ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how the changes in the presidency and the media over time have affected the president's ability to frame his health-care proposals in the news. It focuses at how Democratic presidents separated by over 40 years worked to overcome some of the most harshly critical framings opponents applied to their health-care plans and how the news media of their time covered those frames. Meanwhile, Kennedy and Johnson, although dealing with a narrower, manageable news media structure pre-Internet and cable television, had a much more difficult time getting news content to echo their challenges to the Medicare as socialized medicine frame. In addition to raising the age-old specter of socialized medicine, Republicans and conservative groups that stood against the plan that would become the Affordable Care Act developed new lines of fear-inducing attacks, including framing end-of-life care provisions as government administered "death panels".
