The media’s excuse is that people don’t watch stories on health care, and there is little in the way of compensation for such reporting. By that FOX was right to eschew Obama’s health care press conference, they won the ratings in that time frame, but from the standpoint of being a news organization with some responsibility to put significant content in front of the public, they lost.

I loathe that Congress works in such a way that if some kind of plan on health care isn’t rushed through this year it’s bound to be unaddressed for some time. There is something wrong with a system that works that way, especially when the issue is so complicated that I doubt most of Congress understand anything but the political ramifications of it. I don’t have confidence in this process, or the people in charge of it, and I’d like to see some real investigative reporting on the health care issue.

Much of what I read/watch from major news services is nothing more than reports on the political implications of passing, or not passing, a health care bill. I want to see real life reporting on how systems in other countries work, not vague statistical comparatives. What I see is “reporters” making their point with any of the various points you can make with statistics, depending on which ones you choose for your particular agenda. As I’ve said here before, facts of omission are a greater part of our news these days, and with health care it is even more so because it is a complicated issue, probably takes time to investigate, might even take time and concentration to understand, and brings little in monetary rewards. But the public needs to hear some good reporting on this issue.

In a note to Trudy Lieberman (director of the health and medicine reporting program at CUNY’s Graduate School of Journalism who covers health reform for the Columbia Journalism Review’s cjr.org, and regular contributor to The Nation), Sarah Varney, one of the few really decent health care/health reporters out of LA (I lump her with Kelley Weiss, Joe Barr and Paul Conley at Capital Public Radio), who was inside Canada working on a report about their system, said….

“I would say as an American health reporter there is a lot of pressure inside news rooms to give the Canadian horror stories equal footing with what my reporting actually found—-which was that the Canadian system is by-and-large a functioning system that covers everyone for half the cost with enviable health outcomes”

According to cjr.org’s Health Reform Too Boring for Broadcast?

“Varney told a compelling and interesting story that directly contradicts the ads now running on U.S. television. She also conducted a round table conversation with some of the best Canadian health experts, including leading health economists Robert Evans and Morris Barer. They explained that their system is not socialized medicine — doctors don’t work for the state; they are independent and run their own practices. What is socialized is the insurance pool— every Canadian is in it— which powers the country’s lower cost, not-for-profit health insurance system.”

Trudy Lieberman’s Health Care pieces at at cjr.org

At the Nation

We need real health care reporting, whether we want it or not, and it is all but non-existent.

If you have a favorite reporter who is currently covering health care, I mean really covering it, let me know.

Peace

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