FAIR: Frontline Distorts Global Healthcare Options

[marmar]

http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2009/04/07-19



FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 7, 2009
6:41 PM

CONTACT: FAIR
Isabel Macdonald, Communications Director,
212 633 6700 x 310
[e-mail]


Frontline Distorts Global Healthcare Options
PBS show treats mandatory for-profit insurance as the only alternative


WASHINGTON - April 7 - The March 31 documentary by PBS's Frontline, Sick Around America, treated mandatory for-profit insurance coverage as the only alternative to the current U.S. healthcare system--even though the documentary was a sequel to a 2008 Frontline special, Sick Around the World (4/15/08), that examined several publicly funded healthcare models, including Taiwan's single-payer system.

In a segment of Sick Around America subtitled "How to Get a Fairer System," Frontline narrator Will Lyman asked Karen Ignati, a spokesperson from the insurers' trade group America's Health Insurance Plans, why the U.S. couldn't guarantee coverage for all like other developed countries do. After Ignati responded that her industry could only guarantee universal coverage if the government required all citizens to have insurance, Lyman stated:

That's what other developed countries do. They make insurers cover everyone and they make all citizens buy insurance. And the poor are subsidized.

This generalization about other developed countries being places where "people are mandated to buy" insurance is also repeated on Frontline's web page about Sick Around America, in a paragraph that contains a link to the Sick Around the World investigation. The only alternative to the current U.S. healthcare system that was examined in any depth in Sick Around America was Massachusetts' system of mandating that people buy insurance from for-profit health insurance companies.

But this exclusive focus on mandatory for-profit health insurance as a solution to the healthcare problems facing the nation negated Frontline's earlier findings about the healthcare systems in developed countries. None of the healthcare systems featured in Sick Around the World is based on mandatory purchase of for-profit insurance; indeed, as a report by the Canadian government noted (5/97; revised 2/01), "The United States is the only OECD country that relies primarily on private insurance for healthcare financing."

Frontline's 2008 documentary actually highlighted Taiwan's single-payer model of healthcare system. As Frontline correspondent T.R. Reid explained, when Taiwanese healthcare adopted single-payer it went from being "worse than America's is today," with high rates of uninsured, to a system that guarantees coverage for all and "has the lowest administrative costs in the world, less than 2 percent." The U.K.'s system of public national health insurance was also featured.

And as Reid emphasized in the conclusion of the 2008 report, in countries where there is some private-sector role in health financing, one of the central lessons is that they "all impose limits," including that insurance companies "can't make a profit on basic care." (This point is made by one source in passing in Sick Around America, but it's easy to miss.)

Reid was supposed to be the correspondent for the new documentary, but he revealed in an interview with Corporate Crime Reporter (4/2/09) that he quit over concerns that the new documentary contradicted his earlier research:

"I said to them, mandating for-profit insurance is not the lesson from other countries in the world," Reid said. "I said, I'm not going to be in a film that contradicts my previous film and my book. They said I had to be in the film because I was under contract. I insisted that I couldn't be. And we parted ways.

"Doctors, hospitals, nurses, labs can all be for-profit," Reid said. "But the payment system has to be non-profit. All the other countries have agreed on that. We are the only one that allows health insurance companies to make a profit. You can't allow a profit to be made on the basic package of health insurance."

Frontline's new documentary perpetuates the media's longstanding pattern of ignoring proposals for single-payer health insurance (FAIR Media Advisory, 3/6/09), despite the fact that this proposal polls well with the American public and has been codified in a bill co-sponsored by 74 congressmembers. While Sick Around America included several spokespeople from the health insurance industry, no single-payer advocate was featured in the documentary.

ACTION:

Ask Frontline why Sick Around America misrepresented the findings of Sick Around the World, treating mandatory for-profit insurance coverage as the only alternative to the current U.S. healthcare system. CONTACT: Frontline [e-mail] 617-300-3500


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FAIR, the national media watch group, has been offering well-documented criticism of media bias and censorship since 1986. We work to invigorate the First Amendment by advocating for greater diversity in the press and by scrutinizing media practices that marginalize public interest, minority and dissenting viewpoints.

[marmar]

1. Happy Hour Kick!!!!

:kick:

[PA Democrat]

2. Kick! (and a 5th R)

[FiveGoodMen]

3. Kicking (with great disappointment in PBS)

[slay]

4. Same here! WTF PBS?!?!

That and their "analysis" a few weeks earlier of the "wall street collapse" lacked any real reporting on cause and blame and just stated facts that were already known! Something very strange is afoot at Frontline me thinks. :tinfoilhat:

[Touchdown]

5. Frontline's a day late and a dollar short. Sicko came out in 2007.

The conclusions made in Sicko have had longer to seep into the public's consciousness. This Frontline will be as forgotten as most of their other puff pieces, like the one on Rumsfeld.

[PHIMG]

6. Check out who sponsored the program

$50,000 grant from the Commonwealth Fund, founded by heirs of the Standard Oil fortune, and committed to saving the private health insurers.

We won't have a healthcare system that works until we cut out the wasteful and corrupt middlement -- the private health insurers, who make medical decision for you in thier own narrow self interest. We'd save HUNDREDS of billions of dollars if we got rid of them but OBAMA and Congress is afraid to go up against them. They think by doing the "public option" we can get rid of them naturally as if the AHIP crowd is too stupid to see thru this.

We need a single payer system. Paid for by progressive taxation with no out of pocket expenses and you are covered from cradle to grave. And you can go to any doctor or hospital you want. No checking a list from the insurance company to see if your doctor is "in network."

Private Health Insurance Must Go!

[truedelphi]

7. Yep if you do not at all pay atttention to advertising

You cannot figure out how they arrive at the slant they put to the news.

Why are there Billions of dollars spent each year by hospitals and HMO's, to convince a populace that often has no choice over insurance coverage anyway?

Most people cannot afford it unless employers have chosen to pay for it, and if employers do make that choice, you cannot choose the insurer.

But those Billions of advertising dollars are out there, precisely so that the TV network will not have its local news team look into the awfulness of the health care system. Or mention any of the inequities of the system.

Only a few brave columnists like Frima Harrup can go ahead and report the realities. And according to Frima, one reality is that the Chief Exceutive of an HMO that has refused a paltry 10% increase in payments to a Rhode Island hospital, pays that exec more than all 3,300 salaries combined!

[eridani]

8. I hope everyone has called and written

Don't let this stuff go by without challenge.