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For the third weekday out of the last six, Barack Obama leveraged his bully pulpit to make his push for healthcare legislation the Story of the Day. This time he did it by scheduling a primetime White House press conference, prompting both ABC and NBC to lead with their previews. CBS, too, led with a health-related story but it chose the 'flu instead. The National Institutes of Health called clinical trial volunteers for a vaccine against the H1N1 strain of influenza, the so-called Mexican swine 'flu.

Even though NBC decided to make Chuck Todd's preview from the White House its lead story, Todd spent most of his time explaining why the presser would not be so newsworthy. "The President has been long on cheerleading. He has also been repetitive," he complained. "On three key aspects of reform, the President has been vague about where he stands." Todd still does not know how revenues will be raised, whether the plan will mandate universal coverage or how the government-run scheme will work.

CBS had Wyatt Andrews file a Reality Check. If passed, the legislation will guarantee universal coverage by 2013, he asserted, yet he raised another pitfall not mentioned by NBC's Todd. Will the legislation cut healthcare costs? "The fact is that nothing on the table right now leads to savings the administration can prove." To save money, Andrews argued, doctors shall have to be "paid differently, not for every single test and procedure, but for healthier patients." Yet the draft legislation does not call for wholesale change, only for "a series of pilot programs."

CBS' Reality Check notwithstanding, both ABC's Jake Tapper and CBS' Chip Reid (no link) focused on cost cutting as the fresh focus of Obama's argument for the necessity of the legislation. Both quoted from the President's prepared remarks: "If we do not control these costs we will not be able to control our deficit." Obama's second talking point had been that both House and Senate come up with a bill before they go home for the August recess. This Week anchor George Stephanopoulos of ABC stated flatly: "It is not going to happen." He referred us to The Hill magazine's reporting from Sen Dick Durbin: "He counts the votes in the Senate. He has counted the votes."

ABC offered a sidebar feature on healthcare cost cutting in Laura Marquez' A Closer Look. She traveled to the corporate headquarters of the Safeway supermarket chain. The firm's healthcare costs have remained unchanged for the last four years compared with 40% inflation for most other employers. Safeway's formula for its 25,000 workforce is to measure four key indicators--weight, blood pressure, cholesterol and cigarette use. The lower the score, the less the worker pays to be covered.

Andrew Tyndall 7/24/09 10:52:24 pm

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