The NYT reported on the prospects of a public insurance plan being included in a health care package and tells readers that a public plan faced opposition from conservatives "to what they considered an attack on insurance industry profits." Okay, that is not what the article actually said. Instead it told readers that conservatives' opposition is due the fact that they consider a public plan an: "excessive government role in the economy." The reality is that the NYT does not know the reason why most conservative politicians oppose the public plan. Certainly their close ties to the insurance industry is a plausible explanation and possibly a more plausibly one than their philosophy of government. After all, these are politicians, not political philosophers. Rather than attributing motives where they cannot be known, the NYT would best serve its readers if it just reported what people say.
--Dean Baker
