It's about time someone stood up for the poor insurance companies! The New York Times today delves into what it's like to be "Dealing With Being the Healthcare 'Villains,'" eliciting sad stories from nice people who work for big insurance companies and feel they're under attack.

Times reporter Kevin Sack tells us, "Some workers said that unlike other contributors to the country's healthcare problems--the doctors who overprescribe, the hospitals that fail to control infection, the consumers who do not take care of themselves--insurance companies are faceless, impersonal and distant." Sack and the NYT to the rescue! Let's put a face on these victims.

Humana's employees want the politicians to know that, in the words of Aerion V. Miles, a customer service team leader, "We are human beings, too."

This is seriously absurd. Health insurance company employees are clearly not the villains; it's the private insurance system (and if you had to put a human face on it, the CEOs). What is happening is their jobs are being threatened by the possibility of lower insurance company profits, which the Times has managed to turn into a piece on how these employees do things like volunteer at a local hospice, so jeez, why are they under such heavy assault? The New York Times is not that stupid--but it apparently does think its readers are stupid enough to fall for  pure insurance industry PR.

In today's New York Times (6/19/09), Kevin Sack's article about the prospects for healthcare reform devotes all of a paragraph to single-payer:

Seeking broad popular support, the president and congressional leaders have played between the 40-yard lines of the health policy spectrum. Those who favor a single-payer, government-run insurance system have been marginalized, along with those who would unleash the system to the free market.

This is exactly wrong. Single-payer is, in fact, broadly popular--at least according to many polls, including the most recent from the New York Times (1/11-15/09). The decision to marginalize single-payer is a decision to avoid playing between the 40-yard lines.  The Times and the rest of the corporate media are the ones who have decided that single-payer isn't popular--no matter what their polling tells them.