Once again: The New York Times and Obama’s attack on health care

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Once again: The New York Times and Obama’s attack on health care

17 November 2009

The New York Times has stepped up its campaign in defense of the Obama administration’s drive to overhaul the US health care system. In an editorial Sunday headlined “Reform and Medical Costs,” the newspaper employs a series of cynical and dishonest arguments in an effort to defend proposals that the Times’ editors know will erode health care for millions while boosting the profits of the giant health insurers and pharmaceutical companies.

Both in its substance and its arrogant tone, the editorial fairly drips with contempt for working people.

The editorial begins by asserting that the major concern of Americans is “the relentless rise in health care costs and health insurance premiums.” This medical spending, the authors argue, “is propelled by two things: the high prices charged for medical services in this country and the volume of unnecessary care delivered by doctors and hospitals, which often perform a lot more tests and treatments than a patient really needs.”

This passage presents the reader with a tautology: rising costs are caused by high prices. Left unmentioned and unchallenged is the real root of the health care crisis—private ownership of the health care industry and the subordination of health care to corporate profit.

The reader is then presented with what the Times considers to be the real problem: “unnecessary care” and the deplorable practice of doctors and hospitals performing “a lot more tests and treatments than a patient really needs.”

The editorial points favorably to proposals contained in both the House and Senate versions of legislation that would impose “forced productivity gains” to “reduce the rate of growth in annual Medicare payments to hospitals, nursing homes and other providers.” The newspaper notes: “This proposal could save Medicare more than $100 billion over the next decade.”

The editors omit the fact that the health care plans under consideration include massive cuts to Medicare, the government-run program for the elderly and disabled―$570 billion under the House bill and more than $400 billion in the Senate Finance Committee version.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/nov2009/pers-n17.shtml

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