Dean Baker cautions that reporters should stop assuming they know what politicians think rather than what they say:
[I]t was very annoying to read a book review in the Washington Post that tells us that Bill Thomas, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, prohibited Medicare from offering its own drug plan that would negotiate directly with the drug industry because he “thought pitting private insurance companies against one another would inject competition into the drug market for seniors and keep the price of drugs down, without the heavy hand of government.”
While Mr. Thomas said this, do we really know that this is what he thought, as opposed to the competing view that he thought the insurance and pharmaceutical industries are a great source of Republican campaign funds?
True that. Part of the problem with policy reporting is the credulity reporters use in presenting opposing arguments. Given that a fair fraction of the energy generated by the intellectual engines of the right is devoted to thinking up superficially plausible policy justifications for proposals that advance the interests of the very wealthy and the very corporate, it would likely be wise to cease reporting such flimsy arguments as legitimate.
One way, as Baker points out, to have known that Bill Thomas was playing reporters was that he didn't allow Medicare to offer its own drug plan, which would then compete with the private plans its beneficiaries could also choose from. In other words, Thomas refused to allow Medicare to compete in the private market, thus putting the lie to his professed desire for competition. Moreover, a primary function of capitalism is that adept players grow larger and use their size to bargain down the prices of products. That Thomas also kept Medicare from deploying its competitive edge in service of America's seniors was further proved this a wet, sloppy kiss to Big Pharma.
