The press coverage of the Edwards' health plan has been an absolute embarrassment. Today, on A19, The New York Times ran a story on the plan, of which the vast majority of paragraphs are devoted to outlining all the opposition the plan will face, comparing it to HillaryCare, and wondering how it'll get paid for. Various elements of the plan are namechecked, but precisely none of them are sufficiently, or even moderately, explained.
For instance, explaining the Health Markets, where all non-employer options would now be provided, where a public insurance provider would exist, and where everything will be community rated, the Times helpfully explains that, "Mr. Edwards also proposed creation of regional health insurance markets, to use the purchasing power of millions of consumers to drive down health insurance premiums. The concept is similar to that in Mrs. Clinton’s 1994 plan to create health insurance purchasing alliances." The point of the HMs is to regulate insurers, not to bargain down prices. If you want to bargain down prices, you'd just create Medicare-for-All and use monopsony power to do it. And what purpose does the Clinton illusion serve, save to subtly suggest the plan is too liberal?
The Washington Post, meanwhile, doesn't mention the public insurance option, the community rating, or really much of anything. Reading their coverage, you'd be hard-pressed to distinguish the plan from any other proposal ever offered.
But if the problem with the New York Times and Washington Post story was that it failed to clearly or seriously explain the plan's features, much of the media hasn't even bothered to fail at the substantive task. They, instead, have been mainly interested in Edwards' willingness to raise revenues to fund the plan. This, of course, is a no-go, a non-starter, political suicide, evidence of unelectable extremism. On the other hand, all of these reporters would happily tell you, in private, that taxes need to be raised. Most all of them support health reform. They universally loathe the politician's tendency to avoid tough questions like revenue increases. But when a politician steps up, they rush in with the very narratives and reporting style that encourages such irresponsible rhetoric. If the framing were that Edwards was willing to speak the hard truths about how to pay for his, and the country's, expressed priorities, maybe other politicians wouldn't fear honest utterances.
