Wall Street Journal Report on Employers Eying Bare Bones Health Plans Under the Affordable Care Act

The Wall Street Journal has a report on how employers are looking at bare bones insurance plans to control costs  (subscription needed to read online) that they are required to provide under the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare).  This comes as little surprise to Single Payer advocates who know that a nonprofit healthcare system is most efficient at providing care and controlling costs as our economic impact study shows.  Canadian Ellen Page eloquently defends her country's healthcare system against right wing critics below.  This is our 150th post.

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Papa John's Pizza Attacks the Affordable Care Act

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
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Jon Stewart skewers how the CEO of Papa Johns pizza, John Schattner, entered the fray on the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) by stating that it would add about $0.11 to $0.14 to the cost of pizza in 2014 when it is fully implemented.  I must confess to liking their pizza and once working for Papa Johns as a delivery driver.  Stewart doesn't quite differentiate between socialism and the affordable care act but he does state that other things can drive up the cost such as the Midwest drought driven by global warming.  

Stewart almost said that a true single payer system could reduce Schattner's costs by taking the profiteering motive out of the health care system (see Real Reasons for High Medical Costs for a review).  Stewart almost said that his employees costs would be lower with no co pays for the ones that are insured and his uninsured drivers would be covered.  Schattner's employees might actually be more productive if they do not have to worry about putting off seeing a doctor until their health problems become enormous.  I am not calling for a boycott or for you to buy more Papa Johns Pizza or Jon Stewart.  Both are equally stupid.  Campaign for a better bill.

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Does Propaganda Work?

First of all, before you read any further, you have to take this pop quiz on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) written by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Finished yet? O.K., now you can read Kaiser's analysis of the results. You'll find that less than 1% of respondents got all ten items correct. I was one of them, which is why you people should listen to me when I'm talking!  ;)  You'll also find that people who got fewer correct answers were (among other things) more likely to be Republicans, watchers of Fox News, and in favor of repealing the law.

Kevin Drum has constructed the following chart. He points out that there has been more conservative disinformation regarding the five items that more people answered incorrectly than the other five. This suggests that the right wing and their media enablers have been effective in misleading the public about the ACA.

I'm not sure I buy Drum's argument, since he has no data on how frequently false claims were made. I don't recall hearing that much about the nonexistent mandate that small businesses offer coverage to their employees, for example. Of course, there have been more complaints about the individual mandate than any other provision of the ACA, but in this case, the conservatives have not lied about it. There really is an individual mandate, although they have neglected to point out how small a percentage of Americans will be affected by it.

In order to get these results, you need more than just conservative propaganda. You also need corporate news media that fail to correct it, media that present these false claims as a he-said-she-said “controversy,” without explaining who is right and who is wrong.

Update

Thanks to Paul Ricci for pointing out that paid advertisements have almost certainly been a major factor in spreading public misinformation about the ACA. On June 20, The New York Times added up the expenditures to that date.

The amount spent attacking the ACA ($235 million) was 3.4 times the amount spent defending it ($69 million). Almost all the pro-ACA ads were from the Department of Health and Human Service ($47 million)--ads which the Times describes as “bland, explaining aspects of the law.” The anti-ACA ads come largely from the usual cast of Elephants who have emerged as major players in the post-Citizens United ad wars—the U. S. Chamber of Commerce ($27 million), Karl Rove's Crossroads USA ($18 million), etc. As part of the captive audience for these ads, I would not describe them as bland. The anti-ACA ads play to people's fears about government takeovers (“socialism”), rising deficits, and the rationing of care.

The anti-ACA ads have played primarily in swing states such as Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio, suggesting that they are, in part, an early start to the presidential campaign. Many readers of this blog have seen these ads, since they live near Pittsburgh, the fourth largest market for these ads ($7.6 million), or Philadelphia ($7.9 million), the second largest market.

Mission Accomplished

It's Wednesday. Here's something to think about while we're waiting for the nine Supreme beings to come down from the mountaintop tomorrow and hand us the tablet that will mean life or death for thousands of Americans.

By now, you probably know the recent history of health care reform. The individual mandate—the requirement that everyone purchase health insurance—originally proposed by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, was the cornerstone of Republican health care plans for two decades. They preferred it because it encouraged “individual responsibility.” President Obama opposed the individual mandate during the 2008 campaign, but he and the Jackasses eventually conceded in the hope of gaining conservative support. (Flip!) Then, in 2009, in an even more remarkable turnaround, the Elephants in Congress unanimously decided that the individual mandate was unconstitutional. (Flop!)

As Ezra Klein reports, in 2010, when 14 Republican state attorneys general filed their suit challenging the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), “it was hard to find a law professor in the country who took them seriously.” (Here's an analysis of why the ACA is constitutional.)

How did the corporate media report on the constitutionality of the law? First of all, here's what they were reporting on. There were nine court cases related to the constitutionality of the act. Four of these courts overturned the law and five upheld it. There were also several cases in which courts dismissed complaints without ruling on the constitutionality of the law.

Media Matters looked at all the reports devoted to these courts cases on the nightly newscasts of ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox and NBC—a total of 31 segments. Of these 31 segments, 26 (84%) reported decisions that the act was unconstitutional, 3 (10%) reported rulings that it was constitutional, and the remaining 2 (6%) dealt with dismissals. If instead of counting segments, you get out your stopwatch, you find that a remarkable 97% of air time was spent discussing cases that overturned the law.

Unfortunately, the researchers do not report the number of minutes these newscasts devoted to advertisements paid for by pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies and health care providers.

Newspapers were only marginally better. There were 59 articles about these court cases in the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post. Thirty-five of them (59%) dealt with rulings that the ACA was unconstitutional, 17 (29%) dealt with decisions that it was constitutional, and 8 dealt with dismissals. Rulings of unconstitutionality were far more likely to make the front page.

It's possible that, initially, the greater attention given to rulings that the ACA was unconstitutional was due to the fact that journalists were surprised by these decisions, given the near-unanimity of their legal experts. However, that does not account for the consistency and longevity of these findings.

The bottom line is that this unbalanced coverage appears to have had its intended effect. A Gallup poll released earlier this month found that 72% of Americans think the ACA is unconstitutional. Several polls have found that the majority favor repeal of the law. For example, Rasmussen reported that, as of June 23-24, 54% of likely voters favor repeal and 39% oppose it. Although, as my colleague Paul Ricci reports, a majority of those folks favor starting work on a new health care reform bill, it's hard to imagine that any new health care legislation could get through Congress in the foreseeable future.