My favourite myth: Obama stated he did not read the reform bill

The internet is a rich source of information, we all know that. And most of us should know, that there is at least as much rubbish on it as there is really good stuff. The greatest strength of this form of media, the fact that everyone can actively participate, is also a source of danger when it comes to reliable information. Untruths and misinterpretations spread enormously fast nowadays. This is also what happened July 2009, when a specific utterance by Barack Obama at a conference for bloggers was turned into one of the most famous myths concerning the health care reform.

“Morning Bell: Obama Admits He’s “Not Familiar” With House Bill”

Or

“Obama admittedly 'not familiar' with key provision of health bill”

And here is the original audio of the interview:

So, what had happened? Some people interpreted Obama’s statement the way that he cannot answer the question because he is not informed about the health care bill’s contents and this caused a huge discussion, as you might also see in the comments following the articles above.

 

The thing they did not realise, as other sources found out subsequently, is that Obama implied that the provision the man was talking about simply does not exist in the bill, so it becomes clear why he does not know it.

I think this is a great example of how ordinary misinterpretations influenced the online debate about the whole reform. Just think about Sarah Palin’s “death panels”…

The average American thinks....

Now that I have considered several official perspectives on the debate, I think something very very interesting will be finding information about the discussion’s influence on the American people. As a starting point, take a look at the survey results below taken from the findings of the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press (March 2010).

 

 

The survey's main interest was the question of how well-informed the average American feels to be about the current discussion. As you can see, about 44% answered they do not have sufficient information about it and in general, families with a higher income tend to say they understand the issue at least somewhat. If you read the institute’s summary you will see, that only 18% of the Americans said that they really understand the health care reform. I think this number to be alarmingly low. Only about a fifth thinks they know enough, so what about the rest? At least, more than half of the respondents stated that they do follow the discussion and unsurprisingly those who follow it very close tend to have a better idea of what is going on. The survey also found out that the media is their main source of information. Thinking about my previous post about TV ads, I am not really surprised. The study offers a lot more, but it is far too much to mention all results here. Anyway, just go and sneak a peek at it.

 

The main conclusion I drew from it is that the health care reform is very important to many American individuals. If you google for private blogs on this topic or search youtube for videos about personal opinions, you find loads of different statements. Here you find a small selection of different people and the things they have to say about health care:

 

In his post “Healthcare reform, should you be getting private healthcare?” Robertbloggert from Oklahoma discusses the situation of badly informed citizens depending on the biased new via the media. He himself tried to find out about facts concerning the reform, similar to my approach.

 

Joe Pugnetti, the author of the blog “A Liberal Point of View”, seems to be one of the rather well-informed citizens. His comments on the health care reform are very balanced and carefully thought out with scarcely any liberal bias.

 

This young woman used the service of youtube.com in order to share her thoughts on the reform. Her desire to express herself publicly is shared by many other people on the internet. 

Of course, I cannot include all positions in one post, so if you think your opinion on it is worth sharing, just send a comment and tell.

What's on TV?

TV is the most popular form of media in the United States (and in may other countries, too), so in order to reach a large audience on a certain issue, there is nothing more obvious than using this form of broadcast. The influence of television commercials on individuals has been proven by numerous studies.  Election campaigns used this media for many years already and when it comes to controversial topics, more and more non-party organisations use TV ads to support their favoured attitude. 

When it comes to the health care debate, especially in 2009, before the bill was passed hundreds of campaigns used TV ads and clips on the internet. Suddenly, everyone wanted to influence politics directly and an endless swarm of advertising started. According to an article on USA Today, throughout 2009 all those groups spent about $ 57 million on health care ads. 

In contrast to officially political campaigns, their ads seemed to be not as exaggerating but still many did not stick to pure facts either. Both sides regularly tried to outdo each other, as it appears to be customary in American debates (maybe you want to read more about this on Bloomberg.com). On the one hand, this might be part of the entertaining factor and makes people even more interested in certain topics. On the other hand, doing this on such a public basis is quite unusual in other countries like Germany. Moreover, here almost no organisation that is not directly a political one tries to interfere in such debates. This is the reason why to me these TV ads are so interesting. Americans might be used to it, but I am not. So I enjoyed watching numerous video clips and picked two TV ads with directly contrasting attitudes on the same part of the topic:

  

Americans United For Change is a group founded in 2005 to oppose Bush. Now they are dealing with several topics which they think desperately need change.

The Chamber of Commerce is a network of organisations that directly represents the interests of businesses.

The Tea Party at tea time

I had a hard time trying to figure out what arguments members of the Tea Party movement have concerning the health care reform. Local groups may have websites, but I think they are not that informative. Curious about the things I found there? Well, besides some children’s colouring books “for little patriots” which I am deliberately not linking to, I did not find a lot:

1. They do not like the reform.

2. They do not like it because it restricts their freedom of choice and contradicts “the American way”. It is against the Civil Rights.

3. Government must not spend people’s money on things they do not want.

4. They will try everything to achieve repeal.

5. They are afraid of socialism.

 

Unfortunately, that’s it. Here you can find related articles published by members of the movement, for a more neutral comment see this article from the Washington Post.  I could not find any reliable source with some more details. But I will keep my eyes open. In the meantime, take this as an impression of how against they actually are:

It's the liberals' turn today

Yesterday’s focus lay on the conservative perspective, so unsurprisingly now it is time to consider the liberal’s attitude towards the reform. Something I did not expect while checking several links was that most liberals are not very happy with the current reform either. Really, I expected to find mere praise of Obama’s plans, so at least for me my project seems to be worth the effort. So now let me share my conclusions:

 

1. The government is the only social institution that can balance and protect individual needs and the requirements of the whole public.
2. Health care is a right that government must guarantee to every citizen, social injustice needs to be overcome.
3. Health care is a human necessity, so it should not be object to the free market.
4. They demand a universal social insurance plan, but no socialised medicine meaning that government owns all health care delivery institutions.
5. They want a single-payer system instead of the public option, the latter being additional to private insurance companies. Obama made too many compromises. (Find out more about the difference here)
6. Health care should be financed via progressive (if you earn more money, you have to pay more for health care) or proportional payments (the relation between income and payment is constantly the same for all). The former system is based on regressive payment (those who earn less have to pay more for health care).

I do like the well-researched and distanced article by Thomas Bodenheimer on the liberal perspective and if you have the time, you should read it yourself. I based my post mainly on it. And in addition, The New York Times focussed on the way liberals reacted to the government's decisions in more detail.

So far, two groups, two points of view…. And at least a third one to follow soon.

What do conservatives say?

As I planned to consider all kinds of perspectives on the health care reform, today I will start with the conservatives’ attitude towards it. This was the first time I really did some research on their point of view and I was surprised to find out that they actually do not neglect a health care reform in principle. Actually, they do see a problem with the health care system in the United States and want to change it, but they are not happy with the way Obama does it. So here are some of their main points:

 

1. The health care system should not be turned upside down at once. Not everything is that bad, so small reforms year after year will do perfectly well. The slogan here seems to be “Slow down!”                         
2. They oppose the current reform so strongly because they feel like there are only two ways, yes and no, but no alternative concepts accepted
3. A health care reform should focus on the improvement of health care itself and not mainly on health insurance, destroying private insurance companies.
4. Improving the general access to health care and insurance is more realistic than guaranteeing coverage.
5. Nationwide competition will help to improve health care instead of harming it, as bad service will loose patients and insurance prices will decrease automatically.
6. Making health care dependent on government ignores and violates America’s distinctive American identity as it is a step towards the European model of well fare states. Self-reliance has always been important to the American people.

 

 

Of course, this is just an extract of the wide range they cover. In order to get more detailed commentary, see this post on redstate.com dealing with a number of arguments in detail. As this blog describes itself as “right centre”, be aware of their bias.

Besides, the article “Conservative Perspectives on Health Care Reform” by Justin Quinn is quite interesting, too. Both links offer complementary information and they helped me to develop an idea of the conservative positions and their arguments.

 By the way, yesterday I was very happy to have health insurance again. I had to see the dentist because my cheek was swollen. The x-ray showed that one of my wisdom teeth needs to be extracted and it caused me an infection. I am on medication now until monday and as I was curious about it, I found out what all this would have cost me in the U.S.: approx. $1000 including everything... That would be quite a lot for an undergraduate like me.

A very brief history of American health care

As I don't have a lot of time in the moment, my post on the history of American health care will be a very brief one. And anyway, all I could have done would be repeating what others said somewhere else. So I wanted to share those pages I like most, each of them with a unique way of presenting the facts. They all address the issue of the historical context of the current debate which I think to be a helpful hint for a generally better understanding.

The Public Broadcast Service (short: PBC) offers an interactive timeline including exactly as much information as I think to be good as an introduction to the topic: not too much, but fairly enough. It starts in the 1900s.

This video concentrates on the developments since the 1940s in a very simple and entertaining manner and is able to illustrate even rather abstract aspects quite well:

Finally, I warmly recommend the history of U.S health care in images published by the Free Speech Radio News. I found the picture above there and maybe it caught your attention. There are several more to be discovered, just take a look and see how people got more or less convinced through leaflets etc.

Up to now, I did not find sufficient information on the time before 1900, but I will add it as soon as I discover things worth sharing.