Left-wing group’s grant will “educate” MSM on Obamacare law
It’s whistleblower week. This morning, I wrote about SEIU workers coming forward to protest their open-borders bosses’ anti-Arizona electioneering. This afternoon, a journalist writes in to expose a cozy propaganda arrangement between the self-identified “progressive” Commonwealth Fund and the Society of American Business Editors and Writers:
I’m a reporter at a major newspaper, and quite conservative compared to the great majority of my colleagues…Anyway, here’s something that just turned up in my e-mail and has got me really annoyed:
SABEW awarded $15,000 grant for health-care reform education programs
PHOENIX – The Commonwealth Fund has awarded a $15,000 grant to the Society of American Business Editors and Writers to conduct a series of education programs focusing on aspects of the nation’s new health-care reform law.
The programs will be onsite and online, said Warren Watson, executive director of SABEW, the nation’s largest and oldest organization of business and financial journalists.
It is the third such grant Commonwealth has awarded to SABEW, which has conducted seven workshops on the business of health care with Commonwealth Fund support since 2007, the most recent in April 2010.SABEW will conduct webinars and two workshops at its national conferences under the grant. The first education session will be held in New York Oct. 1 at SABEW’s annual fall conference, to be held at City University of New York. The second onsite workshop will be at SABEW’s annual spring conference at Southern Methodist University in Dallas April 7-9, 2011.
“We’re pleased and thankful that our partnership with The Commonwealth Fund will continue with this grant,” said Watson. “Journalists we reach will better understand the complexities of the health-care law.”
With offices in New York City and Washington, D.C., The Commonwealth Fund is a private foundation that aims to promote a high performing health care system that achieves better access, improved quality, and greater efficiency, particularly for society’s most vulnerable, including low-income people, the uninsured, minority Americans, young children, and elderly adults.
The Fund carries out this mandate by supporting independent research on health care issues and making grants to improve health care practice and policy. An international program in health policy is designed to stimulate innovative policies and practices in the United States and other industrialized countries.
For more information, contact SABEW executive director Warren Watson at watson@sabew.org or call 1-602-496-5186
I may be wrong, but this sounds like a program to teach reporters to write supportive stories about the health care reform law. It’s not my beat, so I can’t really get into it, but I wonder if any members of the blogosphere would want to do a bit of research on this one…
I did a quick scan of the Commonwealth Fund website, and it’s pretty solidly pro-Obamacare. See, for instance, http://www.commonwealthfund.org/Content/Blog/Who-Is-Helped-by-Health-Reform.aspx
Nothing at all wrong with that. But should an organization of news reporters and editors accept a grant from this group to “educate” journalists on this topic? This seems to me exactly the sort of logrolling and message-shaping that an objective media ought to regard with deep suspicion. Imagine if SABEW got a $15,000 grant from the Heritage Foundation or the Cato Institute to educate reporters on how awful the new law is. I think we’d hear lots of criticism of that.
Nope, this just doesn’t seem right to me. Anybody else?
The tipster is right to question the Commonwealth Fund’s ability to provide objective information about Obamacare to journalists. The head of the fund, Karen Davis, is a Jimmy Carter leftover and self-identified “progressive” economist who has long peddled single payer. Her 2009 annual report proclaims:
The Commonwealth Fund marshaled its resources this year to produce timely and rigorous work that helped lay the groundwork for the historic Affordable Care Act, signed by President Obama in March 2010.
Perhaps one of the journalists participating in these indoctrination sessions can enlighten the public on the people, funding, and ideology driving the Commonwealth Fund’s media “education” campaign.
And perhaps the editors of newspapers who send their reporters to the sessions should see fit to disclose at the beginning of every health care story whether the Commonwealth Fund underwrote their “education.”
Sunlight is the best disinfectant, right?
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No surprise to you, I’m sure: Several George Soros staffers and fellows have worked at the Commonwealth Fund and vice versa — see, for example, here and here.
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Absolutely! Good stuff Michelle, I intend to call the Pittsburgh and Youngstown papers tomorrow to as a few questions.
Z
There’s that word again. Pretty soon it’ll go the way of “liberal” and “Marxist” and whatever.
Here’s what they tried to do with the health care bill in a nutshell (politically neutral explanation).
They wanted to solve the problem of high health insurance costs (under the name of ‘health care’ – health care isn’t health insurance).
The problem is that most people don’t know how much it costs because they get it through their employer for ‘free’. That’s why they wanted to tax those benefits so you would have some ‘skin in the game’ concerning the cost of health insurance.
The main focus is on the individual market (my specialty, nobody knows more about this crappy subject on the planet than me). First, they needed to have ‘community rating’ (meaning everyone gets covered and no underwriting).
Second, they needed to require people to get coverage so community rating would mathematically work.
Third, now that the first two steps increased the cost of health care by adding benefits, the government will pay a portion of your health insurance.
So while your health insurance costs might actually rise, you won’t pay as much because the government pays for the portion of your health insurance premium based on your income – THROUGH THE IRS (via the insurance ‘exchanges’ to be set up by 2014).
The problem is they are underestimating the cost to the government when they put this program in place. It will collapse when the government can’t afford to pay the premiums.
Sorry for the length, but that’s what the whole thing in a nutshell. It’s a bad idea from the beginning and it got worse when they tried to ‘fix it’.
Well, there are actually several problems, but it would get political if I went over them. Here’s a big problem you won’t hear anywhere else. . .
The whole plan is based on using tax dollars to pay for private insurance to private insurance companies. . .this is why they wanted the ‘public option’ directed by the people who have yet to demand all available skimmers go to the Gulf for clean up.
But these insurance companies are going to be bullied by DC . . . Obama demanding that insurance companies not raise their rates and whatever.
But lets say this plan works for 5 years. Your government pays a private insurance company for your insurance and pressure the company not to succeed (make too much profit). At some point, the private insurance company decides it no longer wants to provide coverage and it closes its door. . . executives and board members live large on the tax dollars that the government gave them because of health care reform.
So basically, tax dollars are spent, and nothing to show for it but a bankrupt health insurance company and millions of newly uninsured former clients that the government will have to pay for.
People don’t realize that insurance companies have HUGE cash reserves (as required by the government). That’s cash that they keep if they decide to stop doing business. If Obama wants to fight them, they will ‘shrug’ and Obama will be left with the bag (well by then it will be America that is hurting because of Obama’s program – Obama will be long gone).
Anyway, it’s pretty straight forward. It is epically bad. It’s too bad that people don’t understand it because it is fascinating to listen to people spin instead of explain. Most of the spinners have no idea what they are talking about. Obama has no idea what he’s talking about concerning health care.
Shouldn’t the Republicans be doing this as the main part of their pledge to overturn Obamacare? Oh yeah, attention deficit disorder.
No education drive needed regarding Obamacare. Just look to the great white north – Canada. Public healthcare means long waiting lists, inferior care options, reduced pharmaceuticals, shortages of family doctors and specialists etc.
I always laughed with disgust when I hear American politicians tout the success of my country’s public health care system.
The Canadian government is now considering charging for some procedures like hip and knee replacement because the wait time between initial diagnosis and surgery can exceed 2 years. For someone in their 70′s or 80′s, 2 years is a valuable amount of time lost.
Of course, when the con-man in chief (sorry to say that about your leader, but it’s true) gets ill, he won’t go through the public system, he’ll fly to another country and access evil private, profit health care system. Exactly the same as his elimination of school vouchers supposedly in support of public education for all, except his own kids, whom he sent to private educational facilities.
I really can’t believe this man was elected President of the greatest country history has every known. How did this happen?
Affirmative Action is how it happened. If a white guy had his credentials, the white guy wouldn’t have been accepted to Harvard and by default been considered ‘intellectual elite’. Much less gotten a free ride with a minority scholarship.
Affirmative Action promoted people because of the color of their skin, not based on merit. Obama benefited from that.
Getting into Ivy League is the hard part. . . once you get there, they won’t try to flunk you out. He was an affable and opportunistic ‘eddie haskal’ type who based his ‘intelligence’ solely on the fact that he went to Harvard. . . which doesn’t indicate ‘intelligence’.
He went to Chicago and became a cog in the machine who happened to be spit out because he was black (again, not because of his ‘leadership’).
Obama is the first Affirmative Action president. Keep this in mind the next time you have to have surgery. Do you want the most competent based on merit, or the most ‘victimized’ based on race?
Obama will be the poster child for why ‘affirmative action’ was a bad idea. Every decision he has made has been ridiculous. The media were so in love with their own ideology, they don’t see how incompetent he has been since day one.
He does one thing well. . . spend everyone else’s money – and smile really big (two things). Other than that, he’s not even serviceable as a competent leader. It will become clear soon enough.
How did it happen? Affirmative Action.
This part caught my eye. Even though this is the third grant and they have conducted seve workshops the public is still seeing through the BS that is known as ObamaCare.
Reichmarshal Goebbels would be proud to see his policies in force 65 years later!
Let them educate the MSM. Our mission is to educate the people, the voters. The mission is “Sieze control in November.”
We need to be focused on that like a laser beam. We need the comittee chairs back. Idf we can’t repeal all of this crap due to Presidential vetos then we defund it all.
We also need to get the hearings going that begin to root out all of the corruption.
But without control we cannot get the job done. All politics is local. Get involved.
Michelle, please define “progressive” – not a Democrat in America today has any idea what that means.
Jimmy Carter economist. Wow! Who would admit that?!
I don’t see how an economist can be a progressive economist. Economic principles are quite straight forward. It is the study of how humans use scarce resources to satisfy unlimited wants.
For example, with healthcare, there is only so many doctors, drugs, hospitals, nurses, etc. at any given time. The pricing mechanism allows supply and demand to intersect and bring equilibrium to the marketplace. An economist can be as progressive as he/she wants, but it doesn’t change the realities of scarcity in any society.
The traditional economist explains how supply and demand impact health care. The progressive economist helps determine what members of society need to be sacrified for the “common good.”
If you are over 60, good luck.
Why give out grants to educate slugs in the MSM when they collude all on their own?
No need to even look at Canada.
As I’ve said over and over, all one needs to do is volunteer for 6 months at a Veterans Affairs hospital to see what kind of lousy care will be available under ObowmaCare.
I think the trust of the Obowma regime is now so low, that no one cares what they say. Even my liberal friends no longer watch. All he has left is the freebie hopey crowd.
George Soros again? That voracious parasite spreads it’s toxins through-out the whole body and kills the host. I can spray for such critters on the roses, with Soros I wonder if it can be stopped. His blood sucking zombie Kagan the Evasive is on-she needs watching; irritating as it is I will.
And shame on such Editors and Writers for such shenanigans-shame.
===
Let your sidearm be like Master Card:
Don’t Leave home without it.
The nuanced language thing has always been emphasized by the communists. It needs to be constantly thrown back in their faces. There is nothing progressive about “Progressives” and there is nothing democratic about the “Democratic” Party. They blithely hide behind creamy phrases like “social justice” and ‘progressive” but their actions betray a long-term strategy of totalitarian dominance of society.
I’m all for edukating jowhorenalists so that thay can rite and spel gud.
I thougt the left-wingers already had the MSM as their chearleaders and advocates, unless this grant is to “educate” them on techniques to
indoctrinate,brainwash, er, “educate” we, the people.Pretty soon we will run out of new names to call communist/socialist members of the democrat party, and will have to invent new words. Nonhistoryliteratemorons is my suggestion.
And now a VA hospital in Missouri may have infected up to 1800 veterans with Hep B, Hep C and HIV! Welcome to ObamaCare! As if we needed other reasons to overturn this Obamination!
http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/06/30/va.hospital.hiv/index.html
This isn’t education, it’s propaganda. Sounds like the re-education camps have started When will they start putting the so called ignorant masses that don’t agree with this government into them?
I think it’s like training a dog. Do or say something wrong, you get a “jolt.” Do it again, same thing, until you realize you don’t like the response you get for your actions, then you stop doing it.
You are now left with 2 choices: submit (see: LameStreamMedia); or revolt.
(I know, I know, “The peasants are revolting!” “Yeah. They stink on ice.”)
Viva la revolution. It actually may be coming by design. The left would have no problem in fomenting a revolution to splinter the USA and seize perpetual power on the way to their one world government.
The training should be a piece of cake for many of those that have already been indoctrinated by our publik skool sistums for the last 30 yerars.
Chaos is part of the plan for taking over the US by the Chosen One’s Government. Create havoc and then establish that the only way to regain control is through one world order, or something like that……
The US will not be helping the US oil companies as Chavez takes over and nationalizes these companies. Chavez’s pattern is obvious. less obvious is the creeping marxism into our
society. (See #29 – sorry about that – hit button too soon).
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HI REPUBLICANVET–#16. Good comment on the lower standard of care in VA Hospitals. My 2 sons went to the Albuquerque VA Hospital a day a week when they were interns / residents at UNM 5 years ago.
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They both commented on how slow it was to get tests run and to get results in a timely manner. They needed the results in 8 hours or less so they could make proper adjustment in medications and treatments–and it took days and wasted lots of their time. Not to mention problems with the patients healing that should not have occurred.
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They also commented that this was a bad way to treat those who had been maimed and disabled when they served our country. This was a “wakeup call” to them on what military service can mean.
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Get ready to lose many good doctors as they bail out of Medicare.
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John Bibb
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It’s been creeping into our society since the ’50′s. Many of those that were students of marxism on our campuses in the’60s now have very important positions in government, law and education and now the pattern is more obvious than ever.
ThackerAgency commented on “Affirmative Action”. But there was one missing point; “Who does AA harm the most?” The answer is minorities; here’s why. First they are often not well trained for their profession. Second, it creates a racial issue. For example, you might purposely avoid a minority physician just because he might be a product of AA. In reality he may be the best in his field, but are you gonna take that chance?
You are 100% right about that Cogs. AA hurts minorities most. Freedom and capitalism depend on the ability to succeed and fail.
There are many FANTASTIC minority doctors, lawyers, etc. And there are many WORTHLESS white doctors, lawyers, etc.
Freedom demands that everyone compete equally. It shouldn’t matter your race. We need the best and the brightest Asian, Hispanic, African, or European.
There is no reason that blacks born and raised in America shouldn’t be able to compete at the same level as recent Asian or Hispanic immigrants. . . yet for some reason the blacks are continually ‘victimized’ by America.
We all have opportunity. There is no place in a free society for race based initiatives from the government.
rocketman/JB, after almost 20 years of going to them, I could fill several volumes of how sorry the treatment is. I believe a third-world hospital would be a step up.
As for your sons….I always felt bad for the interns or others who came to he VA temporarily. You could always tell the frustration in their faces.
The sad part is how much politics have become a part of the VA….by both sides of the aisle. I was supposed to testify before Congress last fall about how bad the care has gotten, but the hearings kept getting canceled.
You see, a Democrat occupies the WH, and a Democrat chaired the committee holding the hearing. At the same time, the same Democrats were trying to fool the public into believing socialized health care would be great.
It just wouldn’t do to have a bunch of scummy vets whining publicly about how bad their government run health care was.