Trust But Verify
The Catholic bishops are not the only ones still harboring strong reservations about current health care legislation. Their early October letter to Congress stated clearly that when it comes to the necessary provisions for protecting life and conscience protection, “no current bill meets this test.”
There has not been much progress since then, and the USCCB is not alone in its insistence that much more work is needed to create an acceptable piece of health legislation.
On Wednesday afternoon, a press conference was held near the Capitol on the issue of health care, where participants discussed the issue of abortion coverage directly. Many of the most prominent legislators from both houses of Congress were present, including Rep. Mike Pence, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, and former presidential candidate Sen. Sam Brownback, indicating that concerns over issues of life are still front and center in many minds not only within Catholic leadership but among lawmakers as well.
Smith’s point was simple: In essence, trust but verify. If the bill supporters continue to affirm that abortion is not covered, they should be open to verifying that that was the case. However, Smith makes the point that amendments to that effect, such as the one sponsored by Rep. Bart Stupak to prohibit tax dollars going to abortions, should have been passed, but they were defeated. The USCCB expressed the same concern in their October 8th letter to Congress, stating “we remain apprehensive when amendments protecting freedom of conscience and ensuring no taxpayer money for abortion are defeated in committee votes.”
Perhaps the bishops’ firm stance is making an impact.
USA! We’re number…37?
Another wrinkle in the health care debate emerged yesterday. If you have ever engaged someone in a debate about health care, you have probably heard this statistic or something close to it: The U.S. ranks 37th in the world in health care.
But according to this recent article in the Wall St. Journal, a healthy skepticism is well deserved when it comes to this number.
Apparently it is based on outdated statistics and flawed measurements by the World Health Organization, being “based on a report released nearly a decade ago” and relying on “statistics that are even older and incomplete,” notes Carl Bialik in his piece for the Wall St. Journal.
The ranking also takes into account statistics that can’t be controlled by health care and even ties in measurements to literacy rates and income inequality. The study also misleads in the fact that it is primarily not a measure a quality and outcomes – it measures how much care we are getting for our money spent, which is why the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, and Morocco all ranked higher than the U.S., according to the WHO. However, notes Bialik, the statistic is often presented as an absolute measure of the quality of our health system.
This is not to dismiss the need for health reform but only to put what can be a misleading statistic into context -- U.S. health care isn’t perfect, but it’s not that bad.
Reuters, CNBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Fox Business News all fell for it.
On Monday, an activist group pulled one over on half the mainstream news media. Members of a liberal activist group calling themselves the “Yes Men” issued a press release with a forged Chamber of Commerce logo to major news outlets announcing that the “Chamber” was reversing its position on cap and trade legislation. They had even created a fake Chamber of Commerce website to push the fake release.
The plan was to feed the media a fabricated story in which the Chamber of Commerce came out endorsing climate change legislation, which the actual Chamber does not endorse. The Chamber of Commerce has come under pressure lately from the White House due to its opposition to the current form of health care legislation and the creation of new consumer protection agency, as well cap and trade.
Unfortunately, almost every major news outlet bit, with stories all over the news until the actual Chamber came out to correct their position.
The activist group also staged a brazen fake news conference at the National Press Club. After duping the Press Club with a fake name, they actually went forward with the fake press briefing, with one of their activists posing as a member of the Chamber of Commerce. A video exists of this fake press conference and includes a confrontation with an actual spokesperson of the Chamber of Commerce who arrives to break things up in a heated exchange. Apparently, a number of the audience members in the video were planted actors.
The entirely series of events raises less questions about the motivations of a bunch of activists with too much time on their hands than it does about the media itself. The live news media, especially the online and television outlets that can run with stories instantaneously, has seemingly dropped rigorous verification of reports in favor of pushing out whatever hot story drops in their laps.
Similarly, on Monday as well, a CNN anchor was forced to apologize to talk radio host Rush Limbaugh, after wrongly attributing to him a quote about slavery that had been gleaned from the open source website Wikipedia.
If more and more news outlets plan to start charging for online content, we as readers might have to think about demanding a little quality control.
Paul Ciarcia, Communications Associate
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