured relative to the uninsured is 0.71 to 0.97.
Key Summary Points
Key Summary Points
In several specific conditions, the uninsured have worse survival, and the lack of coverage is associated with lower use of recommended preventive services.
The Oregon Health Insurance Experiment, the only available randomized, controlled trial that has assessed the health effects of insurance, suggests that insurance may cause a clinically important decrease in mortality, but wide CIs preclude firm conclusions.
The 2 National Health and Nutrition Examination Study analyses that include physicians' assessments of baseline health show substantial mortality improvements associated with coverage. A cohort study that used only self-reported baseline health measures for risk adjustment found a nonsignificant coverage effect.
Most, but not all, analyses of data from the longitudinal Health and Retirement Study have found that coverage in the near-elderly slowed health decline and decreased mortality.
Two difference-in-difference studies in the United States and 1 in Canada compared mortality trends in matched locations with and without coverage expansions. All 3 found large reductions in mortality associated with increased coverage.
A mounting body of evidence indicates that lack of health insurance decreases survival, and it seems unlikely that definitive randomized, controlled trials can be done. Hence, policy debate must rely on the best evidence from observational and quasi-experimental studies.
People have been pleading with the media to tell the whole truth by putting the facts of the GOP's policies in its proper context...
What pundits call a "moderate" Senate health care bill will kill people
As Andy Slavitt, the former acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, noted, “The Senate bill needs to be compared to current law, not the House bill.” People will die if this bill becomes law. That’s the context reporters should be using when discussing this new proposal.
Media can't take their eyes off the ball on health care Trump and Secretary Price can (and probably will) work to destabilize the current health care system behind the scenes. Media must hold them accountable.
After Senate Republicans failed in their latest effort to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA), it is imperative that media stay focused on covering health care. President Donald Trump and Tom Price, his secretary of health and human services, are likely to make unilateral changes that will undermine the ACA and affect those currently covered under it. Media outlets cannot let these policy decisions happen in the dark, as they have in the past.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) announced on July 17 that the latest “effort to repeal and immediately replace the failure of Obamacare will not be successful,” after four Republican senators said they would not vote for the bill. McConnell currently intends to vote on a bill to repeal the ACA with no replacement plan in place -- a move Trump supports -- which, The New York Times wrote, “has almost no chance to pass.”
Media largely failed to cover the debate leading up to this failed legislative attempt, which played out behind closed doors in “almost-unprecedented opacity,” leaving audiences in the dark about the consequences and stakes of the proposed bill. For the time being, it appears as if decisions about health care will continue to be made in the dark.
Without Congress, Trump and Price can still deal a potentially fatal blow to the health Insurance market. On July 18, Trump reacted to the Senate’s failure to pass an ACA replacement, saying, “Let Obamacare fail. ... I’m not going to own it.” And, as Vox explained, “Especially in states with shakier exchanges, the president certainly does have some fairly broad discretionary authority that he and his health and human services secretary can use to deliberately sabotage the program if they want to.” In March, former Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius told New York magazine that Trump and Price would have to decide “whether or not HHS will continue to reimburse insurance companies for cost-sharing expenses.” Sebelius explained that not making those payments, which Trump has threatened to do, “could cause a number of companies now offering plans in the marketplace to not sign up again for 2018.”
Given the likelihood that Trump and Price will work to destabilize the health care system however they can, media have an obligation to prioritize the issue, especially as Trump is likely to blame Democrats for any negative impacts to health care coverage or to the insurance market in general. The current health care system will undoubtedly continue to inspire debate and attempted sabotage throughout Trump’s time in office. Media better pay attention.
Cable and broadcast news still obsess over process, ignore personal stories in health care coverage
Immediately after Senate Republicans unveiled a new draft of their plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA), cable and broadcast newscasts framed reports about the bill around the challenges it faces in the legislative process, including vote counts and optics, rather than personal stories from those who would be most affected by the bill. However, the programs did use the opportunity to cover key changes to and consequences of the bill.
Senate Republicans on July 13 introduced a new draft of their bill to repeal and replace the ACA, which includes key changes surrounding health savings accounts and ways for insurers to offer more bare-bones policies. While the bill has changed a bit, the media coverage has largely stayed the same. Once again, media are continuing to focus on the process surrounding the bill and largely ignoring personal stories from those most affected. Unlike with previous coverage, cable and broadcast news did focus on the new changes in the bill and their potential consequences for Americans. MSNBC in particular provided more context and information about the bill than other networks.
Broadcast news
During the July 13 newscasts, just hours after the new draft plan was introduced, broadcast news shows framed their coverage around the legislative process and optics of the bill. NBC’s Lester Holt introduced a report on the bill on NBC Nightly News by noting that “Republicans face a crucial battle for votes in their own party” over the bill. CBS’ Anthony Mason said the bill was “already in critical condition” on CBS Evening Newsbecause of the lack of Republican support. And ABC’s Mary Bruce framed her report on the new bill by pointing out that it faces “the same old problem: Can it get the votes to pass?”
Like previous coverage, broadcast newscasts largely neglected to offer personal anecdotes from people who would be most affected by the bill. One exception was CBS Evening News, which followed its coverage of the bill with a segment on how Kentuckians would be “hard hit” by its Medicaid cuts.
Network newscasts did do an exemplary job of highlighting the consequences of and new changes in this newest draft of the bill, however, including provisions that would allow “the return of skimpy junk insurance policies and discrimination against people with pre-existing conditions,” according to HuffPost, and expand the use of health savings accounts, which have been found to “primarily benefit the wealthy, the healthy, and the educated.”
Cable news
Like broadcast newscasts, the 6 p.m. hour of cable news coverage framed the unveiling of the bill largely around vote counting and optics. Fox News’ Bret Baier introduced a panel discussion of the bill on Special Report by explaining that the GOP “can only afford to lose one more vote” to pass the bill. Earlier in the program, Baier set up a report on the bill by highlighting “the continued internal dissent” surrounding the bill. MSNBC’s Ali Velshi framed his discussion of the bill on MSNBC Live by saying that it “is hanging by a thread” in terms of votes. CNN’s Jim Acosta opened a segment on the bill by stating that Republicans are “increasingly optimistic about its prospects.” Acosta even conducted an interview with Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) and asked only about the prospects the bill would pass, not the actual policies it contains.
Like broadcast newscasts, cable coverage was also largely devoid of personal stories from those most affected. However, cable coverage did highlight several changes that are included in this draft of the bill and the consequences of the provisions. MSNBC, especially, excelled in this area, hosting Dr. Kavita Patel, medical director of Sibley Primary Care in Washington, D.C., who noted that this bill “does cause a death spiral … by allowing for insurance plans to sell … catastrophic insurance.”
MSNBC also hosted Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, who pointed out that the bill negatively impacts state budgets, like in Virginia.
Watch MSNBC's Ali Velshi call out a Republican’s lies on health care Velshi: “I’m wearing a big Santa Claus hat right now. That’s about as honest as what you just said.
ALI VELSHI (HOST) That's unfair. You could actually have hearings about this and consult all these groups, what President Trump called special interest groups and one party. Why not have hearings and then come up with a bill rather than throw a bill out there and hope people like it?LANHEE CHEN: Well Ali, we've been having hearings for the last seven years about replacement --VELSHI: Well that's not true. Well that's just not true Lanhee. The Republicans have not moved to a single hearing. A public hearing on health care? Not been done.CHEN: No, no no, we've had lots of hearings in the last seven years --VELSHI: With whom?CHEN: -- In the House Ways and means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee about all of the different types of provisions that you see contained in the senate bill.VELSHI: But no one has had a public hearing at all on this bill. I mean that's a fact.CHEN: But the policy that goes into it, we've had tons of public hearings on that for the last seven years. That's the point people are trying to make.VELSHI: People would really like a hearing. I mean I have had the American Cancer Society on this show. I've had the Diabetes Association the show. I've got the American Heart Association on this show, I've had the Alzheimer's Society on the show. AARP on this show. I had every single one of them, the Nurses Association, all of them saying "Can we please have a hearing? "Can we have a meeting with Mitch McConnell?" And guess what he says to every single one of them -- big fat goose eggs. So let's not go down this road and suggest there have been hearings, Lanhee. There here very zero hearings.CHEN: No there have been hearings and all those groups Al have been represented at those hearing over the last several years. I don’t disagree with you a better process is good. These issues have been discussed.VELSHI: I'm wearing a big Santa Claus hat right now. That's about as honest as what you just said, but that’s how we're gonna end the show. I'm wearing a Santa Claus hat and there have been hearings about Obamacare.
Previously:
How Conservatives Smeared Obamacare And Laid The Groundwork For Trumpcare
A Comprehensive Guide To The Right-Wing Media Myths And Facts About Trump’s Potential Health Care Policies
Obamacare Repeal And The Myth Of Trump As The "Great Negotiator"
What Jake Tapper should have been saying here is that "so a few less people are going to die... people are still going to die. How do you feel about voting to kill Americans?"..are the sorts of words and facts that will drive the point home. How do you think the American people would feel if they heard the truth? How long would the repeal process last if the American people heard the truth?
Watch Jake Tapper explain to a Republican senator that even "skinny repeal" means less Americans insured Tapper: Skinny repeal "would mean people being removed from the insurance pool"
JAKE TAPPER (HOST): Let's talk about the measure that Republicans are calling "skinny repeal", because it would be a relatively brief amendment. It would get rid of the both the employer and the individual mandate and also get rid of the medical device tax. Wouldn't that measure, if it were signed into law, hurt insurance markets and cause premiums for those who have insurance to go up? Because obviously it would mean people being removed from the insurance pool.JOHN THUNE (R-SD): Well, what you would have, the individual mandate is I think the thing that people find most objectionable about Obamacare, and that is that they have to buy a product that in many cases they don’t want and can't afford. So repealing the individual mandate is something on which I think were there is pretty broad agreement. There might even be some Democrat support for that before this is all said and done.[…]TAPPER: But the "skinny repeal" would also take away the employer mandate also, which means that individuals in businesses of a certain size have to provide health insurance. So it’s not just the individuals who can’t afford it necessarily being forced to, it’s saying to employers they don’t have to provide it.
Previously:
How Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson are (still) ignoring the health care debate
Capitol Hill staff prevented journalists from reporting on Senate health care bill protesters
Fox & Friends leaves out that Obamacare mother actually benefited from the law
Fox & Friends leaves out that Obamacare mother actually benefited from the law Hosts also pressure Republicans and deflect blame from Trump
As the Senate Republicans prepared to vote on a bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Fox & Friends spent the morning misleading its audience about congressional procedure heading into the vote, omitting key details in an interview with a critic of the ACA (a mother who blamed health care reform for a lack of options for her son's care), and failing to mention that the GOP sabotaged the ACA for years. The hosts also, directly and indirectly, pressured Republicans into voting for the bill while shifting blame away from President Donald Trump if it fails.
One of the first health care segments on the July 25 edition of Fox News’ Fox & Friends was an interview with Marjorie Weer, a mother who was invited to the White House on July 24 to serve as an example of someone victimized by Obamacare.
During the interview, Weer discussed her son’s disability and said the ACA has made it more difficult for her son to get care. Co-host Ainsley Earhardt, who conducted the interview, left out a few previously reported details of Weer’s story wherein her family directly benefitted from health care reform. A July 24 article in The Post and Courier pointed out that Weer and her family “benefited from the Obamacare provision that insurance compan
