ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses health care with reporters and editors of the Washington Post. The Washington Post—like most of the national media, both print and electronic—showed little or no interest in a sustained investigation into the need for health care reform. Major news outlets went out of their way to avoid mentioning the progressive alternative to the Clinton health care program: a Canadian-style single-payer reform, which would replace private insurance with tax-financed comprehensive universal coverage. A Congressional Budget Office analysis of 1992 health plans conservatively estimated that Cooper’s bill would leave 25 million Americans uninsured. The US market-based health insurance system is by far the most costly, bureaucratic, and complicated health care system in the world. Peer-reviewed research published by Himmelstein and Harvard Center codirector Dr. Steffie Woolhandler found that private US insurers spend 13 percent of every dollar for overhead, while Medicare and Medicaid combined average 3.5 percent overhead.
