Twitter
StumbleUpon
Facebook
Delicious
Digg
Newsvine
Google
Yahoo
TechnoratiTell Media: Include Single-Payer in Healthcare Debate
To address the public's need for a "robust debate of health care issues and potential policies", ABC recently aired a prime time town-hall meeting (6/24/09) on President Barack Obama's health reform proposals. The forum was supposed to feature "questions from every single vantage point," according to ABC host Diane Sawyer.
Yet ABC did not air a single question about single-payer national health insurance--which many healthcare providers and citizens consider the best way to fix the broken healthcare system.
Single-payer national health insurance is a model in which healthcare delivery would remain largely private but would be paid for by a single federal health insurance fund (much like Medicare provides for seniors). The goal of healthcare reform, we're told, is to expand coverage to the uninsured while lowering costs, and many people consider single-payer to be the most sensible way to achieve these goal.
Polls show that single-payer is supported by 59 percent of the American public (New York Times/CBS, 1/11-15/09) and 59 percent of physicians (Annals of Internal Medicine, 4/1/08).
Yet single-payer has been mentioned only four times on ABC News over the past 6 months, three of them by opponents dismissing the idea (3/5/09, 6/14/09, 6/14/09).
A recent FAIR study (3/6/09) showed that of hundreds of newspaper and broadcast stories on healthcare reform in the week leading up to Obama's March 5 healthcare summit, only five included the views of single-payer advocates; none of those appeared on TV networks.
Let's send a message to ABC and the other TV networks: The insurance lobbies and many politicians don't want to talk about single payer. But that makes it all the more important that the media do.
Sign our petition to ABC, CBS and NBC, demanding that single-payer be a part of their coverage of the health care debate. Add your name to lend your voice to this effort to broaden the debate over the broken U.S. health care system.
13 Comments so far
Show AllBack FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting) on this to make sure single payer at least gets in a word edgewise. I've put this same kind of account in my blog. Let's back FAIR about being fair on health care.
AD
The MSM is owned by The BIG Health Care Mafia. They sure as hell are not going to allow anyone to hurt their customers are they?
Who cares what the 'half-vast wasteland' thinks? I unpluged my TV last year and send my cards and letters and angry phone calls directly to my senators and congress creature.
The major networks don't give a shit what FAIR thinks any more than Baucus or Obama gives a shit what 60%+ Americans think about health care. It's the CEO club they listen to, and only them. Far as Diane Sawyer and Charlie Gibson are concerned, the CEO club of Big Pharma and Insurance are the ONLY real representives of what the public thinks about the issue. They own the fucking government. We're just the passive, irrelevant spectators, even when we get agitated and active. They don't give a rat's ass what pisses us off.
"Are you kidding me?" ABC/CBS/NBC/CNN make money from the Healthcare System....They are no different than the politicians getting their contributions from the Healthcare Industry........F_____ the American People!!!! We want to "Protect the American Way of Life".....We, the MEDIA, have a right to earn millions of dollars......We are no different than Bernie Madoff......We want the good life......It doesn't matter that 98,000 to 100,000 of you die in hospitals from mistakes made in those hospitals every year......It doesn't matter that thousands of you die every year from bad prescription drugs. It doesn't matter that 35,000 of you die every year from the common flu.. It doesn't matter that over 50 million of you have no health insurance coverage......
Barack is our man ....Let's: keep the troops in Iraq,expand the invasion in Afghanistan, open a new invasion front in Pakistan, detain people for indefinite time periods without "Just Cause", and pretend that Amercans will be given a good healthcare system.........Don't worry, Barack will say, "In this political, environment, it is the best that we could do!" (I am just a dumb American Retired Teacher and know that "Singlepayer Insurance" is the way to save billions and protect everyone.......Simple, every single worker deducts 5% into social security healthcare and every married worker deducts 8% into social security healthcare and everbody is then covered through medicare........If you want supplemental care, you can pay a Blue Cross $400 a month and go to a Blue Cross Clinic.)
After dumping 6 TRILLION DOLLARS down the "Invasion Holes" and enriching thousands and destroying the American Economy, it is time to help our friends in the Healthcare Industry !!!!
As a long-time advocate for single payer, I share the frustration with the MSM continuing to pretend it doesn't exist and/or is politically impossible.
But I take out my frustration by doing everything I can to change it, including signing the petition above and e-mailing other people I know asking them to sign it too.
You're probably right the the MSM doesn't give a shit about single payer, but they do give a shit about their popularity: They've got to have viewers that they can sell to advertisers. If enough people complain about something, they'll listen and, who knows, maybe change their evil ways. Gnashing our teeth will only benefit our dentists.
The MSM is still the same as it was in the days leading up to shock and awe!
Total black out of the truth and common sense.
All together now!
"US governance is an organized crime syndecate."
Have a nice day now y'all.
It's July Fourth, a celebration of the rich grabbing the reins once again. And we call it freedom.
Must be out of our minds. No doubt.
The only way we, the people, can ever get a seat at the table on any issue being debated on in Congress is to get rid of private campaign donations and go with Publicly Financed Campaigns. Corporations own and control our government...this is why we have contaminated food (ecoli, mercury,lead, salmonella), poisons like lead in our kids toys and other consumer goods....because we no officals who are not on the take!! $$$$$$ talks!!!
There is a bill in Congress now for public finance for qualified candidates running for the House of Representatives. It is HR 1826. The only way we are going to get democracy in this nation is to take control of the Congress. With public finance a decent person could run to be your representative, and really do just that. With public funding and the right to be in a debate and get a special low cost for TV advertising, (which is part of this bill) that candidate can have a chance of getting elected. Wow!! Can you imagine having a House of Representatives who really represent the people and are not paid mercenaries for the corporations?
You have got to GET IN THE FACE of your Representative and DEMAND that she/he vote YES on HR 1826. The name, address, phone number and email address is on line. So make a move. DO SOMETHING.
The current U.S. medical health situation is perpetuated by the medical insurance, pharmeceutical, and medical supply industries to CONTINUE raking in money profits from the public and government welfare programs. These industries scream against single-payer insurance and they buy politicians' favors to CONTINUE raking in money profits. No doubt that the med insurance industry bought off at least ABC to slant all news stories against single-payer insurance. It is time to break these industries' arrogant hold on U.S. medical care and on the American public. Congress just passed a law that any citizen NOT buying "affordable" med insurance will be fined $1000. This "law" was requested by the medical insurance industry to guarantee and increase corporate money profits even farther. Lapdog Congress did what the med insurance industry paid and told them to do. We MUST break the greedy, arrogant strangle hold that money rich medical insurance corporations have on almost all U.S. citizens.
What’s going to work best for ALL of us – in personal terms and in terms of business, education, the environment and peace? As citizens of a democracy, these are questions we need to filter our decisions through, politicians especially.
A “competitive” public option does not go far enough to lower the cost and improve the quality of healthcare for everyone. Single Payer Healthcare is the only way to accomplish this goal. We cannot let leaders in Congress and private healthcare control the narrative. America is being torn apart by the forces of separation, selfishness, fear and greed. In effect, government controls the poor and serves the rich. This is why, to many Americans, the word “government” is a bad word and why it can be used against us so effectively to stop meaningful legislation.
Government IS bad when it uses public money to benefit the few and oppress the many! To keep government from effectively serving all the people, wealthy and powerful insiders insist on privately funding political campaigns so they can exercise control over politicians and the legislation they write. It doesn’t help that corporations have been given the status of personhood and that lobbyists, business leaders and politicians have easy access to one another. When we are hungry for money, power and privilege it’s easy for us to form relationships with others who seek the same. In the process we forget our promise and responsibility to the public at large. Perks (favors, bribes?) in the form of product and service discounts, jobs for family members and players themselves, contribute to an incestuous relationship that breeds destructive policy and threatens the very existence of a democratic America.
I know I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know and I’m not saying you have fallen into this trap but I think it is important for the public to educate itself and get its head out of the ground. We are all responsible for this sorry state of affairs and it is time for all of us to stand up and set it right if we care for our children and the future they will create. It’s not what we’ve done, it’s what we do from now on that counts!
EVERYONE deserves affordable healthcare and Single Payer is the most cost-effective way to provide it. We need to do the right thing. We need to make government work for ALL of us, not just the few who hypnotize themselves and their friends with the Darwinian mantra that “life is about survival of the fittest, it’s eat or be eaten, kill or be killed.”
Responsibility (accountability and self-development) is the price of freedom.
Please let your friends and constituents know that T-shirts, signs, hats and buttons with the Single Payer design on them are available at The LifeSong Store: http://www.thelifesongstore.com. We have removed our mark-up from this product so customers can purchase items at our cost, what Café Press, an Internet company, charges us for buying our own products.
Pete
http://realtalkworld.com
"We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience." - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin