The mainstream media deserves credit for its coverage of the ObamaCare launch debacle. Even throughout the 16-day government shutdown, media coverage of the faulty ObamaCare website was brutally accurate. An area of media coverage, though, that has been as awful as the coverage of the tech problems has been good, is when it comes to telling the stories of the legions of ObamaCare victims — those everyday Americans facing premium increases and losing their insurance, doctors, jobs, and hours.
Our friends over at TruthRevolt.org did a study that perfectly confirms what I am seeing across many media platforms: that in all of the major media outlets, only three ObamaCare victim stories were told between October 1 and October 16. During this same time, however, the Washington Post alone carried 220 shutdown victim stories.
The media are usually pretty big on victims, but only certain types of victims — victims that further the cause of big government and the Democrat agenda. For example, during the government shutdown, immediately, everyone from furloughed federal workers to inconvenienced tourists to children in need of cancer treatments could be seen across every cable channel and newspaper. And those are legitimate stories. No one is arguing that. But where are the ObamaCare victims, whom I promise you are much easier to find than ObamaCare enrollees?
If you want to give some in media the biggest benefit of the doubt possible, the best you can say is that, unlike furloughed federal workers (who will get paid for their two weeks off), the media’s elite Gang of 500 –who dictate the nation’s media conversation — just don’t care about those they cannot relate to or see.
When your only world is the fairly wealthy Manhattan/DC corridor, how will you ever meet the family of four who just saw their premiums jump $4000 a year; the worker who lost his health insurance after his hours were cut to 29 per week; the untold thousands who had their insurance cancelled because it didn’t meet the ObamaCare Cadillac-coverage minimums — which means more expensive premiums and possibly losing your doctor under the new plan.
Bureaucrats, Capitol Hill elevator operators, and members of the White House staff are part of the media’s everyday existence. So the media empathize with them during a shutdown, which is all well and good. But this same media has absolutely no contact with the small business owner in Ohio with 67 employees, who is now faced with the decision of laying off 18, or being pummeled with the cost of insuring all 67 or the $134,000 annual fine for not doing so.
Again, that explanation gives the media the most generous benefit of the doubt one can. Another less generous explanation is that the media see the victims of ObamaCare as inconvenient to their political agenda — which is to protect the power and growth of the federal government and Barack Obama’s only major achievement as president.
The media certainly understand better than anyone the power The Victim can have in our nation’s politics.
We see the Newtown families because their story advances gun control, and we see the uninsured because their story advances ObamaCare. But the legions of everyday ObamaCare victims — many among the working poor — serve only to put a very real face on the disastrous consequence of a dream the left have wanted for generations: universal health coverage. These victims the Gang of 500 do not want us to see.
Poll after poll shows that over 70% of pre-ObamaCare Americans were happy with their health care. The goal of ObamaCare is to insure seven million. In other words, to serve seven million, Obama exploded a health care system that satisfied a couple hundred million.
And that is something else to which the Gang of 500 can not relate. Because they have worked hard, most of the 500 are wealthy and work for even wealthier conglomerates. This means that they have no idea what the impact of a $350 a month premium increase has on the average family — especially in year five of a no-growth economy. Nor do the Gang of 500 have any idea what the impact is to your standard of living when your employer cuts your hours as a way to avoid paying a hefty ObamaCare fine for employing a full-time worker.
It is easy for the media to cover the ObamaCare launch issues because eventually those will be fixed. And the media desperately want the site fixed because they desperately want ObamaCare to succeed. What can’t be fixed, and what will only get worse, is the economic chaos ObamaCare is raining down on millions.
And by the day, it is becoming more and more obvious that the media only see those ObamaCare victims as collateral damage to The Cause.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC