I was hoping that The New York Times would do a better job than other news outlets at covering the issue of people losing health insurance coverage. I was mistaken. Today’s paper has a story about three people who lost coverage. The reporters could easily have followed up to find out what options those people do have. The reporters could have mentioned what the people failed to do or why two of these people had problems. But the reporters didn’t bother.
More below the mighty squiggle.
Here’s how the story starts:
Charles Nance, Dean Wright and Julie Tyrrell are getting dropped — forced out of their existing health insurance plans — and landing smack in the middle of the uproar over President Obama’s health care law. One expects to pay more. One expects to pay less. And one is just trying to figure it all out.
Let’s look at these people in the order just listed above. “Mr. Nance, 57, a home inspector in suburban St. Louis,” is the one who is seeing his family’s insurance cost go up. This is happening because “Their insurance company offered an alternative that would cost twice as much.” The story goes on to say, “He said he does not qualify for federal subsidies, and has had difficulty signing onto the online marketplace to evaluate his options.” Did he try using a telephone to “evaluate his options”? Evidently not, and the reporters did not try to find out what options he really has.
Now for the one who pays less. The story says that Mr. Wright found out he will actually save about $100 a month on the replacement plan that he found on his state’s insurance exchange. No surprise here.
Finally, let’s look at the one who “is just trying to figure it all out”:
…Ms. Tyrrell is still trying to navigate the new landscape. Her existing plan will be dropped next year, she said, and her insurance company is raising prices by nearly 18 percent. But she is unsure if she qualifies for federal subsidies because she has had trouble logging on to the problem-plagued government website, HealthCare.gov. “There’s so little information now,” said Ms. Tyrrell, 54, a freelance writer in Phoenix.
Again, we have someone who seems to be unaware of the option of using the telephone. Again, the reporters didn’t bother to mention that this is an option. In fact, the word “telephone” does not appear anywhere in the article.
The article also fails to note that Mr. Wright (the one who found a cheaper plan on the exchange) lives in Washington, one of the states that implemented its own exchange and therefore made it easy for people to find insurance. You will probably not be surprised to learn that the other two people in this story live in states (Arizona and Missouri) that have no state-based exchanges. The reporters don’t bother to point out that the differing actions of the states might account for much of the difference in the experiences of the people profiled in the article.
It’s a fundamental principle of journalism to answer the Five Ws, one of which is “Why?” In this case, the question is “Why are these people unable to find cheaper insurance?” The reporters don’t bother to ask this question beyond the implication that the federal exchange is the only way to explore options.