We’ve been scanning the headlines for even a hint of media outrage and we’re coming up empty.
Where’s the headline complaining: “Democrats propose cutting Medicare, seniors to see decreased access to health care”?
We know the media aren’t unaware that Medicare cuts can hurt seniors, because they have always complained loudly—until this time.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-NY) says he expects to find $1 trillion for health care reform, in part by cutting Medicare by $400 billion. President Obama has indicated that he too wants to cut Medicare.
So why aren’t the media asking whether such deep cuts will hurt seniors? They certainly picked up on the issue back in 1995, when then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich proposed slowing Medicare’s rate of growth. Not “cutting” Medicare, mind you, just slowing its growth rate.
And yet Democrats went on the attack accusing Gingrich and the Republicans of “cutting Medicare,” which they claimed would have a devastating impact on seniors. The media joined the chorus, and within a few weeks the public was convinced. Of course, the public never even heard the cutting-the-rate-of-growth message. Just “cutting Medicare.”
Or consider that when President George W. Bush made his ill-fated push for Social Security reform. Instead of focusing on personal accounts, Bush said there might need to be some benefits reductions.
Well, that was all it took for Democrats, loudly seconded by the media, to claim Bush would hurt seniors by cutting benefits. Within a few months, the president’s Social Security reform efforts were dead.
Now Democrats propose the most drastic cuts in Medicare since its inception—$400 billion, give or take—in part by reducing the government-dictated reimbursement levels (i.e., price controls), yet the media appear oblivious to any potential impact.
Many people claim that the mainstream media are in a swoon over the president and his agenda. And the fact that the media have completely ignored the impact such huge Medicare cuts would have on seniors—in essence, giving the Democrats a pass they never gave Republicans—is making it harder and harder to reject that view.