'Good Morning America' Thinks You’re Not Smart Enough to Buy Health Insurance

When it comes to the presidential candidates’ health care plans, journalists could do a service by explaining the differences to voters. ABC’s “Good Morning America” gave the impression of doing that, but instead gave a confusing presentation that was insulting to viewers.

Republican Sen. John McCain (Ariz.) advocates more patient choice and flexibility, but ABC’s medical editor, Dr. Tim Johnson, scoffed at that notion in a September 5 story.

“The idea that individuals are going to have enough knowledge and enough savvy and enough insight and, frankly, enough guts to make choices all by themselves is pretty much a pipe dream,” Johnson said.

ABC’s Web site touts Johnson as “one of the nation's leading medical communicators of health care information.”

Johnson was the resident expert reporter Chris Cuomo interviewed in two stories inviting viewers to “Meet the Joneses” – representing an average American family – and see how each candidate’s plans for health reform would help or hinder them. The Jones family has a daughter with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or ADHD, and her treatment is not covered by their HMO, her parents said.

McCain’s Solutions: Choice and Portability

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, McCain’s economic adviser, told Cuomo that under McCain’s plan, the family could join a different plan where the ADHD treatment would be covered, including one in another state if they choose.

McCain’s plan would create a national market for health insurance, allowing people to purchase across state lines and shop for the policies that best fit their needs and pocketbooks. Under today’s system, people are trapped by state laws that take away choice and competition. That means a similar health insurance policy costs $388 a month in New York but just $98 in Iowa.

What Cuomo didn’t include in his piece was the fact that McCain’s plan also would allow the Joneses to choose from a wider range of plans. They wouldn’t have to stay with an HMO if they didn’t like it, and their insurance wouldn’t have to be tied to an employer. Cuomo did allude to the fact that McCain advocates loosening the link between the workplace and health insurance, allowing people to own their own policies that would be portable if they move or change jobs.

But Cuomo, like Johnson, worried about a shift toward individual control and responsibility: “Is there a risk in putting the Joneses in control of their own health care?”

Holtz-Eakin pointed out that the result of McCain’s plan would be more “competition to please the Joneses” as insurance companies compete to offer more options and affordable policies to keep the business of these newly-empowered consumers.

McCain’s Solutions: Tax Credits

Cuomo warned, inaccurately, that another plank in McCain’s platform involves taxing health insurance obtained through an employer. While people would see their incomes go up as the value of their health insurance policies were counted in their income, the McCain plan would offer a new refundable tax credit, worth $5,000 for families and $2,500 for individuals, which would more than offset the taxes on that amount.

As the system stands today, workers get a generous tax break – which is invisible to them – if they get their health insurance at work, but not if they buy health insurance on their own. That break goes disproportionately to higher-paid workers with the most generous health insurance. McCain would more fairly distribute the tax break to all Americans so they could get the same help, whether they get their health insurance at work or on their own.
 
A commonly cited figure for a family insurance policy is $12,000 a year, prompting ABC and other critics to pooh-pooh a $5,000 tax credit.  But the current tax break for job-based health insurance is worth an average of $4,200 a year for the average American family. Add to that the money workers are paying in co-payments as well as the employer contribution, and almost all workers would come out ahead under the McCain plan.
 
Cuomo dismissed those facts with his own attempt at analysis.
“Was this a kind of Peter and Paul thing – ‘Here’s $5,000 but I’m going to take it right back in new taxes’?” Cuomo asked Holtz-Eakin. “Why not give the $5,000 because health care’s a mess, and not tax benefits?”

Clearly the financial implications of such a plan would be prohibitively expensive. As Holtz-Eakin explained to Cuomo, “You can’t just hand out money.”


Obama’s Solutions: ABC’s Coverage Nebulous at Best

Cuomo said McCain’s plan would cause the Joneses to deal with “more health care bureaucracy,” which was ironic considering it’s Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-Ill.) plan that actually would create multiple new bureaucracies. But viewers wouldn’t know that after watching Cuomo’s piece on Obama’s plan .

The August 26 piece on Obama was vague, focusing on a promise to save each family $2,500. Even ABC’s Johnson said he was “skeptical” about the savings, as he should have been since numerous experts have said the savings are illusive at best.

Obama adviser Austan Goolsbee mentioned the Democratic nominee’s “National Health Insurance Exchange,” saying that would give the Joneses more choices. But he didn’t explain that the purpose of the Exchange would ultimately be to standardize private policies, essentially killing off competition and driving private plans out of business.

In addition, Obama would create an entirely new bureaucracy in a Medicare-esque government insurance plan. But ABC didn’t explore what that would mean for consumer choice and for taxpayers.

Instead, Cuomo prodded Goolsbee with the standard media query: “Why not take the big step and say ‘universal health care’?”

Unfortunately, “Good Morning America” subjected viewers to Cuomo’s planned questions and pithy sound bites instead of offering understandable, fact-based, educational reporting.


Related:

August 26 “Good Morning America” story on Obama’s plan and the Joneses

September 5 story on McCain’s plan