There's been a lot of attention for this video, where President Obama describes hearing from a woman who doesn't want the government touching her Medicare. Obama says he really wants people to understand that Medicare is a government program (and, in fact, a very popular one, especially compared to private medical insurance). Today, The New York Times ran an article about a poll indicating more trouble for health-care reform -- basically the same old story: People don't like the status quo and sincerely desire change, but are afraid of said change and confused about what kind of reform Congress is going to pass. I don't blame them. But then you read something like this: “First of all,” Mr. Obama said, “nobody is talking about some government takeover of health care. I’m tired of hearing that. I have been as clear as I can be. Under the reform I’ve proposed, if you like your doctor, you keep your doctor; if you like your health care plan, you keep your health care plan. These folks need to stop scaring everybody, you know?”... In one finding, 75 percent of respondents said they were concerned that the cost of their own health care would eventually go up if the government did not create a system of providing health care for all Americans. But in another finding, 77 percent said they were concerned that the cost of health care would go up if the government did create such a system.All this public confusion and false messaging -- where people don't understand that Medicare is a government program, that insurance companies are limiting your choice of doctors and rationing your care, that single-payer is not the same as nationalized health care (and that neither are on the table) -- makes me wish there was some kind of institution that gathered information on public policy and published that information, maybe on a piece of paper that could be delivered to your house every day or just on the Internet where people could learn what's going on. The people who did this would be called "reporters" because they would report on what's happening. Snark aside, I think every time journalists read a poll that says the public is incredibly confused, they should understand that this situation is their fault. Maybe one reason that newspapers are dying is that it's incredibly unhelpful to read an article that informs you, the reading public, that you have no idea what's going on. You probably already knew that. But maybe you'd like something explained to you. Which is why, on one hand, it's really cool that the Washington Post hired Ezra, who likes to explain this stuff, and really weird that they run factually inaccurate op-eds by Bill Kristol, who can't even tell the difference between numbers going up and numbers going down.Further Reading: The 10 Dumbest Arguments Against Health-Care Reform.
-- Tim Fernholz
