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Columbia Journalism Review content tagged Obamacare

1. June 25, 2012 06:50 AM

   Romney’s ‘job killer’ narrative: time for an X-ray

   Some reporters are asking: Does Obamacare really destroy jobs?

   By Trudy Lieberman

   ONNtv.com, which bills itself as Ohio’s channel for news, is one of the latest media outlets to casually pass along one of Mitt Romney’s favorite campaign messages—the one that blames Obamacare for "killing jobs." ONN reporter Jim Heath, traveling with Romney on his campaign bus, sat down for a one-on-one with the presumptive nominee. Romney told Heath: “Get rid of...

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2. 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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3. July 9, 2012 06:50 AM

   A sober look at healthcare after the ACA

   The Los Angeles Times leads the way

   By Trudy Lieberman

   Chad Terhune’s piece, “Supreme Court’s healthcare ruling: The outlook for California,” offered a clear-eyed look at the repercussions of the Supreme Court’s decision on the healthcare reform law. It presented a realistic assessment of what Obamacare might really mean for California—a blend of the good that the Affordable Care Act does and what it leaves undone for Californians (and residents...

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4. November 2, 2012 10:28 AM

   Ask Romney This: What will replace Obamacare?

   A vague healthcare plan raises many questions

   By Trudy Lieberman

   Over the final weeks of the campaign, CJR has been publishing a series of pieces under the headline “Ask Obama This” and “Ask Romney This,” suggesting themes and questions that reporters and pundits can consider posing to the presidential candidates. There’s not much time left for that, of course, but the questions this series raises will be around for the...

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5. November 16, 2012 03:08 AM

   Audit Notes: Papacare, Post problem, trade reporting

   Forbes finds Papa John's Obamacare math doesn't add up

   By Ryan Chittum

   Papa John's CEO John Schnatter has been carping for some time that Obamacare will add 10 to 14 cents to the price of a pizza. That sounds like an argument for the health care law rather than against it (a dime extra on a $10 or $15 pizza to insure your pizza delivery guy?) but Papa John, from his 40,000...

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6. July 3, 2012 03:03 PM

   Climbing the Medicaid mountain

   The press is starting to master the policy angles. Now for the people

   By Trudy Lieberman

   The Affordable Care Act envisions a major expansion of health insurance in America, with some 30 million Americans gaining coverage. That figure includes some 17 million people with low incomes who were to get health insurance via an expansion of Medicaid eligibility. With eligibility raised—from 100 percent of the poverty level to 133 percent—many states will enlarge their Medicaid rolls...

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7. November 15, 2011 04:59 PM

   Confused NYT Coverage of Obama Health Care Law’s Prospects

   By Ryan Chittum

   The New York Times can't make up its mind on what a Supreme Court ruling against Obama health care plan's individual mandate would mean for the overall health-care law. On page one today, it reports this: Whatever Court Rules, Major Changes in Health Care Likely to Last On the website today, a news analysis , presumably going in tomorrow's paper,...

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8. May 15, 2012 03:19 PM

   Health costs: Is Mass. the only model?

   What about Vermont? (Not to mention Maryland)

   By Trudy Lieberman

   We all know Obamacare is Romneycare and Romneycare is Obamacare and that the Bay State has set the standard for everything health reform—from the individual mandate right down to ways to cut its gigantic medical bill. Or at least the media have passed along that narrative. The Wall Street Journal’s recent piece, “Same State, New Stab at Health Care,”was no...

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9. July 27, 2012 06:50 AM

   Medicare and misinformation

   Is my premium rising? A beat memo for reporters

   By Trudy Lieberman

   Two weeks ago a Midwest businessman sent an email to a long list of his senior friends warning that their Medicare Part B premiums would reach $247 a month by 2014. “These are provisions incorporated in the Obamacare legislation,” he wrote, and they “are purposely delayed so as not to cause Obama problems in the 2012 re-election campaigns.” He urged...

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10. May 21, 2012 06:50 AM

    Medicare and the $500 billion bogeyman

    Will a half-truth still work for the GOP?

    By Trudy Lieberman

    Republicans and their allies are dusting off an old $500 billion deception about Medicare, trying once more to scare seniors into voting their way. The logic on this one turns truth on its head, but some in the media have caught on to this election tactic and have begun trying to supply missing context. A bit of background: Before the...

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11. August 22, 2012 11:17 AM

    Medicare and the $716 billion bogeyman

    Will a new version of a half-truth work for the GOP?

    By Trudy Lieberman

    It’s been hard to escape from Medicare in the 11 days since Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan burst into the news as vice presidential candidate with big and well known ideas about the health program for nearly 50 million Americans. Medicare zoomed to the top of the issues parade, elbowing the economy. Romney and Ryan hope it will be a winning...

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12. September 10, 2012 11:00 AM

    Medicare spending: Do Obama and Romney see eye-to-eye?

    Matthew Yglesias has a flawed but useful argument

    By Trudy Lieberman

    Several days ago, Matthew Yglesias dug deeply into the Medicare weeds, arguing in Slate that Obama and Ryan basically agree on what needs to be done to Medicare costs. “They have essentially the same plan to control Medicare spending. And it’s a pretty good one,” Yglesias told his readers. Hmmm. I don’t agree with Yglesias, or at least with the...

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13. January 30, 2012 12:22 PM

    Medicare Versus Obamacare

    The fight begins in Florida

    By Trudy Lieberman

    In the last few days, three mainstream news outlets elevated “Medicare: The Political Story” into the headlines. It was good to see that The New York Times, PBS’s Need To Know, and Reuters, all of which reach large audiences, have realized Medicare may be the most important health story of the campaign. (Yes, perhaps more important than the Supreme Court’s...

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14. November 20, 2012 11:15 AM

    Papa John’s Pizza and the business backlash

    The real story: how some employers are still working to undermine Obamacare

    By Trudy Lieberman

    The media have latched onto the story of John Schnatter. That’s the John of Papa John’s Pizza, a CEO with an Ebenezer Scrooge approach to his employees and customers. He is vowing to reduce employee hours and wages while jacking up the price of his pepperoni pies—all because of Obamacare. The press has presented the story as sort of funny...

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15. August 6, 2012 06:50 AM

    Romney likes Israeli healthcare

    And the press takes a look at what it is. Whoa!

    By Trudy Lieberman

    Thanks to Mitt Romney’s laudatory remarks about the Israeli health system during his trip to Israel, we now know a bit about how another country provides healthcare—and how that nation manages to have better mortality and other outcomes than we do, at a far lower cost. The press, laudably, took a bread-and-butter political story—what Romney said—a big step further, explaining...

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16. May 13, 2011 02:57 PM

    Romney on Romneycare is a Bust

    Conservatives are not buying Mitt’s Michigan speech

    By Joel Meares

    Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney took to a stage in Ann Arbor yesterday to twist and turn his way through the “Obamacare”-“Romneycare” dilemma—that tricky quandary in which Romney must come out against the Affordable Health Act while dealing with the fact that he instituted a similar plan in Massachusetts five years ago. Here’s how Romney handles the problem, as reported...

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17. July 5, 2012 02:42 PM

    Spinning the Supreme Court’s healthcare decision

    The press rides a PR tsunami on Obamacare

    By Trudy Lieberman

    In the days before and after the Supreme Court’s decision, spin doctors were hard at work peddling their experts, positions, and takes on what might happen, and then what did happen and what might happen next. This is all to be expected, but the scope and the volume of the spin was extraordinary. “I have never seen so many lawyers...

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18. October 8, 2012 03:00 PM

    The debate: Some healthcare ‘facts’ that
    shouldn’t stand

    Reporters did good fact checking, but also left falsehoods on the table

    By Trudy Lieberman

    There was no shortage of media fact checking after last week’s presidential debate, much of it focused on healthcare, much of it good. Still, reporters left a lot of healthcare “facts” on the table, unexamined, too. Let’s take a look. The New York Times devoted seven graphs to accurately explaining why Obamacare is not, despite Mitt Romney’s assertions, a...

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19. June 20, 2012 06:51 AM

    The failure to explain health reform

    The public doesn’t understand it. Whose fault is that?

    By Trudy Lieberman

    If the Supreme Court rules the health reform law or its central feature—the individual mandate requiring people to have health insurance—is unconstitutional, much of the public won’t shed a tear. The Affordable Care Act remains about as unpopular as it was two years ago when the president signed it into law. In April 2010, one month after passage, 46 percent...

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20. July 17, 2012 06:50 AM

    The healthcare whatyamacallit

    What’s a reporter to call that payment thing—tax or penalty?

    By Trudy Lieberman

    The Supreme Court decision on the Affordable Care Act handed journalists something of a semantic dilemma. What do we call the sanction against people who do not buy the required health insurance? Is it a tax or a penalty? What should we call it in our stories? In upholding the constitutionality of the law, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts...

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