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Columbia Journalism Review content tagged Medicare

1. September 18, 2012 10:48 AM

   Medicare: Where’s the evidence that vouchers save money?

   The National Journal seeks some, and comes up empty

   By Trudy Lieberman

   Margot Sanger-Katz, a National Journal reporter who has been brave enough to question conventional wisdom surrounding health policy—she reported that elements of the Affordable Care Act “designed to lower costs will likely raise them instead”—has now taken a hard look at the claims and rhetoric sloshing around about vouchers lowering the government’s Medicare bill. She asked a reasonable question, one...

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2. February 25, 2011 11:02 AM

   “Tweaking” Health Reform

   Who pays the price for the changes?

   By Trudy Lieberman

   Lost in MSM coverage of the president’s budget and hype over a government shutdown has been reportage about the various “tweaks” to the health reform law. Kudos to Merrill Goozner of the Fiscal Times, Megan McArdle at The Atlantic, and Timothy Jost writing for Kaiser Health News, for their enlightening commentaries. Who will pay the price for these changes? Why,...

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3. April 17, 2012 04:09 PM

   EXTRA Unpacks the Media’s Medicare Coverage

   Are journalists writing for doctors or for patients?

   By Trudy Lieberman

   I don’t know Amy Poe, a writer and Medicare consumer based in Little Rock, Arkansas. But I like a piece she wrote for EXTRA, a monthly magazine of commentary and criticism of the press. I suspect most Beltway reporters and those who toil in smaller circles don’t know much about FAIR, a progressive media watchdog group that publishes EXTRA. But...

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4. April 7, 2011 10:27 AM

   New York Has Clarity on the Ryan Budget

   By Joel Meares

   A quick thank you to Dan Amira of New York magazine’s Daily Intel blog, who has published just the dummies guide to Paul Ryan’s budget proposal that we asked for early in the week—okay, Amira called it “the Absolute Moron’s Guide.” The piece is written as a Q&A with a savvy but clueless questioner and a befuddled but informative...

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5. August 31, 2012 11:07 AM

   The Wall Street Journal lets Paul Ryan go all but unchecked

   Misleading claims get ignored or given he said-she said treatment

   By Ryan Chittum

   The Wall Street Journal's coverage of Paul Ryan's speech to the Republican National Convention Wednesday, which was packed with one hypocrisy and misleading claim after another, has been awfully weak. On page one the day after, its story doesn't bother to fact check a single one of Ryan's claims, though even Wolf Blitzer knew immediately that many were bogus. Worse,...

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6. February 6, 2012 11:57 AM

   USA Today Touts the Government’s Good News on Medicare

   But was it the full story?

   By Trudy Lieberman

   A few days ago USA Today trumpeted some health policy news: enrollment in Medicare Advantage plans is up and premiums are down. The paper reported that premiums for the controversial Medicare Advantage plans, which provide private benefits for Medicare seniors through managed care arrangements, had dropped an average of seven percent during 2011, while enrollment had grown on average by...

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7. May 25, 2011 12:54 PM

   A Beat Memo on Medicare

   Is the Ryan plan really so novel?

   By Trudy Lieberman

   Perhaps no other health issue is as important to so many Americans now and in the future as Medicare. In this ongoing series, “Covering Medicare,” we will follow the reportage and offer Medicare beat memos from time to time. A few weeks ago, Amy Goldstein of The Washington Post gave her readers a short Medicare history lesson. She harkened back...

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8. May 29, 2012 02:35 PM

   A Grand Bargain on entitlements?

   The press is sending signals about Simpson-Bowles. How about explaining it?

   By Trudy Lieberman

   To the average person, Nancy Pelosi’s May 20 interview with George Stephanopoulos probably seemed like standard procedure for a Sunday morning talk show—another politician slipping and sliding around the questions. It was more than that. Stephanopoulos noted that Pelosi had said—a few weeks earlier—that she would vote for the Simpson-Bowles deficit reduction plan, l which among other things proposes severe...

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9. August 24, 2012 04:04 PM

   A laurel to Jackie Calmes of The New York Times

   She begins to X-ray the Romney/Ryan Medicare plan

   By Trudy Lieberman

   This week’s laurel goes to Jackie Calmes of The New York Times for reporting the increasing skepticism in health policy circles about claims from the Romney-Ryan ticket that Medicare beneficiaries will be hurt because the president’s health reform law cuts $716 billion from future Medicare spending and puts the savings into subsidies for the uninsured called for by the...

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10. February 27, 2012 04:29 PM

    A Medicare Memo to Campaign Reporters

    Tailing Mitt on Medicare and Social Security, too

    By Trudy Lieberman

    Dear Colleagues: I have just returned from a reporting trip to Southeast Arkansas, where the folks I visited have very little. They certainly don’t have good health. Some are crippled by bad knees messed up from on-their-feet jobs. Most have diabetes. Some have had strokes. They are lucky, though, that they have Medicare. Without it, they probably would have died...

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11. July 18, 2011 02:33 PM

    A Medicare Miss at the LA Times

    Some fact-checking, please

    By Trudy Lieberman

    Medicare is a bear to write about. It’s tough for beneficiaries to understand, and unclear news stories only serve to compound their confusion. That’s what last week’s LA Times story on Medicare costs did. The paper’s thesis was that seniors’ medical bills “could jump hundreds or even thousands of dollars,” and the top supported that storyline. A Medicare expert from...

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12. May 16, 2011 03:52 PM

    A Medicare Referendum? Not So Fast

    Polls in N.Y. special election tell a more complicated story

    By Greg Marx

    The future of Medicare is one of the biggest, most fiercely contested questions in American politics these days. And with a special election coming up in a congressional district in western New York next week, the candidates there have spent a lot of time debating a Republican plan that would transform the federal health care program. So is the election...

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13. April 27, 2011 12:13 PM

    A Missing Medicare Link from The New York Times

    Covering Medicare, Part II

    By Trudy Lieberman

    Perhaps no other health issue is as important to so many Americans now and in the future as Medicare. In this new series, “Covering Medicare,” we will follow the reportage and offer Medicare beat memos from time to time. Medicare was big news on the political circuit yesterday, with Florida congressman Allen B. West getting, shall we say, pushback from...

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14. May 23, 2011 03:02 PM

    A Second Look at NY-26

    New polls suggest a role for Medicare, but reasons for caution remain

    By Greg Marx

    A week ago, I called for more restraint in press coverage of tomorrow’s special election in NY-26, which the press has eagerly framed as a referendum on House Republicans’ controversial plan to turn Medicare into a voucher program. With some new polling data in over the weekend, it’s time to walk back parts of that post — but also to...

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15. November 15, 2012 01:12 PM

    An election post-mortem on Medicare coverage

    Coverage? Yes. Guidance? Not so much

    By Trudy Lieberman

    In mid-August, when Paul Ryan burst on the scene with his voucher scheme for Medicare, the 47-year old program suddenly became hot news. Until then, the media had paid scant attention to Medicare, except in the fall when they served up some “how-to” stories for choosing new Medicare Advantage plans. This time it was different. Ryan’s plans for transforming Medicare...

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16. October 26, 2012 06:51 AM

    Ask Obama This: Will we have to be older to get Medicare?

    We know about Romney’s vouchers, but the president is quiet on the subject of raising eligibility

    By Trudy Lieberman

    Over the final days of the campaign, CJR is running a series of pieces under the headline “Ask Obama This” and “Ask Romney This,” suggesting themes and questions that reporters and pundits can put to the presidential candidates. So far we’ve asked President Obama about his short term jobs plan and about housing, and Africa, among other things, and asked...

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17. May 17, 2011 01:41 PM

    Candidate Pawlenty and Social Security

    What’s he really talking about?

    By Trudy Lieberman

    Not long ago, presidential aspirant Tim Pawlenty sat down with reporters from the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review for a heart-to-heart about his policy positions. The interview covered everything from from Libya to health care. (We know where he stands on that last one). He talked of his personal battles with the Minnesota legislature and said “you’ve got to draw some lines in...

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18. May 18, 2011 03:58 PM

    Challenging Newt’s Medicare Walkback

    Choice is the least of Medicare's problems

    By Trudy Lieberman

    Poor Newt Gingrich! What a beating he’s taken since he said on Meet the Press Sunday that Paul Ryan’s scheme to privatize Medicare was “too big a jump” for Americans, just like Obama’s health care law is. The former House speaker compared Ryan’s proposal to Obamacare, which he said he opposed because it imposed radical change, and he “would be...

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19. August 22, 2011 03:25 PM

    CJR Holds a Town Hall in Missouri

    Do the pols represent the voters?

    By Trudy Lieberman

    As Barack Obama’s bus cruised through the heartland last week, the media told us a fair amount about what the president said. In Alpha, Illinois, Obama gave a less-than-clear explanation of the amount of wages subject to the Social Security payroll tax, and then let it slip that apparently he supports a change in the way cost of living benefits...

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20. April 25, 2011 01:48 PM

    CJR Holds a Town Hall in Philly

    Shoppers on Market Street sound off

    By Trudy Lieberman

    Finding myself in Philadelphia recently, I decided to stroll along Market Street and see which of the day’s big political issues ordinary people had on their minds. Medicare topped the list, followed by Social Security and job security. The day of my interviews, the Democratic polling firm of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner released results showing that two thirds of respondents had...

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