The NYT asserted that members of Congress and activists who are opposed to a health care plan that will likely lead to a sharp jump in profits for the insurance and pharmaceutical industries are motivated by "ideology," and contrasted their motivation with the "pragmatic" President Obama. The Congressional Budget Office and other independent analysts have found that the bill being debated does little to control health care costs at least in part because it does little to clamp down on insurance and pharmaceutical industry practices that push up costs. As a result of the failure of this bill to contain costs, there are serious efforts in Congress to create a deficit commission that will almost certainly seek to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits. It is not clear how the NYT has decided that the effort to prevent budget pressures that could lead to major cuts in these core social insurance programs is motivated by ideology, but this sort of name-calling has no place in a news article.
--Dean Baker
