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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 frontline@pbs.org 617-300-3500
Please share your letters to Frontline by posting them in the comments section on the FAIR Blog.
5 Comments so far
Show AllIf we had a Universal health care, run like France or Britain, our auto industry would never be under this financial pressure. No wonder our car manufacturers are in steep competition with foreign companies, because outside of the United States auto makers are subsidized. Not only does GMC, Ford and others have to add health care benefits to every vehicle off the conveyor belt, but they have likely millions of retirees who are still collecting health care services.
Its a dream, but think of it? no intermediates like cold-hearted insurance companies. Run by a bunch of bean counters. I have first hand knowledge of their relentless activity, to use any gray-area possible to undercut services to you or a loved one. Serve you with all kinds of paperwork, to deceive you. Look for pre-existing conditions, charge you exorbitant premiums and co-pays.
Wouldn't be great to have a single payer system, where you pay your share to the government and your employer. Then you collect decent services such as doctor visits, specialty physician's, eye and dental care. Just like Europe, without the skulduggery of debt collectors, medical billing companies, civil courts or bankruptcy. I never, ever had to show any ID, to go and see a doctor. No receptionist was ready to photocopy your social security number, drivers license and insurance card? It's criminal thats it's a privilege in our nation--not a necessity abroad.
Whereas it's the wealthy who don't appreciate Universal health care, because they have no intention in waiting a month or so. Yet while uninsured Americans have to jump through hoops for health care, illegal aliens who have stolen into our nation pay--NOTHING--for emergency services. Colds, flue, hang nail--they go to hospital and get it all for free. Well! that's not quite true? You! The taxpayer are their wealthy uncle. That's thanks to Sen.Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and other Senators, who think 40 million illegal aliens is great for America.
Thats why they killed E-Verify in the Stimulus/Omnibus packages. ILLEGAL ALIENS NEED NOT APPLY!
After being referred to this article by a friend, I watched the "Frontline" report it refers to. I recommend everyone who is reading this do so if they have not already. I then read this article. I can agree "Sick Around America" may have not included all possible solutions to the United States' health care quandary. I do not agree the report advocates for or against a single-payer insurance program, or any other solution for that matter. The notion that "Frontline" has a political agenda concerning heath care reform seems unlikely to me. If it does then that should be the subject of an article, and not the editorializing of the facts and quotations included in the report.
The article refers to an interview with Karen Ignati where she (not "Frontline") advocates mandatory commercial insurance. Naturally she would advocate this as she represents insurance companies who stand to benefit the most from it. The report directly follows this excerpt from her interview with a detailed example of such a system in Massachusetts. The report detailed the only working example of such a system to be more expensive for everyone and still not everyone is covered; in short the report shows that Ms. Ignati's idea won't work. In so doing the report effectively advocates against mandatory commercial health insurance.
Watch the show for yourself...make up your own mind.
Why did T.R. Reid refuse to appear or narrate the show? Why did Frontline not mention single payer given that " ... Nearly half of all Americans now want the government to provide it [health insurance] for all problems." http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/01/30/sunday/main4765027.shtml
mrlaughlin:
I did watch the show. There was no mention of the concept of "single payer". Frontline does not have to advocate it, but they should bring up the subject. They didn't. They didn't bring up HR 676, nor the CA Nurses Assoc. nor Physicians for a National Health Program, all advocating single payer. IMHO, there was a clear, deliberate, omitting of the concept.
I liked T.R. Reid's Sick Around The World better, more comprehensive, seems like the two shows were more like different versions than sequals. But Sick Around America did show the problems that are specific to US. Reid does not seem to be advocating single payer although he does hammer it home about the administrative costs. Bottom line is that insurance companies are playing profit motivated casino game with our health care and they don't want to be cut out of the loop. Who is gouging in the end; the insurance companies who try to avoid the sick and deny claims, the doctors who want to earn a nice living after 8 to 12 years of schooling and long hours with high stress, the hospitals who invest in costly technology and infrastructure, the drug companies who research cures and develope medicines and fend off class action lawsuits, or the American people who gulp down diet coke and cheeseburgers like their credit is about to be canceled! The health care thing is an essential issue. We are an unhealthy society. From the food supply to education to equality to psychological health to financial health to democratic health. Public health care is an important statement for Americans. It is saying that we care for our Health. We are going to invest in our Health. We love ourselves enough to care for our bodies and minds collectively. Whoa! Its profound! If we could care for ourselves maybe we could care for immigrants and women and homosexuals and African Americans and Africans and poor people and refugees and endangered species and rivers and oceans and our planet. If we loved ourselves maybe we would not be on this crazy war mongering suicide trip!
I'm for the total health care package, you know, the one that covers Mother Earth!
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