Yesterday Jed Lewison wrote about the
disastrously bad analysis PolitiFact used to debunk a DCCC ad the asserts Republicans voted to "end Medicare" when they voted for Rep. Paul Ryan's budget plan. Which, does indeed end Medicare as the country has known it for nearly half a century.
PolitiFact appears to be resting its entire case on a severe case of parsing and the fact that the GOP proposal wouldn't change Medicare's name. Still, even PolitiFact acknowledges that the GOP plan would fundamentally change what Medicare does, replacing it with subsidized private insurance administered by the Office of Personnel Management, a completely different agency than currently runs Medicare.
According to their logic, if the FBI were replaced with a voucher program wherein citizens would receive subsidies for hiring private investigators to look into criminal activity, but the agency running the voucher program were still called the FBI, it would be unfair to say that the FBI had been ended. I guess it's their right to make that argument, but it's transparently absurd.
Today, Columbia Journalism Review weighs in on the controversy, and unfortunately parses to much the same extent PolitiFact did. Josh Marshall responds:
As I said in the first case, knowing how Medicare works, it's history and how its replacement would work is really key to be being able to do this kind of analysis. And the establishment, disinterested mode of deprecating definitive statements and trying to split every difference is a really a liability in these cases, not an advantage....
Did Republicans vote to 'end Medicare'?
Err, not really. As already mentioned, Republicans did not, as the ad suggests, vote to end Medicare. Rather, they voted—in the lower house—for a plan that would change Medicare, were it to reach the president's desk and be signed into law. Which it won't. The ad mentions none of this, instead leaving its bold claim hanging like a piñata for PolitiFact's batsmen.
'End Medicare' is the heart of the question. And as I've already repeatedly noted, ending a program that functions in one way (single-payer guaranteed medical insurance regardless of health status) with one that works in a fundamentally different manner (provide limited subsidies for private insurance which would quite possibly not exist for many seniors) and doesn't provide anything like the same service by any definition counts as 'ending' the program regardless of whether you give the latter program the same label. But look at the reasoning in the excerpt. One of the reasons the claim isn't 'true' apparently is because only the House voted for it so far, not the Senate. And the President would still have to sign it. And he probably won't. So since it likely won't become law in this Congress, House Republicans aren't even really voting to do it.
By that standard, Bernie Sanders doesn't really support single-payer because it's never going to become law.
It's discouraging to see CJR go the route of he said, she said "establishment, disinterested" analysis. Contributing editor Trudy Lieberman, has done some of the best work scrutinizing the media on Social Security and debunking some of the worst of the disinformation. But on this one, assistant editor Joel Meares is definitely erring on the side of "serious" journalism, and missing the really radical nature of the Republican's effort.
And yes, they really do want to end Medicare. Have for a very long time. Last week's vote was the culmination of years of plotting against the program, along with all the other social insurance programs the New Deal and Great Society brought. Not recognizing that basic organizing principle of the modern-day GOP is doing a disservice to journalism.