Krugman: Why the Real Story About Obamacare Is Not Being Told

Photo Credit: via youtube

Janet Allon

Paul Krugman proposes an interesting theory in today’s column about why the success of Obamacare is a story that is mostly being ignored by the media, and therefore kept from the American public. In fact, he suspects the mainstream news media does not even know how successful the Affordable Care Act is proving to be. Not that there is any excuse for that ignorance. How do they manage to stay so ignorant? Krugman thinks it may be because many of the people who work in media–especially the pundit class–are well enough off that they don’t need Obamacare, and these media elites seldom cover poor people or even talk to them much.

So, no excuses really. Why has the media been able to get away with getting the health reform story so wrong?

Photo Credit: via youtube
Photo Credit: via youtube

“Think relentless negativity without accountability,” Krugman writes:

The Affordable Care Act has faced nonstop attacks from partisans and right-wing media, with mainstream news also tending to harp on the act’s troubles. Many of the attacks have involved predictions of disaster, none of which have come true. But absence of disaster doesn’t make a compelling headline, and the people who falsely predicted doom just keep coming back with dire new warnings.

Consider, in particular, the impact of Obamacare on the number of Americans without health insurance. The initial debacle of the federal website produced much glee on the right and many negative reports from the mainstream press as well; at the beginning of 2014, many reports confidently asserted that first-year enrollments would fall far short of White House projections.

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