Doctors, Media Critics Demand Broader TV Debate on Healthcare
The national media watch group FAIR and local healthcare advocacy groups will deliver a petition signed by over 12,000 people demanding that the TV networks include the single-payer proposal in their coverage of the national healthcare debate.
The petition will be presented to a representative of ABC News, which disinvited Dr. Scheiner (Obama’s former physician) from its recent forum on healthcare reform, where he’d been planning to ask Obama a question about single-payer.
FAIR, Physicians for a National Health Program, Healthcare Now!, the Private Health Insurance Must Go Coalition, Code Pink and the Raging Grannies are taking part in the petition delivery. In addition to the petition, the groups will be presenting a giant prescription–for a broader healthcare debate–to a representative of ABC News at the network’s NYC headquarters at 77 West 66th Street.
Please add your name to the growing list of people who demand that the news media include Single Payer information in the national health care debate.
Grand Rapids Institute for Information Democracy 
We must have National Health Care now!!!
Lana, I fully agree we need a truly national health care plan. Unfortunately, the administration and the news media are not talking about Single Payer, which would provide everyone with adequate health care coverage.
Jeff
It seems that we in West Michigan are more reluctant to talk about single payer. Friends in other parts of the country are having open, inclusive dialogues.
We simply need single payer if we intend to provide health care to EVERYONE.
Jeff, what in your opinion is really driving the near-media blackout on health insurance reform, and particularly the absence of discussion about the advantages of single-payer? I understand why politicians, including Obama, are keeping it off the table: so many of them are funded by insurance and pharmeceutical companies. But how is the media linked into this? Do you think it’s because of the agendas or investments of parent companies? Some other editorial direction reporters are following? Or influence from politicians themselves?
We know, for example, that newspapers and other media can be blocked in DC from access to stories if they upset the sitting administration. There’s a lot of behind-the-scenes choreography going on that we only glimpse from time to time. And of course, owners of papers have enormous influence over the editorial direction of reporting.
I know you touched on this in your commentary earlier this month but since you follow patterns in the media so closely, I’m wondering if you have a gut feeling about the driving force behind what seems eerily like a conspiracy of silence.
Sorry for any confusion of my position, let me make myself very clear………I do, and have for years, support and have preached on behalf of Single Payer Nation Health Care. The UAW has supported this position on health care for many decades, and we have promoted this position very aggressively. On a personal note, even though I have good health benefits through my employer, my 2 adult sons have NO health care coverage at all. They both have health issues (one a back problem and the other a shoulder problem as well as a dental problem), but these issues have not been addressed because they would have to be a “self pay” and neither can afford the cost. As a Mother and as a concerned citizen, I am very committed to this country passing a Single Payer National Health Care Bill, now !!!!!!!!!
I just found this online today:
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3845
It may not be the entire answer, but there does seem to be links between mainstream media and large insurance companies at the board level that could be acting as a deterrent to reporting on single-payer advantages and public support for it.
Kate, I saw that same piece from FAIR, so thanks for adding it here. I think that in addition to the connection’s that FAIR points out, there also is the internal censorship of news media companies since the health care industry, drug & insurance companies spend a ton of money buy advertising space/time from news media.