Was Frontline Documentary Edited to Reflect Health Insurance Industry Interests?
There was never any doubt in my mind that once PBS was moved by the Republicans to corporate sponsorship instead of full public funding, their content would inevitably grow to reflect the viewpoints of the people who wrote the checks.
It seems that insurance company investments are paying off in the healthcare debate. While this Frontline piece does address corporate abuses of their clients, the journalist who worked on it says it was altered to reflect insurance company interests, according to Russell Mokhiber, editor of Corporate Crime Reporter:
Last year, former Washington Post reporter T.R. Reid made a great documentary for the PBS show Frontline titled "Sick Around the World."
Reid traveled to five countries that deliver health care for all – UK, Japan, Switzerland, Germany, Taiwan – to learn about how they do it.
Reid found that the one thing these five countries had in common – none allowed for-profit health insurance companies to sell basic medical coverage.
Frontline then said to Reid – okay, we want you to go around the United States and make a companion documentary titled "Sick Around America."
So, Reid traveled around America, interviewing patients, doctors, and health insurance executives.
The documentary that resulted – "Sick Around America" – aired Monday night on PBS.
But even though Reid did the reporting for the film, he was cut out of the film when it aired this week.
And the film didn't present Reid's bottom line for health care reform – don't let health insurance companies profit from selling basic health insurance.
They can sell for-profit insurance for extras – breast enlargements, botox, hair transplants.
But not for the basic health needs of the American people.
Instead, the film that aired Monday pushed the view that Americans be required to purchase health insurance from for-profit companies.
And the film had a deceptive segment that totally got wrong the lesson of Reid's previous documentary – Sick Around the World.
During that segment, about halfway through Sick Around America, the moderator introduces Karen Ignagni, president of America's Health Insurance Plans, the lead health insurance lobby in the United States.
Moderator: Other developed countries guarantee coverage for everyone. We asked Karen Ignagni why it can't work here.
Karen Ignagni: Well, it would work if we did what other countries do, which is have a mandate that everybody participate. And if everybody is in, it's quite reasonable to ask our industry to do guarantee issue, to get everybody in. So, the answer to your question is we can, and the public here will have to agree to do what the public in other countries have done, which is a consensus that everybody should be in.
Moderator: That's what other developed countries do. They make insurers cover everyone, and they make all citizens buy insurance. And the poor are subsidized.
But the hard reality, as presented by Reid in Sick Around the World, is quite different than Ignagni and the moderator claim.
Other countries do not require citizens buy health insurance from for-profit health insurance companies – the kind that Karen Ignagni represents.
In some countries like Germany and Japan, citizens are required to buy health insurance, but from non-profit, heavily regulated insurance companies.
And other countries, like the UK and Canada, don't require citizens to buy insurance. Instead, citizens are covered as a birthright – by a single government payer in Canada, or by a national health system in the UK.
The producers of the Frontline piece had a point of view – they wanted to keep the for-profit health insurance companies in the game.
TR Reid wants them out.
“We spent months shooting that film,” Reid explains. “I was the correspondent. We did our last interview on January 6. The producers went to Boston and made the documentary. About late February I saw it for the first time. And I told them I disagreed with it. They listened to me, but they didn't want to change it.”
until they endorsed the magic bullet theory, or explained the Kennedy assassination in a way she thought was phony and cooked up.
me-oww!
where they filled a skull with sand & shot it from a distance, and it flew backwards. Very peculiar.
PBS must go back to Public Funding, and LOTS of it.
As for med insurance: it is ironic that people unrepentantly cheat insurance companies because they believe the companies are cheats; insurance companies don't hesitate to overcharge for insurance, and justify it by pointing to insurance fraud. I suppose its a chicken or egg situation.
Might work better if insurance companies, like hospitals used to be, were not-for-profit.
Angry about Medicare Part D that does not help the middle class? You can do something about it.
Angry about the low possibility that single payer health care will get enacted by a moderate Democratic congress? Do something about it now!!!
I have a plan to fix the prescription drug benefit and more.
Get people to Send a free prewritten fax to Sen. Minority leader Mitch McConnell telling him to STOP EVERY REPUBLICAN FILIBUSTER, get the Employee Free Choice act enacted into law, along with single payer universal health care, a fix for the Medicare Prescription drug benefit, a 10 dollar an hour minimum wage, an end to the Iraq war and until that happens you will boycott some Republican campaign contributors.
You can go to http://write-congress.democratz.org and send Mitch McConnell a free prewritten fax. This web site appears completely noncommercial. I don't sell anything there.
We have to hit the friends of the GOP in their wallets. Oh and if you only send your fax, this will fail. You need to get friends to send the fax and have their friends send the free fax and so on.
Thank you!
PS the prewritten fax reads thusly:
Hello
I want the following actions taken
and legislation enacted into law.
Congress and the President must
enact HR 676 single payer universal
health care and set up a new
prescription drug benefit in
Medicare Part B covering 80% of the
cost of all drugs with no extra
monthly premiums, no extra yearly
deductible, no means tests, no
coverage gaps, and remove the means
test for Medicare Part B and until
that happens, I won't buy ANYTHING
from Republican contributor
Rite Aid Pharmacies.
The President must end the war in
Iraq and until that happens
I will not buy any products from
Republican contributor and War
contractor General Electric
Corporation.
Congress and the President must
enact a $10/HR MINIMUM WAGE
into law and until this happens
I will not go to any Republican
contributor Wendy's Restaurants.
In 2008 Brown-Forman of Kentucky,
the maker of Jack Daniels Whiskey
and Southern Comfort gave Mitch
McConnell money for his campaign.
SENATOR McCONNELL MUST NOT
EXECUTE ANY REPUBLICAN
FILIBUSTERS FOR 8 YEARS
DURING THE OBAMA PRESIDENCY
AND MUST GET THE EMPLOYEE
FREE CHOICE ACT ENACTED
INTO LAW AND UNTIL THAT
HAPPENS I WON'T BUY JACK
DANIELS WHISKEY OR SOUTHERN
COMFORT OR ANY OTHER OF THEIR
PRODUCTS.
Thank you.
Why do you go on about means testing? Trying to protect the rich? It's ridiculous that wealthy people drain social service funds, threatening the viability of those services.Progressives support more means testing.
yer not allowed to talk about a TV show that you clearly know nothing about.
We have surrendered our passion for freedom to the acquisition of stuff. We cannot even mount a decent opposition to wars that are destroying what little we have left in our treasury or to resist the oligarchy that has taken over our electoral process.
huh?
If a drone kills a child in Kandahar, do the crying parents make a sound?
by pushing Kopel out and now they are going after frontline.
disgusting!
until they aired a slanted dramatization on Hugo Chavez last year.
That's the last one I've seen.
The notion that a for profit company will have the best interest of patients as their prime directive is absurd. The notion that this is the best we can do is more absurd.
I watched that show, and felt it was schizophrenic. It made good anecdotal points, but was interlaced with sympathetic bytes from odious lobbyists, even a choppy super edit to make Obama looked like he was in accord with Inangri. Your post puts it in perspective. Frontline sold out. Worse than doing a puff piece, they made a carefully crafted propaganda film. One that could influence people to endorse another health disaster to replace the current one. Shame on them, and fuck you health care lobby.
Right on.
When corporations run the government -
Corporate teevee becomes State Teevee.
The US direly needs its own version of the BBC, CBC, ABC (Australia) or Deutsche-Welle. The lack of an unchecked medium that answers to no one, not corporate nor government, is one of the US's greatest failings.
The best thing about an independent voice is that it would force biased voices to tell the truth - if FAUX Noise's stories are so skewed from an independent story, it would make people stop listening to them.
Repeal Capitalism.
statusquObama, change you can only pretend in
...since 1913.
I say we try it again. This time around without the private Federal Reserve or its IMF/world bank evil twin.
...and all the global supercorp monopolies that "do business" with them.
audit-prosecute-incarcerate
... the only issue with capitalism is the red herring argument that is the Fed Reserve. LOL.
I say, let's stop wasting time with systems that expect infinite growth in a finite reality. How about that, eh?
its certainly not "the only red herring" and I most certainly believe that corporations that operate for profit need to follow the rules.
...we need a good set of laws with good judges to uphold them.
...just make sure they do it within the law.
...we used to have a set of laws for wall st. ...but then came the Federal Reserve and "Laws" suddenly became a set of "regulations" that anyone who does business with "the Fed" must follow. which changed the laws...I prefer using the word "law" instead of regulation.
I guess because I know damn well that what Wall St. and our govt are doing ...used to be against the law.
audit-prosecute-incarcerate
it is the lack of oversight and enforcement, not the Fed itself.
handle the finances of the people of the U.S.? Why is so much power given to private bankers?
...that desribes infinite, but unsustainable, growth for its own sake: cancer.
that the multinational corporation has replaced the nation-state
as the true world power.
Mick
audit-prosecute-incarcerate
charter. Well, no, that's not all we have to do, obviously. Our the corporate-government complex is corrupt from top to bottom and needs to be changed--having political campaigns funded only with public moneys would be a start. Banning campaign and PAC "donations." Barring lobbying by former government officials of any kind for five years. Etc.
But at some point, a predatory corporation could be ended. Revoke its charter. Dissolve it. Force it to sell off its assets and cash out (at a very high tax rate).
Wouldn't it be nice to dissolve Monsanto? Exxon? General Dynamics?
in the first place, the charter should have a mandatory sunset in place of no more than 5 years, renewable once only. Incorporation is an invitation to abuse and criminal enterprise and NEVER should a corporation have the legal standing of a PERSON! That way lies madness.
Barring lobbying by former government officials of any kind for
five yearsEVER.Any lobbying by these people is a corrupting influence.
Right, everything was groovy before 1913. Read some history, idiot.
Right, everything was groovy before 1913. Read some history.
Have grown shittier every year.
I listened to NPR and watched PBS very often in the past.
Now? They're not as bad as MSM, but they grow closer every day.
Why? Look at the sponsor's.
Both are pathetic examples of what happens when the Corporations move in and take over the "show".
...actually worse than the rest of the MSM, because they still carry a high, but no longer deserved, residual aura of trustworthiness from the days when they actually had integrity. Propaganda has its best chance of succeeding when the audience that is targeted for manipulation trusts the manipulators. I have observed that most PBS/NPR programming consumers are uncritical, because they still trust the source. Worse for the the NPR/PBS audience is that these propaganda organs commit their violations of their audience in a manner that is often subtle and a lot more polished than is, for example, FOX 's spewings...the aware listener/viewer often has to work harder to find and expose the NPR/PBS lies.
I would put the CPB at the top of the list for reforming, even above FOX.
...only time we really get some true people based perspective is during the Diane Ream(sp) show
But it will be until corporate money is removed from politics.
Which means that, in the United States, health care reform will benefit Anthem and Healthsource and Cigna but not you and me.
We are screwed because we are unwilling as a nation to tip over the street cars, rip up cobblestones, burn the glass towers and chase the bastards back into the sewers. That's the threat that exists in Europe and their governments know it - hence they have universal health care with the best in those nations that removed profit from the equation.
and stop questioning authority.
Despite what many in this country say about the French, they are at least gutsy enough to raise hell in the streets and force the change they want to see. There are massive protests happening around the world, but our media is not reporting it! The corporate run media in this country KNOWS it is effective. Power is never given up willingly, we the people have to take it.
!
wouldn't know world history if it bite them in the ass.
Whenever anyone laughs about the "cowardly" French, I point them out that little feller called Napoleon.
Viva Lafayette!
World War 1.
You don't have to go in the streets. Send a fax to Mitch McConnell then make some phone calls that I list in the chat box.
We can hit the friends of thee GOP in their wallets with a consumer boycott.
They'll be just terrified of THAT.
There's always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby. - Tom Waits
But everybody has to wag their finger EXTRA hard at the monitor when they hit the send button! Oh, and make sure to give them a frowning they won't soon forget.
You can send your emails, faxes, and letters and who knows - maybe once in a while someone will actually pay them some attention. I guarantee you however that an angry mob is harder to dismiss and the thought that they just MIGHT escalate from angry to... something else... WILL get a legislators attention. Sure, you don't HAVE to get off your ass and DO something, but you get what you pay for.
T.R. Reid's side of the story needs to be told. How can we ensure his view is heard?
Fire the editors.
Make sure they know that Hell will freeze over before you become a member or a subscriber to PBS, or that you'll cancel your membership if you have any. Then, call your local NPR station and do the same.
State clearly the reason why, and tell them that this MUST be corrected. This is what I will do Monday morning...cancel my membership and demand to erase my name of their list of contributors.
...Olberman, Maddow or Shuster.
want us sick. It's a pyramid scheme.
commercial, for profit health insurance is one of the greatest Ponzi schemes foisted on the public. i have voiced my opinion on what i believe to be some of the short comings, but one additional topic is a problem for me and that's insurance companies. how a ceo of a healthCare insurance company can become a billionaire is beyond comprehension. if something is NOT done soon healthCare insurance will
double in price by 2017. socialized medicine is a misnomer it should be socialized healthCare insurance.
we already have a socialized healthCare insurance program.....medicare.
In MN health insurance companies can't make a profit and they continue to try. This industry has way too much power. They make money when the rest of the country is clearly in trouble. They don't want to ensure the chronically ill and those with pre existing conditions. They keep raising co pays. Even an issue as simple as high blood pressure requires going to the doctor perhaps four time before it's under control. If the co pay is $30. $30 times 4 is $120. Families are left broke. People don't take care of issues until they become dangerous.
Jeanne
That is INSURE chronically ill.
Jeanne
Another reason I stopped watching Frontline a long time ago. I can no longer trust them. They have taken teh Public our of PBS and inserted corporate.
Sad. Because it wasn't long ago that they were the most courageous show on TV. Bushco did a good job of gutting them.
I wonder what the going rate is for a PBS producer these days?
Tens of thousands dollars and a corporate job in the future, when the public finds out that said producer has turned propagandist.
Throwing the "inside game" propaganda like this in order to build out to a preselected "documentary" slant is pure stinkgaming of this crucial American issue.
Shame on the gamers who put this fix in.
Go to hell you bastards.
It is going to come down to the money. No way around it. The "for profit" healthcare players want the money. The lies and fact abuse will be running deep and long. Already the "high cost of making this better" is being played hard and loud from the usual suspects.
What counts is where you start. Are we adding on to what is now being spent on American healthcare under the current regime? Or are we going down to zero and resetting current American "for profit" spending outcomes to zero and building out to Universal Single Payer American HealthCare premise from zero?
The "for profits" are going to want to make this all sound and look really expensive and truly scary on the cost framing. Deny them any say and zero them out. Give them any say and they will go with what this "documentary" points to.
This is going to be a dirty political fight with the entrenched "for profit" lobby loaded with lots of $$ and misdirection. Lots.
Go after the moral depravity of this "for profit" American betrayal of any decency of perspective in putting "for profit" motives in American healthcare.
Go after the "for profit" idea. It is immoral.Depraved on decency.
Make "for profit" political poison. Make the politicians run from "for profit" healthcare premise. It is immoral. Make being for "for profit" healthcare political poison. Just like having to pay the fire department to put out your house on fire. Or having to pay the police department to enforce your court order.
Who would be for that in America?
In the recent California fires people remarked how there were "miracle" homes that seemed untouched as most folks lost everything. Only to find that Insurance companies had paid special teams to save only the houses that had paid huge premiums to for profit insurance companies (come to think perhaps AIG was even one of them).
Priate police of course have been around since Pinkertons.
If anyone sees it posted please say so in a reply here.
we all know the unemployment numbers. one of interest is that number one out of four unemployed have been unemployed over 6 months. many do NOT have healthCare insurance. they can't afford it. bills are being paid on credit cards. if that option is NOT available people go to the emergency room. which of course is over priced and inefficient. the uninsured demographic is going to become larger and at a quick rate. we need to fight for type of reform. i realize there are some that don't want government intervention. i don't believe there are many options. i say develop a socialized healthCare insurance plan NOT socialized medicine which may need a mandate like auto insurance.
I watched that show, and the failure to bring up "single payer" stood out like a sore thumb. But, it does mention "national health care" and or "universal health care", not sure which.
National Health Care: The current system remains intact, and the government buys coverage for the uninsured. I think Obama has a panel working on the details now. When Obama campaigned on this idea, he said he would finance it by cutting spending elsewhere. Obama supports employer paid insurance as part of his plan.
Single-Payer National Health Care: Everyone's insurance would change to a single non-profit or government insurer, such as Medicare. The savings occur by eliminating the profit costs associated with the insurers. While our current costs are 16% of GDP, other countries who use the single-payer approach spend 11% of GDP. Obama doesn't support this approach, and banned John Conyers (D-Michigan), author of H.R. 676 from the health care summit.
In fairness to Obama, he believes that single payer isn't politically feasible. The debacle when Hillary tried to introduce national health care is something the Obama administration has noted.
The U. S. Supreme Court has ruled that the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment protects the public’s right regarding the media to “an uninhibited marketplace of ideas in which truth will prevail” and calls for “suitable access to social, political, esthetic, moral, and other ideas and experiences” and that “it is the right of viewers and listeners, not the right of broadcasters, which is paramount”
Something sure has broken down in the media when "single payer", used by Europe, Canada, and Japan isn't represented by the media in the national dialogue, particularly in cost comparisons, considering the huge deficits. And we have the previous experience where the corporate media was essentially Bush's propaganda apparatus to convince people to support the Iraq war. And they're coming with a war on Net Neutrality, and bandwidth caps to limit the ability of alternative media to compete with the corporate media. So long as our government is working more for the corporations than the people, we're going to have these issue.
..is on the wrong side of right on this issue. He's got his head up his ass as regards his position on HR-676. The American people elected him to represent them, not the insurance companies. He needs to clean up his act and support Conyers' bill.
The point is that our PUBLIC media has been infiltrated by CORPORATE INTERESTS.
Forget single-payer healthcare, because it's never going to happen so long as we have a weakened media. I mean, if bloody Frontline can't do the hard-nosed reporting, who CAN?
We need to get the Obama administration to shake up the Public TV and Radio board, and more importantly, to invest more of OUR TAXPAYER DOLLARS in it. It's much more important to our democratic interests than ANYTHING happening abroad.
We shouldn't just have one PBS. We should have PBS 1 and PBS 2, at least. How many BBCs are there? In a country a sixth of our population? Embarrassing.
Write a letter.
PBS shows usually mention the donors. And, with the digital tv, I have 3 stations on my PBS 18.1 18.2 and 18.3. But, there is other media, such as DemocracyNow.org. There's TheRealNews.com.
In media player, you can watch the Ruskie news, in English
http://streaming.visionip.tv/Russia_Today
If we get in a row with Iran, they have an English station as well.
mms://wms.edgecastcdn.net/200216/ipresstv
My computer has a TV out video card, so this media plays where it's supposed to, on the TV.
That's why, when I see restrictive bandwidth caps, such as those on Time Warner and FrontierNet that wouldn't allow a person to watch DemocracyNow.org a full month (1 hour show a day), my concerns about restricting a "wide diversity of viewpoints from a multiplicity of sources" so that the truth doesn't prevail comes up. The end of Net Neutrality could allow a provider to limit your internet access to a list of corporate approved sites.
Corporate America knows full well that if they control what the people see and hear, they'll control what they think and say.
Here here. This is why net neutrality so important and bandwidth blocking is anti-democratic by its nature.
'The devil crept into Heaven, God overslept on the 7th, the New World Order was born on Sept 11th.' - Immortal Technique
What is equally perplexing is that, if you look, you are not likely to see this story reported in the other "most read" liberal/progressive blogs. More and more too many of the influential blogs are omitting the more provocative stories or editing them to NOT be as revealing as they should be. One in particular will not even allow commenters to reveal the obvious oversights. I could name them......but that wouldn't be right, would it??
If there's a blog or blogs out there that are starting to censor themselves (or being censored), I'd like to know which ones, along with some hard examples of their dodging the truth. If the blogosphere is being corrupted, we should know who and how.
The major reason I will not name her blog publicly at this time is that I do not save the comments I write on the fly. So the only verification I have at this point is my say so. I do not feel as though this is enough to single out an important and popular blog, by name. However, To comment on these pages that I feel self-censorship is indeed happening without significant justification on some Liberal/Progressive blogs is not as much a hard indictment as it is an observation and a heads-up.
Having said this, I will begin to collect my deleted/censored comments for further review by those that want to see evidence of this fact. Then you can judge for yourselves whether or not it was arbitrary in a positive or negative manner.
I am a founding member of this specific blog and making a claim and attaching a specific name to it without black and white proof of my grievance would only hurt myself and not change anything. After I have collected several instances of censorship I will feel justified in revealing the name(s), consequences be damned. Stay tuned......
,,be right. Long ago when people would behave in a manner harmful to the community they got chastised to varying degrees, including banishment. If some ones an asshole I want to know so I can avoid them. Social ostracization is a very powerful tool to cause folks to change for the better.
Generally speaking I don't trust anyone making over 150K a year.
I used to have the URL to Frontline's watch online page, not anymore. These corporations are like cancer that has spread so bad throughout or government that it's going to be hard to get rid of it. There's no reason for people to die in this country just because the insurance company doesn't want to pay up.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/
for the "E-MAIL FRONTLINE". (We're alway happy to hear from you.)
Where's the option for "Criticism"?
I guess they don't want to hear it.
when the corporations started owning part of the
PBS, i stopped all my donations to PBS. they
are no longer a free and open forum of opinion.
if i want someone to dictate what i see and hear
on tv, then i can watch the all the other channels.
PBS is now just another lobotomy of the public.
I stopped listening/donating, too...about 7-8 years ago. They are out of their minds if they think I'm going to pay for the privilege of being lied too or idly accept the continuing insult of being made a target for manipulation. One of the things that also got my goat was having to listen to gratuitous, self-serving and self-promoting drivel from some of the most socially irresponsible corporations on the planet who "sponsor" propaganda programming.
every now and then I tune into NPR, just to see if anything is getting better. Invariably I hear some wanker from the American Enterprise nstitute, the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute or some other reichwing think tank spewing neocon BS with no opposing viewpoints, no alternative explanations for particular events. And, the NPR new readers seem determined to undermine any fact-based coverage that accidentally gets past the propaganda writers. NPR is so dishonest, that I wouldn't believe them if they told ne the sky is blue.
I think that as propagandists, the NPR/PBS pose the biggest threat to society, because of all the propaganda organs they still carry the greatest amount of residual trust from the days when they were still crwedible. Since propaganda only works if the audience that is targeted for manipulation trusts the manipulators. their programming has a far greater likelihood of succeeding than does FOX or CNN.
All of the propagandists need to be called to accounts.
Thank you for posting this. The problems with health care need more attention than they are getting.
Why aren't their names listed here? Who are the people responsible for taking out Reid's reporting?
Just make it so we don't trust the reporting any more than the REST of the MSM. Either they fix this now or all of their listener/viewer funding will dry up and they will be gone so fast that all you will hear is the pop as the air collapses in around where they were. That would be a great tragedy.
PBS/NPR turned to the dark side along time ago. NPR, especially. With a few token exceptions (just like the few token exceptions in the rest of the MSM), it is nothing but a rightwing propaganda organ that is in the business to defraud and manipulate the public with lies, deceptions, misrepresentations, disinformation and by refusing to cover important stories. The CPB, is the 8th corporation that I would include among the number of corporations that should be targeted by the DoJ for RICO fraud investigations/actions.
....why would I want to donate to these people
... while I was watching 'sick around america' but I didn't put it down to Frontline being dominated by the corporate worldview until I read this post. I felt concern for the people victimized by cherry picking, ridiculous offers of coverage at rates no one could afford (offer a family a plan with premiums higher than their mortgage + auto payments + fixed expenses combined? right - what family could afford to devote 50%+ of their income to health insurance premiums?),the evil practice of 'recision' where they go back on their agreement to insure someone retro-actively (once they file a claim) because they made sure they were legally allowed to sell insurance plans with unethical corporate 'escape plans' built into the contract. But the overall message of the program was dull and confused somehow, parts of the problem were identified but the 'solutions' put forward were a bunch of counter-intuitive PR blather articulated by the top insurance industry lobby spokeswoman. It makes sense now that a program like Frontline (usually a devastatingly 'tight' program which tells a clear story - AND - points to some kind of solution/good news/good fight attempt to right a wrong) could deliver a reporting piece that somehow avoids answering the questions it raises - and says 'healthcare reform is very important to all of us at the insurance industry because we care so very much about the poor little sick people...(and not just because we are vampires HUGELY profiting from the suffering of others and want to continue doing so - we already bought your government so we will make the all the decisions mmmmKay?)*'
* = parenthetical subtext NOT included in broadcast
I had seen 'sick around the world' when it originally aired and thought that everyone in the United States should be required to watch it - it was a very compelling look at how healthcare for a nation can and does really work - just not in the USA. 'Sick around America' should never be aired again.
I have often wondered what the hell was happening as the NewsHour/Gwen Ifill's show seemed to be nudging farther and farther to the right - as 'experts' from right wing think tanks were interviewed and allowed to frame the discussion of political policies and social issues - and as Mark Shields and David Brooks became the segment that was supposed to set the liberal and conservative goal posts for political analysis - with all of it strangely off - weirdly tone deaf to what 'real' people I knew out in the world were saying about what was going on or what the actual priorities of a political discussion between a real conservative or a real liberal should have been. I grew up watching the Newshour and expecting dry, serious, but essentially truthful presentation of 'hard' news that fulfilled a journalistic intent to inform the audience. The number of corporate sponsors who get a plug before the shows has steadily grown over the years (seeing that Exxon plug was always irritating as hell) - for nearly all programs - except Bill Moyers I think - who makes a point of highlighting that he has just ONE corporate sponsor - a life insurance company. So now PBS is the voice of the oligarchy - promoting ideas acceptable and accepted by the oligarchs and to be imposed on the lumpen masses who have delusions about how it matters that they are intelligent and mature enough to choose civilized news and documentary programming over the screaming frothing festival of crazy presented as 'news' on cable 'news' networks - or the deliberately insipid bubble-head corporate network 'news' which constantly shoves a jumble of misplaced priorities about meaningless shit (celebrity gossip, sports, scapegoat/silly outrage du jour) into the face of it's viewers so that the audience is paralyzed/buried by the avalanche of stupid.
It's very sad to see Frontline/PBS has been hollowed out and now is just another puppet mouthpiece of the plutocracy.
to the "Join the discussion" area of "Sick Around America":
It isn't true that private, for profit companies can not offer basic health coverage in Germany. About 10% of Germans are covered by private health insurance companies.
I am 65 and am covered here in Germany by a private company with full coverage for €223 per month with a yearly deductible of €1320. Regulations require me (the insurance co) to pay between 1.8 and 3.5 times as much as publicly insured patients, which makes me a most welcomed visitor at most doctors' offices.
Premiums for private coverage are based on health, age and how long you've been with the company. Public insurance premiums are based on earnings and non-earning family members are covered for free.
The system was originally set up by Bismarck well over a 100 years ago but is constantly being tinkered with.
It was edited for balance and fairness. You won't be satisfied until only your point of view is reflected in these pieces, but then Frontline's credibility will be lost.
it was edited to put healthcare for profit in a good light. You are satisfied because it accurately reflects your view, which flies in the face of your own best interests, BTW.
Making money off of illness is in no way good. And a lot of the financial problems we have in this country is due to the privatisation of healthcare.
I'd try to explain it to you, but you dismiss criticism as being dissatisfied with the corporate viewpoint. So waste of my time.
I urge you to get seriously ill w/o insurance because you can't afford it, lose everything you have and have to file bnky. Because it's the only way someone like you will ever understand what people [who think Frontline sucked dick on this issue] feel.
me-oww!
The only thing worth watching on PBS. IS Bill Moyers. The Rest is Pure Bullshit That serves no purpose except to promote a certain Corporate
Interest. Here in Minnesota we have a show that is called Almanac that
is 100% Bullshit and the People that Host the Show are totally Repulsive.
Once a company is large enough, they don't buy insurance, they become self-insured. They may still use insurance companies for administration, but expenses are paid directly.
So, if we have made the decision to cover everyone, and we decide that the U.S. should be run like a business, then the U.S. should be self-insured, ie "single payer". All arguments, especially the costs analysis point to single payer, hence the extensive corporate effort to have the media not present single payer as an option.
The Federal Reserve is an odd institution. It seems to have born from a belief that the legislators and Administration can't be trusted to control credit and supervise banks. There is certainly truth to that perspective. But the Federal Reserve is inherently weak. It was created by an act of congress and might be dissolved by another law. It has made many mistakes. It contributed to the current crisis by facilitating the housing crisis by keeping interest rates low and by pushing banks to originate mortgages to the non credit worthy(by Barney Frank and Bill Clinton and others). Perhaps, some of the actions from the FED stemmed from its inherent weakness. In recent years the treasury and the Federal reserve have been given the freedom to make decisions beyond what was anticipated in the constitution. It may be time for congress to give the Fed a clear set of rules. Perhaps, these rules might reduce the Fed's actions to be among the causes of bubbles.
How about we seal up the border? I bet that paying for all the illegal immigrants health care makes it go up a pretty penny. and how about not suing over every little thing!!! That makes the dr.'s bill go up so they can pay their liability insurance. and what do you say those idiots in government give tax breaks for companies to offer benefits... what crazy I know tax breaks for companies to operate, create jobs and grow the economy... Those obama, pelosi, frank supporter's have obviously never sat in traffic or spent the ENTIRE day at the DMV. That is all run by the government people!!! Hello it has been PROVEN that when their is no profit to be made people don't work as hard. Why work your butt off if you will make the same money by sitting on yor butt???? Money is a motivater it motivates people to do better and be more efficient and that is why government doesn't work.
Jebus Tapdancing Christmas!
Get out the tin-foil hats! PBS is out to hoodwink everyone.
I watched this episode of Frontline, and at no time did I believe that PBS was in the pocket of a private insurance corporation. I was left with the same opinion of the USA's health care industry, which is that it is totally screwed up and we need reform.
In fact, this episode had an interview with one of the insurance CEO's that really showed that those people are heartless, soul-less, greedy bastards. That guy pissed me off so much that I wished he would get terminal disease, lose his job and insurance, and then try to acquire health coverage.
Whinny postings like these are no better than the right wing loons. There is no mass conspiracy at PBS to push a right wing agenda.
I also saw that Kennedy episode that someone else mentioned. That was a documentary by someone who had a misguided romantic viewpoint of Oswald. Most of it was good until the end, but it was the viewpoint of the documentary writer/director.
There have been so many recent episodes of Frontline that have made the Republicans and the right wings look foolish. This should be proof enough that there is no right wing conspiracy at PBS. Did you even see the Frontline episode on Cheney's War? Another fine episode that exposed the corruption of Dick Cheney. Try and spin that as some type of PBS right wing conspiracy.
FOOLS!
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