11.16.13
One of the things that irritates me about news coverage of the Obamacare mess is the willingness of many in the media to describe plans that do not fit the requirements of the ACA as "substandard."
President Obama may have secured a measure of political relief for himself by allowing substandard insurance policies to be renewed for another year.
…“The president told me that if I like my health insurance, I could keep it. And that shouldn’t have an expiration date,” said Crusco, who has been covered under a nonconforming plan that did not cover maternity care. That fit her needs because, she says, she doesn’t plan to have more children.”
One of the things that irritates me about news coverage of the Obamacare mess is the willingness of many in the media to describe plans that do not fit the requirements of the ACA as "substandard."
The two quotes above, both from the same news story, nicely illustrate the rhetorical trick. A plan that does not cover maternity care is nonconforming, since it does not conform to the ACA requirement that all insurance plans provide maternity benefits. It is substandard for someone who does not plan to have children, possibly a man or an elderly woman who is unable to have children, only if one assumes that the standard of what all plans ought to cover for everyone is determined by what Congress wrote into the act, which, as the example shows, is crazy. It should not take more than about thirty seconds of thought for a fair minded journalist to realize that at least some plans that do not fit the ACA's requirements are what their purchasers do and should want.
Which suggests that quite a lot of journalists are either incapable of thought or engaged in deliberately biased reporting.
No comments:
Post a Comment