Friday, May 9, 2008
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Colbert health care story
I went back to The Colbert Report website to see if there had been any health care stories in the past couple of weeks, and there was one from April 1 (the only health care policy story on The Colbert Report that I've found since we started this blog).
Colbert made a joke about the difference in Clinton and Obama's health plans, saying that "Hillary mandates insurance for all Americans, while Barack has an angry black preacher," referencing the large amount of media coverage that the Reverend Wright comments received. Then he discussed Oregon's new health care system that uses a lottery system to decide who is covered. His very sarcastic tone makes the viewer realize that he thinks that a lottery is a very bad idea for making decision about health care. This piece is funny and interesting. It is relevant because it is a new idea (although in Colbert's opinion, a bad one) for a health care system that is broken throughout the country.
Colbert made a joke about the difference in Clinton and Obama's health plans, saying that "Hillary mandates insurance for all Americans, while Barack has an angry black preacher," referencing the large amount of media coverage that the Reverend Wright comments received. Then he discussed Oregon's new health care system that uses a lottery system to decide who is covered. His very sarcastic tone makes the viewer realize that he thinks that a lottery is a very bad idea for making decision about health care. This piece is funny and interesting. It is relevant because it is a new idea (although in Colbert's opinion, a bad one) for a health care system that is broken throughout the country.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
McCain Health Care
On April 29th, 2008, NPR's "All Things Considered" discusses John McCain's health care plan.
The 5 min. segment begins with Scott Horsley stating the facts that McCain and the Democrats agree on which is the state of rising health care costs and the urgency of a new health care plan. He then begins anaylizing McCain's plan with quick clips of McCain describing his plan. He compares his plan to those of Clinton and Obama. Horsley then interviews a Harvard Business School Professor and her agreement with McCain's plan. She describes it as a great consumer driven health care movement. Then Horsely interviews an MIT economist who states the plan is not good for older, poorer and sicker people. I enjoyed how this segment ended by comparing health care to cancer. "There are a few breakthroughs in cancer research, just a lot of hard work. The same apparently goes for fixing the nations health care system."
I thought this segment did a great job of trying to fit as much information as possible in a short amount of time. It covered as much as it could about McCain's new plan although most of it did tilt to a disagreement with it. The two experts in the segment did a great analysis of the plans and it was very balanced from my perspective. I feel that NPR remains very balanced on presenting their issues. They did not side with a particular candidate but rather determined that even with all the options of the candidates plans, improving the health care system is a large task to take on. This is a different perspective than the usual "horserace" that is portrayed in the media with health care.
Link: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90041706
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