Health Care Reform Needs to go to Extreme Measures

With roughly 47 million uninsured Americans in 2006, the country doesn’t seem to be doing enough to retaliate against this insurmountable crisis. Moreover even though health care plays a large role in the main policy issues of the 2008 election, none of the candidates are proposing the drastic changes that are essential to the welfare of the American people.

Neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama’s plans contain the type of revolutionary change we as Americans need. First off, Barack Obama’s plan only includes mandatory health insurance for those under the age of 18, adults are given the choice to buy or decline. This is just not acceptable for a country of our stature in this day and age. Isn’t good health one of our basic rights? Doesn’t it fall under life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Second of all neither of their proposals addressed the outrageous cost of health insurance- an indispensable human liberty. The main solution to fund it is to renounce the Bush tax cuts. Also, Americans paying for health care are taxed in order to subsidize the poor. So basically this calls for a classic Robin Hood situation, not unfamiliar in the American government system. Instead the government needs to take the initiative and make the radical turn needed to re-invent the entire health care system.

We have many wonderful health care examples to look at. The majority of countries have a much better system than us. For example Canada spends only $3,165 per capita on health care, compared to over $7,000 per capita in the United States. (Source: Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services) Why can’t we learn from the numerous other countries that seem to have this thing down, instead of trying to come up with a system from scratch? If the wheel’s not broke don’t fix it. And if it is, well then give it up and get a new one.

All in all, I think Michael Moore is going in the right direction on America’s needs in health care. His proposal is this: 1) Every resident of the United States must have free, universal health care for life. 2) All health insurance companies must be abolished. 3) Pharmaceutical companies must be strictly regulated like a public utility. (Source: michaelmoore.com) Although, his plan may seem rather extreme to many people, we cannot accept anything less than what our surrounding countries have shown us is possible.

Lack of Primetime News Coverage Is Forewarning to Future of Media

My Commentary is based on the article "TV Networks Resort to the 'Crawl' Instead of Real News Coverage" written by Alessandra Stanley in the New York Times on March 5, 2008. This article is about how on Tuesday night primetime television did not showcase the election report of the Ohio and Texas primaries. Instead they left the political coverage up to the cable networks, and continued on with their less than notable scheduled television dramas. The article criticizes that the election report did not get the news coverage it deserved, and got shoved into the background.

I agree with the article’s criticism of the under covered election report. It’s interesting that despite MSNBC’s turnout of 8 million viewers of the Democratic debate last week (as the article states) the primetime shows remained, with only sparse coverage, including crawls. Why would high viewer rating not be a good enough reason? Perhaps primetime television does not feel journalistically liable to do so.

On another note, this compares to what Jon Stewart was saying about the theatrics of the media. Last Tuesday was not news with some entertainment (the primetime shows like “Jericho” and “Big Brother”), but pure entertainment with some secondarily significant news (the election report) sprinkled in. However this secondarily significant news could easily have been the make or break it point in this Democratic nomination, therefore quite possibly deciding America’s future president.

Referring back to Jon Stewart, while researching the topic I found an interesting article (The Daily Show is as substantive as the "real" news) comparing the substance of the Daily Show’s news coverage to traditional news programs. Researchers found the content to be very similar in substance, a quite frightening discovery. Something is wrong when the news media cannot seem to outdo a show on Comedy Central. The standard of journalism has clearly fallen off a cliff. I think it’s time for the viewers to take some of Jon Stewart’s advice to the media and “hold their feet to the fire.” News media has the responsibility to report the hard news necessary to produce an informed democracy of American citizens, and the citizens need to only accept the best.