"Media Matters: Dragging down the health care debate"

[TomCADem]

The interesting thing about media coverage over the health care debate is that there is very, very little coverage of the areas that most folks in favor of health care reform agree on. For example, the coverage of pre-existing conditions or providing subsidies to lower income households to purchase health care coverage.

http://mediamatters.org/columns/200912180038

Rush Limbaugh smeared health care reform supporters as "mentally disturbed" before announcing: "People are going to die prematurely with the government in charge of all this." He called Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) "stupid," "ignorant," and "uninformed" for saying she wants to see a health reform bill pass, and said her "ignorance" was born of a failure to recognize that "people are going to be dying." Limbaugh stridently defended the insurance companies' prerogative to deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions, was outraged that the bill would extend coverage to victims of domestic violence, and advocated "shutting down the government" to prevent its passage.

Glenn Beck theorized that the health care reform bill is purposefully unconstitutional, and that Democrats are ramming it through Congress to set up some sort of framework in which Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is the most powerful person in the country. Rather than bemoan the bill's allowance for victims of domestic violence, Beck compared the bill itself to an abusive spouse. He also offered a rousing defense of those tea partiers who protest health care reform by holding signs comparing President Obama to Hitler and the Nazis.

Speaking of tea partiers, they were at it again this week, holding poorly attended anti-health reform rallies at the Capitol and were cheered on, once again, by Fox News. On the December 15 Fox & Friends, "blind ideologue" Laura Ingraham hyped an Americans for Prosperity-sponsored "Code Red" rally against the "government takeover" of health care. When the rally actually got started, Fox News gave it some fawning live coverage augmented with RNC talking points about how great the tea partiers are for the Republican brand.

Fox Nation gave some love to the "Tea Party 'Die-In' " -- an event where tea partiers would storm the Capitol and pretend to die as a consequence of being denied health care by the government. As David Weigel of The Washington Independent reported, the event itself died a very real death.