Media coverage of problems facing the new Medicare prescription drug
plan focused on elderly patients left in the lurch by bureaucracy,
producing what CBSs Bill Plante called a political headache for
the Bush administration. But in the Jan. 16 reports on the Evening
News and World News Tonight, both networks ignored conservative
critics who had argued the plan was doomed to fail because it was a
typical big government solution that ignored the free market.
ABCs David Kerley opened his story featuring Pat
Young, a Medicare recipient who got lost in the Medicare system and
consequently was in danger of not being able to obtain her drug
prescriptions. Kerley did not, however, explore why senior citizens
like Young are stuck in the red-tape ridden, inefficient,
trillion-dollar government program.
Writing before the prescription drug bill was passed in
2003,
Catos Michael Tanner said that, An option still exists for
seniors to choose private sector alternatives to Medicare, but there
are no longer any incentives for them to do so. Under the plan about
to be passed by Congress, seniors would receive nearly identical
drug benefits under both traditional Medicare or private plans.
Tanner added that without competition on the basis of
either price or benefits, few seniors can be expected to move out of
traditional Medicare.
Other conservative critics, such as American Enterprise
Institutes Joseph Antos, have also long blasted the drug plan as
packing on more weight to a collapsing Medicare system.
Antos labeled the drug benefit a fiscal time-bomb and the
most fiscally irresponsible legislation in U.S. history.
In June 2003, Antos, an AEI health care scholar and
former Assistant Director for Health and Human Resources at the
Congressional Budget Office, faulted the White House for dropping
market-oriented reforms while tacking on an expensive Medicare
benefit. Take the lack of competition into account and the result
is striking, Antos warned, adding, Depending on the future growth
of demand for prescription drugs under Medicare, the Senate plan
would increase the government's unfunded obligation of between $6
trillion and $7 trillion to $12 trillion. Yet Medicare is already in
deep trouble its long-term shortfall amounts to more than $30
trillion. And this is without a new prescription drug benefit.
Just as conservative criticism of the drug benefit has
been persistent over the course of the past three years, so has the
medias near-blackout of the plans detractors. A Nexis search of
ABC, CBS, and NBC news programs from Jan. 1, 2003 through Dec. 31,
2005 for Medicare and prescription drugs yielded 557 hits. Only
two featured criticism of the drug plan by an AEI or Cato expert.
The Heritage Foundations Robert Moffit was featured four times and
Brian Riedl once in the same time period remarking briefly about the
plans cost.
Media Portray Drug Plan as Boondoggle
January 17th, 2006 2:00 PM
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