Why Is the AP So Pessimistic on Health Care?

I try not to play media critic because, frankly, a lot of people do it much better and with more panache than I do.  But after reading through an AP article on health care which seemed to treat the proverbial molehill as a mountain – and a mountain that could potentially squash reform efforts at that – I’m compelled to ask, “What’s wrong, AP?  Do you need a hug today?”

Let’s take today’s AP report on the newly-announced deal with hospitals.  It has the headline, “White House, hospitals reach deal on health care,” but you could be forgiven for thinking the article isn’t really about the deal.  After a killer quote from Joe Biden about the inevitability of reform, the actual discussion of the deal is saved for paragraph 13.  That’s not a typo, folks.  You can have to go to paragraph 13, where the deal is discussed as, “the one bright spot right now for Obama.”

I’m sorry, what?

I can think of a number of bright-spots just in the past week:  the fact that all committees with jurisdiction are working within the same broad parameters, which track rather closely with the health care plan that Obama ran on;  the most excellent score from the Congressional Budget Office on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee which helps make the argument that health care reform needs both the controversial employer mandate and public health insurance option to work effectively;  Wal-Mart stepping up and becoming an advocate for the employer mandate;  an analysis from the same CBO that the House bill would save $500 billion in Medicare alone;  and, of course, Al Franken being seated giving the Democrats the magic number of 60 – enough to pass health care with zero Republican votes, if needs be and if they can keep the more moderate Democrats from straying.

“The one bright spot,” AP?  And what are these dark spots that you fill 9 of the first 12 paragraphs with?    That the tax on employer-provided benefits – which Obama never supported, which he ran quite effectively against during the campaign, and which he continues to publicly say is not the way he would like to go – is proving unpopular.  This is the same tax increase that was only ever popular with those who supported the Wyden-Bennett Healthy Americans Act (note:  not currently under consideration), with Republican Sen. Grassley, and with Sen. Max Baucus, who seemed semi-obsessed with it.  This is the same tax increase that many leaders in the House, including Rep. Charles Rangel, Chair of Ways and Means and one of the representatives writing the bill, adamantly opposes -- and has for months.

So the fact that a payment model that Obama never embraced may also not be embraced by the only people who wanted it means the sky is falling?  And, moreover, overshadows a deal with hospitals to fund $155 billion of health care reform that Obama did want to have help pay for health care?

So says the AP -- which means it should solidified conventional wisdom by dinnertime and worked into Rep. John Boehner's talking points by morning.  Nice one, guys.

(Photo credit:  wai.ti on Flickr.)