Robert Pear has written many good pieces on health care policy at the NYT over the years, but he has a disturbing tendency to attribute grand ideological motives to politicians when their behavior can just as easily be explained by crass political calculations. He did this yet again when he described a proposal by President Bush for a series of cuts in the Medicare program as "advancing the Republican vision of a larger private role in the health care system." Do we really think that there is a group of Republican political philosophers (presumably chaired by President Bush) that contemplates the ideal health care system? Perhaps something like that exists, but it seems at least as plausible that Republican elected officials know that they have gotten lots of campaign contributions in recent years from the pharmaceutical and insurance industries and that they are expected to work for their money, hence the interest in expanding the private sector's role in Medicare. The NYT doesn't have to tell its readers every day that the Republicans are stooges for these powerful lobbies, but it also should not be in the business of tell readers that they are not stooges, but rather are acting out of ideological conviction. Of course we don't know their true motives, so let's just leave the speculation out of news articles.
--Dean Baker
