The lead in an article in today's New York Times (1/26/10) tells us that the White House and Congressional Democrats will soon decide "whether to use a procedural maneuver" to pass a healthcare bill with less than 60 votes in the Senate. That process is called budget reconciliation; it would be a complicated process, to be sure,  and as the Times tells us "it carries numerous risks, including the possibility of a political backlash against what Republicans would be sure to cast as parliamentary trickery."

Well yes, they could indeed say that--and reporters will type it into stories. As the article elaborates: "Republicans, however, have made clear that they will portray Mr. Obama and Democrats as trying to use a hardball tactic to win passage of the healthcare legislation." That was followed by a quote from Republican Rep. John Boehner, who lambasted the administration's "job-killing policies."

Read further, though, and you come to this: "The mere mention of reconciliation infuriates many Republicans, even though they occasionally used the tactic when they were in the majority."

Wait--what was that last part again? Republicans are infuriated by a tactic they used when they were in power? Isn't that hypocrisy a little more important than boilerplate GOP complaints?

This article has a familiar feel. In fact, the problem here was the problem with another Times article eight months ago, written by Robert Pear--a co-author of today's piece.  As I pointed out then, Pear called reconciliation "obscure" and "high-risk," before adding, almost as an aside: "The fast-track procedures have been used 19 times since 1980 to pass major legislation, including much of President Ronald Reagan’s domestic policy agenda in 1981, welfare overhaul in 1996 and President George W. Bush's tax cuts in 2001 and 2003."

There was little protest from the corporate media to passing tax cuts for the wealthy using reconciliation. Healthcare reform, for some reason, is treated differently.

Once again, the New York Times is setting up a false debate over healthcare policy, contrasting White House-style "pragmatism" with left-wing "ideology." The lead of Sheryl Gay Stolberg's piece today (12/18/09):

In the great healthcare debate of 2009, President Obama has cast himself as a cold-eyed pragmatist, willing to compromise in exchange for votes. Now ideology -- an uprising on the Democratic left -- is smacking the pragmatic president in the face.

In this worldview, "ideologues" are those who push for reforms--including single-payer--that they believe will lower costs and offer more comprehensive coverage. "Pragmatists," meanwhile, are moving in the opposite direction, toward higher costs and less coverage, in order to theoretically win the political support of some conservative lawmakers.

Using language like this doesn't tell you much about the debate in Washington, but it speaks volumes about where the New York Times is coming from.

Yesterday's Washington Post (12/16/09) reports that the public isn't sold on healthcare reform. As the headline puts it:

Public Cooling to Healthcare Reform as Debate Drags On, Poll Finds

The story by Dan Balz and Jon Cohen explains that "there is minimal public enthusiasm for the kind of comprehensive changes in healthcare now under consideration." Now, how "comprehensive" the reforms under consideration are is certainly debatable, but these conclusions seem to be drawn from questions about costs and Barack Obama's handling of the issue.

But the Post did ask other, more interesting questions--and then buried the results. Deep into the article we learn that "more than six in 10 favor expanding Medicare to people ages 55 to 64 who lack insurance--a proposal included in one Senate compromise effort that appears unlikely to survive final negotiations." In the next graph, readers are told:

On the issue of whether and how to expand coverage to those who do not have it, 36 percent favor a government plan to compete with private insurers, 30 percent prefer private plans coordinated by the government and 30 percent want the system to remain intact.

As with the so-called Medicare "buy-in," this finding of strong support for a public option suggests that the public is much more supportive of fundamental health care changes than the Congress or White House. In other words, the public isn't really "cooling" to health care reform;  they want more than the politicians are likely to deliver.

Washington Post columnist David Broder rounds up some "non-partisan" budget experts-- one of whom, oddly enough, was John McCain's Social Security adviser during his 2000 campaign -- to agree with him that the Democrats' healthcare bills are too expensive.  He closes with this:

The challenge to Congress -- and to Obama -- remains the same: Make the promised savings real, and don't pass along unfunded programs to our children and grandchildren.

This advice would be easier to take from someone who didn't just write that Obama should escalate the Afghanistan war because of the "urgent necessity is to make a decision -- whether or not it is right." Good thing that war doesn't cost anything-- or that if it does, our grandchildren won't mind paying for it.

A headline in today's Los Angeles Times (11/20/09): "Democrats Risk Taxing the Wealthy for Healthcare."

The paper explains:

Embracing the progressive--and sometimes politically risky--principle that the cost of carrying out public policies should fall to the well-off more than the disadvantaged, both the House and Senate bills would place new taxes on the wealthy to help pay for expanded insurance coverage.

Since mostly people aren't "well-off," and raising taxes on the wealthy tends to be rather popular with most people, what exactly is the political risk here? Surely the article will tell us. Oh, here it is:

In a recent Associated Press poll, 57 percent of those surveyed favored taxing people who earn more than $250,000 a year to pay for the healthcare overhaul. Of a variety of financing options tested in the survey, that tax was the only idea supported by a majority.

In other words, the not-very-risky idea of raising taxes on the wealthy.

The remarkable ability to engage in in-depth discussion of lawmakers' opposition to healthcare reform efforts without ever mentioning the massive contributions such lawmakers tend to receive from the healthcare industry is not confined to the Washington Post--as Dan Ward noted in his Extra! piece (11/09).  Another recent example of the phenomenon was provided by the New York Times, which ran a piece (11/18/09) on three Democratic senators --Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas--who may help filibuster the reform bill to death.

The piece, by Carl Hulse, informs us that the three "have all been skeptical of a public health insurance option," and that all "represent states won handily last year by Sen. John McCain."  An accompanying chart provides more data:  when they each were first elected and when they're next up for re-election; their margin of victory in their last race and their state's presidential results in 2004 and 2008; the population and median income of their states; and what percentage of their constituents are enrolled in Medicare, Medicaid or are uninsured.

The implication is that these figures might help readers better understand these senators' stances on healthcare reform.  But one obvious potential influence goes unmentioned: the money these politicians get from healthcare interests.  For Nelson, the figure $664,000 in the 2005-10 election cycle; for  Landrieu, it's $615,000;  and for Lincoln, $763,000.

By providing readers with information about state residents' income and health insurance status, and leaving out the sums contributed by health interests, the Times is suggesting that the politicians take their voters' interests into account and ignore their own.  If that sounds like the kind of politicians you're familiar with, then you're likely to find the Times' coverage of the politics of healthcare reform highly informative.

The headline and lead of a New York Times piece today:

Trick for Democrats Is Juggling Ideology and Pragmatism
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and DAVID M. HERSZENHORN

WASHINGTON -- Democrats have displayed a striking degree of pragmatism in seeking to push the health care bill through Congress, embracing or rejecting ideological considerations as needed to keep the legislation moving.

By "ideology," the Times means policy ideas that are popular with voters and that would be more likely to reduce the costs of the healthcare system and cover more people (single-payer, a truly robust public plan). By "pragmatism," they mean the things that are less likely to reduce costs, or the trade-offs Democratic leaders have made in an attempt to win conservative support (excluding coverage for abortion services, for example). The choice of such language is intended to send a political message about what policy ideas are wise, and which are not--based on ideology, not pragmatism.

In the Washington Post (10/25/09), reporter Dan Balz has a piece about the "resurrection" of the public option in the Senate negotiations over healthcare reform. But like the Post's trumpeting of its recent poll on the issue, Balz's rationale doesn't make much sense. As he sees it, Senate Democrats "reevaluated the politics of the public option" in part because support was on the rise:

Then last week, new polls, one from the Washington Post and ABC News and the other from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, found clear majority support (57 percent) for a public option. The Post/ABC News poll showed support had risen five percentage points since August. The new numbers emboldened public-option supporters to press harder, even though the same polls continued to show the public divided over the overall shape of healthcare legislation.

As we pointed out already, the Post's numbers weren't all that revelatory; the public option was popular before (with as much as 62 percent support in a June 18-21 Post/ABC poll) and continues to be popular. As for the Kaiser numbers Balz singles out, that poll did find 57 percent support this month; however, the month before (9/11-18/09), Kaiser found the public option supported by 59 percent.

Figuring out why the press is pushing this "public option comeback" storyline is difficult to fathom, but it's undeniable that it is being sold with misleading citations of public opinion.

The Washington Post reports today (10/19/09) on its new poll on healthcare reform. The headline is straightforward enough: "Public Option Gains Support: Clear Majority Now Backs Plan." But it's not clear there's much news here.

The public option has 57 percent support in the new poll. In the last poll (one month ago--9/10-12/09), it got 55 percent support. As the story points out further down, support was at 62 percent before all the town halls. It's a reminder that while the media have given a whole lot of time to critics of public insurance options in general, the public remains surprisingly supportive of the concept.

But it's even more important to remember that the last time the Post wrote up their poll results (9/14/09), they seemed eager to stress the unpopularity of the public option. Just look at the headline:  "Reform Opposition Is High but Easing: More Support if Public Option Dropped."

Apparently the two-point swing in the poll means a lot; something supported by 57 percent of people is popular, while the same thing supported by a mere 55 percent should be jettisoned.

A bit of NBC Nightly News last night, from reporter Mike Viqueria:

But now Mr. Obama faces more friendly fire. After a key committee passed a plan to pay for reform with a tax on high-cost policies, major unions, normally Obama allies, took out full-page newspaper ads complaining that the tax will hit labor hardest and vowing that, without changes, they say, "We will oppose it." And late last night opposition from a more familiar foe, Sarah Palin posting on her Facebook page and echoing insurance industry claims that the latest plan will mean higher premiums, writing, "Unintended consequences always result from top-down big government plans." After being blindsided by insurance industry attacks, the president hit back.

If you were a reporter trying to determine whose views on healthcare to include in the few seconds of time allotted for your story, would you really include a Facebook posting from the former governor of Alaska? Single-payer activists have to get arrested to try and make the news, but Sarah Palin just needs to type.

In a story about the Senate Finance Committee voting down two amendments that would have added a public option to the committee's healthcare bill, New York Times reporters Robert Pear and Jackie Calmes (9/29/09) write, "The votes vindicated the middle-of-the-road approach taken by the committee chairman, Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana."

The Times just had a poll that found 65 percent of respondents were in favor of a public option, with just 26 percent opposed.  To call the approach favored by the rightmost one-quarter of public opinion "middle-of-the-road"--well, maybe someone ought to take away Pear and Calmes' car keys and call them a cab.

Conservative Democratic Sen. Max Baucus of Montana unveiled his long-awaited health reform proposal yesterday, the results of weeks of negotiations among the Senate Finance Committee's so-called "Gang of Six"--three Democrats from the right-wing of their party and three moderate-to-conservative Republicans. The bill (unsurprisingly) does not include a public option and could end up leaving middle-income Americans paying too much for health insurance (Think Progress, 9/15/09). At the same time, no Republican--including those in the Baucus' Gang--has indicated that they intend to vote for this bill.

But some of the early media coverage seems to find it encouraging that the Baucus bill pleases almost no one. The Washington Post's Ceci Connolly presents that view today ("From Finance Chief, a Bill That May Weather the Blows"), with the lead: "On the surface, it appears that no one is happy with Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.)--and that may be the best news President Obama has had in months."

What exactly is the good news? Connolly explains that liberals unions "fumed," but more importantly, "the fragile coalition of major industry leaders and interest groups central to refashioning the nation's $2.5 trillion health-care system remains intact." These "influential players" have not found "reasons to kill the effort." Quite the opposite: "Most enticing was the prospect of 30 million new customers." Well, that is good news--if you happen to believe that pleasing health insurance companies is the key to passing meaningful reform of that industry. Here you see the worldview of the Washington Post in action.

Meanwhile, USA Today's front page headline in the print edition (9/17/09) is "Bill Seen as Step in the 'Right Direction.'" This is a strange conclusion to reach about a bill that no one seems to like. The "right direction" comment was made by Maine Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe, a Maine Republican included in Baucus' Gang of Six, who the paper tells us isn't even sure she'll support the Baucus plan anyway. On their website USA Today has changed the headline to read, "Bill Elates Few but Seen as Progress"-- an improvement, but still a strange way to describe the state of the debate. Unless, of course, one sees Max Baucus, Olympia Snowe or the insurance industry as the most important voices in that debate.

While within the power-friendly environs of the corporate-funded Newseum, congressmembers John D. Rockefeller IV, Tim Pawlenty and Mary L. Landrieu probably felt pretty good about their ability to field such softballs from ABC's George Stephanopoulos as "What's the problem with the public health option?"

But upon leaving corporate TV's criticism-free zone, where such lies as Rockefeller's statement that "Medicare is gonna start going broke in 2017, which is like the day after tomorrow," pass completely unchallenged, they each were questioned by real-life journalist Sam Husseini of WashingtonStakeout.com (9/15/09).

Compare the treatment described above with Husseini's calm but determined questioning of the pols:

Sam Husseini: Health insurance mandates--don't they end up being a subsidy for the insurance companies, because you're mandating that people go out and buy their product?

Mary Landrieu: ...I'm not carrying water for the insurance companies....

SH: You say you're not carrying water, but your No. 1 contributor is JP Morgan Chase, PACs and individuals associated.... And you've precluded the Medicare-for-all type option. Why shouldn't somebody conclude that you are doing the bidding of the financial industry?

And to Rockefeller's platitude, "Don't worry about the insurance companies. Believe me, we're going to take care of them," Husseini responds in a most un-Stephanopoulos manner:

You say not to worry about the insurance companies, but even though you obviously come from a very wealthy family, you've raised money for your campaigns--the No. 1 sector, according to Open Secrets, is finance and insurance. Why shouldn't it be seen that a lot of people in Congress are in effect doing the bidding of the insurance companies?

The New York Times (9/13/09) attempted to fact check a Barack Obama speech on healthcare. By all appearances, this is in the regular, non-satirical edition of the paper:

Mr. Obama opened his 40-minute speech with what he called "disturbing news": a report from the Treasury Department that, he said, "found that nearly half of all Americans under 65 will lose their health coverage at some point over the next 10 years” and that “more than one-third will go without coverage for longer than one year."

In fact, that is not precisely what the department found when it analyzed data from a University of Michigan survey that tracked the health insurance status of more than 17,000 Americans from 1997 to 2006.

The survey found that 47.7 percent had lost coverage at some point during those 10 years for one month or more, and that 36 percent lacked coverage for at least one year during that time, though not necessarily 12 months consecutively. Mr. Obama extrapolated those statistics to predict what might happen in the future.

Critics say that the president, who has deplored the "scare tactics" of his opponents, is now employing scare tactics of his own.

Huh. In case you didn't follow that: Obama cited a study with some striking numbers on workers losing their health insurance. That's indeed what the study found....  BUT, explains the Times, his presentation is misleading because the future could be radically different from the very recent past. Or as Dean Baker put it, "President Obama was making extrapolations about the future based on the past. Next thing he'll be telling us that black is white and night is day. This is why we need an independent media."

A September 7 Washington Post report on Japanese healthcare claims that "more than one-third of the workers' premiums are used to transfer wealth from the young, healthy and rich to the old, unhealthy and poor." Which Dean Baker (Beat the Press, 9/7/09) understatedly calls "a striking statement":

Fire insurance transfers wealth from people who don't have house fires to people who do. Car insurance transfers money from people who don't have car accidents to people who do. This is the basic concept of insurance. It protects people from bad events, transferring money from people who don't have bad events to those who do. In other words, this quote is telling us that Japan's health insurance system is operating like a health insurance system.

The article is also quick to tell readers that Japan's system may be unsustainable. Its subhead is: "Aging population could strain system." It is worth noting that Japan's population is already far older than the U.S. population.

"If the United States had the same age distribution as Japan," writes Baker, "its healthcare costs would almost certainly already be above 20 percent of GDP, compared to the current 17 percent." Listen to the FAIR radio program CounterSpin: "Trudy Lieberman on Healthcare Reform" (8/14/09).