Claiming that “you don’t hear” about the single-payer healthcare plan “as much as you used to,” CNN senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen says that “more people are on the same page” about healthcare reform than they were in 1993. A new FAIR Action Alert debunks these and other assertions by Cohen that have the effect of pushing the idea of universal government-financed health insurance to the margins of the healthcare debate.
You can post copies of your letters to Cohen in the comments section below. Please remember that letters that maintain a civil tone are most effective.
Studio
Dear Ms. Cohen–
I would like to suggest that you become part of the solution rather than continuing to be one of the main problems with your misleading information on Single Payer Health Care.
Fact: The public today is just as much in support of single payer as it was in the 90s.
2009 NYT Poll: 59% in favor
1990s Polls : 54%-66% in favor
Only the insurance companies and the misinformed are in favor of keeping the currently overpriced system or any form of it.
If you won’t consider the general public’s health, I wonder, is it possible that you might consider your own extended family and their health issues by reporting the truth?
Bobotronic
From: Bob White
Date: March 12, 2009 2:31:47 PM PDT (CA)
To: elizabeth.cohen@turner.com
Subject: Single Payer bias
Hi Ms. Cohen, in your March 5, ’09 piece for CNN, you seem to be confused about who exactly does NOT want to include the single-payer proposal as an option in the healthcare reform debate. If you browse New York Times polling from the early to mid-90’s and compare a recent NY Times/CBS poll, (http://www.pollingreport.com/health.htm) your confusion will be clarified. It is the Insurance industry that objects to “single payer,” not “people” as you intimate in your report. I wish you would clarify this in your next report on this subject, as your position and bully pulpit puts you in a unique position to affect opinion on the subject.
Thank you,
Bob White
North Hollywood, CA
HazMatt
Dear Ms. Cohen:
Upon hearing your claim that a Single Payer plan (socialized insurance) was not on most American’s minds I decided to write you and express the views of most Americans I talk with. Most people I know of are tired of the argument always involving private insurers and their overblown profit margins! Private insurance or rather Health Care for Profit has proven to be incapable of meeting the needs of the American people. The prices keep going up and up far surpassing our standard rate of inflation. Health care for profit has failed and 50 million uninsured Americans prove it. I could go on an on with all of the negatives about our current health care system but that’s not what my response is concerned with. My concern is that HR 676 should be part of the national debate yet it’s ignored.
We have the most expensive health care in the world and are much lower in overall health ratings than many societies that have single payer and spend half of what we do. Yet we never hear of any of the other successful health care systems in our national debate. Many National news orginations seem to be completely unaware of the single payer option and lots of money has been spent on a campaign of deliberate misinformation! It is your responsibility as a reporter to report on other options on the table!
John Conyers’ bill, HR 676 has been sponsored by 93 members of Congress and has a stellar grass roots movement behind yet we hear nothing about it in the media. The American people are speaking loud and clear but no one is reporting it. We live in a democracy and that democracy depends on honest un-biased reporting. There are enough people behind HR 676 to warrant a place among the national debate. Please be responsible and report on this very important legislation. Thank you for your time.
wswalcott
C’mon Elizabeth! Get with the program. Do some research. Walk outside of your office and talk to one of the thousands of local organizations pushing for a single-payer system. It never ceases to amaze me how talking heads can say whatever they want as though it is fact without doing the research to back up their claims.
59% of Americans want a single-payer health care system. Over 50% of doctors are for it. Even some of the larger corporations are for single-payer because they know it will help level the playing field in the global economy.
Your job on CNN is to present the facts and comment once you have all the information surrounding an issue – not the half you want to hear.
Corporate media – bought, sold and owned by the health insurance lobby (must we watch another Plaxin or Viagra commercial on TV to not realize it?)
Single-payer advocates are in the millions and the number is growing daily. Get out of your office and do some real investigative journalism for once.
Patrick Carano
http://www.pdaohio.org
bobjudd
Dear Elizabeth,
What kind of country would tie health insurance to your job? Only in America. Out of a job- out of health insurance is, of course the main point of your most recent story. Or should have been, but you missed the point, instead offering “insights” on how to shop for health insurance when you are out of a job.
Is it too much to ask for you to take a more balanced view? Couldn’t you at least include the single-payer proposal as an option in the healthcare reform debate. An option that has continuing popular support.
I wonder where you get your figures when you say that Americans would resist a single payer health system. As you said, “If in time, Americans start to think what President Obama is proposing is some kind of government-run health system–a la Canada, a la England–he will get resistance in the same way that Hillary Clinton got resistance when she tried to do tried to do this in the ’90s
A New York Times/CBS poll (1/11-15/09) found 59 percent of Americans are in favor of government-provided national health insurance. In other words, contrary to your claim, people are on pretty much the same page today as they were 15 years ago.
And, of course, Clinton wasn’t proposing a single payer system but rather one that would keep the insurance companies at the center, albeit competing with one another.
You as a senior medical reporter should know better. Perhaps you do. I would hope that your allegence is to the truth rather than to the medical insurance industry.
yours sincerely,
Bob Judd
rand
Letter to Cohen:
Im a retired attorney working for healthcare reform on the Oregon Coast.
This month we obtained a unanimous resolution from a small city council for immediate reform including a fair debate on the advantages of single-payer-type solutions like expanding Medicare. That council had a banker and a doctor.
This week we obtained a half-page on the editorial page of a rural conservative town…the healthcare reform piece asked for full consideration of single-payer.
Working the grassroots…which is what I do…I see significant political will for consideration of single-payer reform.
…if Nobel winner/World Bank economist Dr.Stiglitz thinks SP is the “only alternative”…
— one has to ask what is the problem with media perception?
(example: our tv coverage for the city rez…every reference to SP was cut…)
rand dawson Oregon 541-997-3950
EgbertoWillies
Dear Ms. Cohen,
I was continuing my research on why the single payer healthcare system was not getting the coverage on CNN and other networks that I would think warranted. You are quite influential with your medical reports and I am in fact a fan of the great service you provide. I hope you will give the single payer system a third and fourth look. It is neither Hillary’s plan or socialized medicine. Mathematically and objectively speaking, it is the most efficient way to pay for healthcare.
Single payer healthcare passage would have a material impact on small businessmen like myself with a wife that has been battling Lupus for the last 16 years and now uninsurable by private insurance. She currently gets state high risk insurance which cost three times standard insurance. I fear even this may be cancelled given the state of state budgets. My daughter and myself have private insurance with a $10,000 deductable to make it more cost effective. I take very good care of myself exercising and eating well. I have not had a physical in 5 years because I refuse to have any potential negative information in the MIB while I feel healthy as it would affect my insurability and indirectly the well being of my company.
I have created a website (http://SinglePayerHealthcareNow.com) of people’s real world experiences and factual information last week and will continue to grow it to show that this issue is not an academic or ideological exercise but one of life and death and the well being of the country as a whole. Please visit it frequently or follow my tweets at http://twitter.com/EgbertoWillies as I send out updates when new information is added.
Ms Cohen, we are depending on objective reporting from quality correspondence like yourself as opposed to the disingenuous hacks at FoxNews. Please live up to your reputation.
Most Sincerely and Respectfully,
Egberto Willies
leaderful
Elizabeth Cohen is at it again. This morning, on CNN Newsroom, she repeated inane, uninformed, empty, ideological sound bytes regarding the public health care option and provided no information regarding single-payer health care. What ever happened to impartial investigative reporting, or even a little research?
Single payer was originally the key plank of Obama’s health care plan. But then he dropped back to offering only a public option.
Opponents of true reform, the monied interests and healthcare companies that want to continue to raise costs far above the inflation level, have been fighting single-payer from the get-go, because they know that they will have to stop ripping off the public. They’re trying to convince senators to support a proposal called the “trigger,” which is designed to kill single-payer health care. Their plan will only mean that the sickest individuals end up in a single-payer option, and the weakened single-payer arm of the reform plan will be unable to negotiate lower costs.
The trigger proposal is a last-ditch effort by opponents of health care reform who want to kill real health care reform. .
It would delay single-payer health care for years, if not forever. Single-payer is the only plan that will cut costs and ensure that all Americans have high-quality, low-cost health insurance. Nothing else will cut the cost of healthcare, make it affordable, ensure that all citizens are covered, and reform the corrupt and bloated healthcare system.
Cohen and CNN are doing a great disservice to their viewers and are enervating informed and enlightening discussion.