That's where the Price Waterhouse Coopers study gets really interesting. Health reform would, according to the report, raise premiums 32 percent over the next 10years. But without health reform, the study says, premiums would still rise—by 79 percent!

It's strange that the nightly news and other media outlets failed to mention anything but the premium rise that would occur under the government program. They didn't mention that the same report indicated that premiums would rise 79% without health reform. They didn't mention anything about the study by an MIT professor that reached the opposite conclusion. They didn't note that a single payer system would address these issues. Even when they bothered to mention that the Price Waterhouse Cooper's study neglected to include proposed cost savings measures in the government plan they couched it in language that made it seem as if it were the government's opinion as opposed to a verifiable fact mentioned in the report itself.

Why? Shouldn't the news media attempt to provide a complet picture of the issue. Shouldn't they avoid presenting opinion as fact and casting fact as opinion? What use are they if they only promote a narrow and biased agenda as opposed to providing the information necessary to form rational, information based decisions? Are they simply too afraid of losing the advertising revenue from insurance, drug, medical device, etc. firms to provide a comprehensive analysis of the debate, do the want to avoid looking too far to the left of Fox News and losing viewers?

Given that we are now headed for an era of inflation that will dwarf the inflation of the Carter years, the premiums will probably go up by an order of magnitude over the next ten years. But so will the price of a loaf of bread.

the right keeps insisting that inflation is coming but no serious economist has verified that.

according to the cryers and screamers on the right we should be having hyperinflation right now.

of course conservative economic policies (cut taxes and deregulate) are the reason we are in this mess to begin with but conservatives can't imagine they are wrong so they keep pushing their failed policies.

religiouslib,

Thanks for your reply. I have four points:

1. What makes you think I am a conservative? What I am is a person who studies the business cycles and who actually lived through the Carter-years inflation. It was hell on wheels.

2. What makes you think my desire is to cut taxes and deregulate? Did I say anything to that effect? If you disagree with what I actually say, go for it. Just don't attribute to me attitudes and opinions I have not expressed. (In debate, that is called creating a straw man and it loses points.)

3. I agree that we are not experiencing inflation now. But, your statement that "no serious economist has verified that inflation is coming," is just not right. Most, both on the left and the right, say it is coming, because there is so much money in the system and because we are projecting huge Federal deficits for years and years. The reason it has not come yet is that consumers are saving rather than spending and the banks, awash with money, are not lending. When those trends abate, and as the dollar continues to devalue, inflation will hit us very, very hard. The question is when, not whether it is coming. We all need to be thinking about ways to protect ourselves from high inflation over the next decade. Having experienced it once before, I have few good ideas to offer.

4. I specifically did not use the term "hyperinflation." That is another matter and not in the cards for us, according to most economists whose opinions I read. To the best of my knowledge, no economists on either side of the political spectrum are predicting hyperinflation. Who, exactly, were "the cryers and screamers on the right" you were referring to?

That's where the Price Waterhouse Coopers study gets really interesting. Health reform would, according to the report, raise premiums 32 percent over the next 10years. But without health reform, the study says, premiums would still rise—by 79 percent!

Did anyone else notice that the construction of this statement creates (and may be intended to encourage) the interpretation that the no-reform increase in premiums is more than double the with-reform increase and doesn't make it clear that the with-reform hike is actually projected to be 111 percent (with 18% of that higher premium being projected as attributable to the proposed policy changes)?

I doubt that there's some pervasive bias or agenda that's behind why the MSM isn't getting into the details on this though. ABC News has seemingly appointed themselves to be the Obama administrations PR department since at least the inauguration (if not before), and as long as Olberman has a show MSNBC will have no fear of straying to the left of anyone save sites like commondreams and democraticunderground (who may well consider Obama to be a corporate fascist, I don't exactly keep up with them).

The simpler explanation is that the reporters themselves just don't understand the details, and can't even get enough of a handle to "dumb it down" further for public consumpsion (whether or not the public is really that dumb is debatable, but the PTB in the media definitely seem to believe it). Fortunately the information is available to those willing to seek it out, which is probably the bulk of those interested in coming to a rational and/or fact-based opinion anyway.

Actually, I noticed this and suspect you're correct about many reporters themselves not knowing the details. As a result they are more than happy to regurgitate the spin put out by either politicians, or the PR reps of major firms. It doesn't change the reality that the press really isn't doing a particularly good job at doing anything but providing infotainment. They could at least hire some interns, or recent college graduates to look into the details and make sure the words they put into the empty suits they place in front of the television viewers are of some value.

Still, it's interesting that the spin that was coupled with this study had such a strong bias to the position of the insurers. They completely left out key information that was readily available in the study itself and virtually neglected other studies that lead to opposite conclusions. Would it really have taken that much effort on the media's part to note that the study focused on four main aspects of the bill likely to result in premium increases and neglected any potential cost saving measures? Noah, for all of his apparent difficulties with math seems to have managed that and he's a writer for Slate, not one of the major news networks, or network news programs.