9% From June 2009 to March 2010—the heart of the health care debate—only 9% of media stories about health care reform actually “focused on a core issue — how our health care system currently functions, what works and what doesn’t,” according to a Pew Research study; the study says that 41% of health care stories were devoted to tactics and strategies for getting reform passed (or not), and 69% of Americans said the debate was hard to follow
For many unemployed Americans, health insurance isn’t remotely affordable—even with the government subsidizing 65% of former workers’ policy premiums.
Most people know the big number: 45 million. That’s the generally accepted tally of Americans currently without health insurance. With the prospect of a public option all but gone, it appears that any change that does occur will pretty much bring more of the status quo—meaning more numbers like these.
The routine at the doctor’s office used to end by patients forking over the $20 or $35 co-pay at the receptionist’s desk. Weeks later, patients could expect a letter in the mail from their insurers, filled with inexplicable details regarding how much more the patient had to pay—10 percent of one set of charges, 50 [...]
Congress was onto something when they named COBRA healthcare after one of the most iconic poisonous snakes on earth—not to mention the terrorist bunch of bad guys on the old “GI Joe” cartoons. (Yo Joe!)
