NPR's Richard Knox evidently forgot to keep up with the happenings of the H1N1 flu vaccine before delivering his report Marketing Flu Vaccine: A Tough Sell For Many. Here is some impartiality for us:

The nation is in the midst of the largest mass vaccination campaign against flu in history, but about half the population is saying they are not interested.

Many have a sense that the vaccine was rushed to production, compromising safety. Some are convinced that it contains harmful chemicals.

Neither is right, federal officials say. But they are clearly worried about vaccine naysayers and skeptics.

Did you catch the "have a sense that the vaccine was rushed to production" line, as if this were simply a matter of fear mongering? Knox must not have read that the CDC approved emergency use of the vaccine in late October: FDA approves emergency use of new intravenous flu drug, peramivir. In case you don't know what "emergency use" means to the CDC, they define it on their website: Interim Questions and Answers About Emergency Use Authorization. Here is the first paragraph:

An Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) may be issued by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to allow either the use of an unapproved medical product or an unapproved use of an approved medical product during certain types of emergencies with specified agents.

It normally takes years for the CDC to approve any drug for use in the United States. The new swine flu (H1N1) pandemic occurred just this year, 2009. So there is good reason to "have a sense that the vaccine was rushed to production" because that is precisely what happened. But acknowledging this fact apparently makes us "naysayers and skeptics," which is another unbiased portrayal of the situation, of course.

I've not heard much concern about unsafe chemicals in the H1N1 vaccine so I question this news report about that aspect of the issue. But the general concerns over the vaccine's safety are being voiced for several reasons, not least of which is the fact that the drug was indeed rushed through the CDC's approval process via the Emergency Use Authorization.

Who are these federal officials Knox references for this report? They either don't know about the recent EUA or they do know and are lying about it. Why all the deception and this manipulative news story?

Please don't misunderstand, I don't oppose the use of vaccinations, but neither to I rabidly promote it. Richard Knox is clearly supporting the use of the H1N1 vaccine with this report, which seems consistent with the general massive media effort to promote health care "reform" legislation. It should be no surprise that even this rather uninteresting issue is being propagandized to further left wing efforts to achieve government run health care.

When Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) shouted "you lie" at President Obama during his speech to both houses of Congress it sparked a remarkable response, particularly from the news media.

Once again, NPR comes to the defense of the president, as long as the president is a Democrat (I challenge you to find news stories of NPR defending a Republican president). In the predictable selective concern over accuracy NPR's Scott Horsley investigates certain aspects of Representative Wilson's outburst in Examining Health Care And Illegal Immigrants Claim. Horsley tries to assure the listener President Obama was speaking the truth when he said illegal aliens would not be covered by the government run health care plan being proposed in the current reform legislation. This claim is just as true as the emergency funds Congress appropriated to help the victims of hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Do you remember the innumerable complaints about how a lack of oversight and enforcement led to rampant fraud of that aid money? It is the same situation all over again with the health care reform legislation and illegal immigrants. There is language in the House bill preventing illegal immigrants from benefiting from this government health care plan the president supports. But there is no enforcement or oversight making sure the plan is implemented the way the president told the nation it would be. As with the Katrina aid money, no enforcement of such protections means there is no protection. It is empty language if there is no oversight. We were pounded with this point over the fraudulent use of Katrina money, but now we are supposed to ignore the same problem with the health care bill?

Apparently Horsley didn't address the possibility that legislation crafting something for the Democrat agenda could be problematic or useless. John Hawkins interviewed Joe Wilson after the incident and published it in An Interview With Congressman Joe Wilson. Rep. Wilson said this about the issue:

So, as the President was going through the speech, when he got to the part about illegal aliens and he was saying they wouldn’t receive benefits, I knew better because I had been following the amendments of the Ways and Means Committee and also the Energy and Commerce Committee.

I serve on the other committee, Education and Labor, that has jurisdiction. I was looking at all of the amendments and I knew that the Democrats had defeated the enforcement amendments about illegal aliens and these would be the amendments that would provide for verification of citizenship. That’s the wording and I’ve actually read the 1,000 page bill. The references to the illegal aliens in the bill didn’t have any enforcement. It was simply fluff.

What Katrina showed us is that a lack of oversight on public money can hurt people, and just because language exists in a bill to accomplish something doesn't mean that language is worth diddly. Horsley was satisfied in mentioning only that the language forbidding illegal aliens from benefiting from the health care bill was actually there, and that the president was technically correct in what he said on the matter. The fact that such provision was pragmatically worthless simply isn't in this news report. You see, when the president is a Democrat we're supposed to admiringly take his word for it.

Horsley at least allows William Gheen to make a statement in the aired story in which the issue of a lack of enforcement is made. Gheen makes the point that we already have rules and laws supposedly preventing illegal immigrants from benefiting from government programs meant only for people who pay into the system that fail to distinguish between legal and illegal immigrants. But Horsley makes sure the listener is well informed by referencing a nameless government attempt a few years earlier to weed out illegals by requiring medicaid recipients to prove their citizenship. How are we to know "only a handful of illegal immigrants were discovered" or that "large numbers of citizens lost medicaid because they couldn't provide the necessary documents" ? It would be helpful of Mr. Horsley to provide his source, as it is rather troublesome to neglect this detail. Alas, Horsley makes no mention of the amendments that Democrats defeated which were designed to provide oversight on the issue of illegals benefiting from the government run health care program. If there is no enforcement in the legislation (as was the case with Katrina aid) what good is the language of the bill? But enough with actually thinking about the issue, as a loyal liberal Horsley makes sure to suggest the concerns about rewarding illegal immigrants with a government run health care system are just a political ploy designed to gin up opposition.

The president also says opponents of these particular convoluted health care bills before both houses of Congress want to maintain the status quo. Why did Horsley say nothing of this Obama lie? His report took the time to portray the illegal immigration issue as an empty political trick, surely there would be time enough to address another questionable claim in the president's speech. The vast majority of opponents of the so-called "reform" currently being debated actually do want substantial change in America's health care system. But that doesn't mean government control is the solution to the problem. I, for one, being opposed to the idea of government control of health care totally and completely support the idea of Health Savings Accounts. With HSAs the money follows individuals, rather than the government deciding where it goes. Jim Graham, Director of Health Care Studies at the Pacific Research Institute, mentions some good alternatives in The Best Health Care Plan You've Never Heard Of. Graham has this to say:

Washington is in the midst of yet another scandal -- but not the kind you'd read about in a gossip rag. Congressional dilettantes are willfully ignoring health-care reform ideas that would cut costs and provide high-quality care to all.

Sound nuts? It shouldn't. By refusing to even consider consumer-driven health care (CDHC), congressional leaders are proving that they're more interested in putting the government in charge of Americans' health care than in actually improving patient outcomes. Decades of evidence show that CDHC-style reforms can achieve the stated goal of would-be health reformers:
high-quality care at low cost.

All the reform plans under consideration in Congress fail to address the biggest problem with our health-care system: third parties, like insurance companies or the government, pay for just about everything. Consequently, Americans have no idea how much the medical services they consume cost.

And why exactly was Wilson's outburst a "shock to Congressional protocol" as Horsley says? Democrats felt free to heckle and even boo President Bush during his 2005 State of the Union address: Flashback: Democrats Boo Bush At 2005 State Of The Union. Is it because it was only one voice yelling above the rest, or the fact that the word "lie" was used? Or is it simply that this happened to a president who was a Democrat?

I will give NPR credit for actually questioning the president's financial numbers that the health care bill would not add "one dime to the deficit now or in the future. Period." as the president claimed. In the September 10 broadcast of Marketplace Tamara Keith asked some financial analysts about those numbers in Inspecting Obama's health care claims. Their verdict? Another technically true issue, if you're willing to wait 20 or 30 years. Of course, if it takes 30 years to even out, then the president's claims are not true for the "now" aspect, are they? If government bureaucrats can't get a handle on predictions 6 months from now why should we give them credit on economic forecasts of 3 decades in the future?

Truth - noun: the Democrat narrative

On August 28, 2009 NPR's Julie Rovner reported on a new angle for the health care debate - In Health Care Debate, Fear Trumps Logic. In yet another "you won't notice how partisan I am" moment Rovner's piece asserts the only reason to oppose the current health care reform legislation currently before Congress is because conservative groups are scaring you with lies. Part of the problem here is the vast majority of "fears" about this latest rendition of health care reform are well founded, even if she wouldn't admit it, something Rovner would know if she would take the time to actually read the bills.

If you listen to the mp3 file you'll notice Rovner mentions nothing what ever as to the contents of the bill, but she does blindly mention objections to the legislation have been widely "debunked." And what loyal reporter to the Democratic Party wouldn't mention the name of the current favorite scapegoat? Like the typical Obama supporting journalist Rovner is sure to mention Sarah Palin's "death panels" argument, as if it were merely rhetoric. Admittedly, the term "death panels" is inflammatory, but so are accusations that anyone who opposes the currently health care "reform" initiative is racist, stupid, un-American or what have you. We don't see NPR or any other main stream media outlet condemning that rhetoric, do we?

The American Thinker reports on a real life example of precisely what Sarah Palin was warning about. In Ethel Fenig's August 11 article 'Death Panels' in Oregon Fenig begins with this:

Perhaps former Governor Sarah Palin (R-Alaska) was referring to the tragic predicament of Barbara Wagner of Oregon when she wrote how she feared for the fate of her Down Syndrome son under "Obama's 'Death Panels.' "

Susan Donaldson James of ABC News reports on the letter Ms. Wagner received from the Oregon Health Plan in response to a $4000 a month drug her doctor prescribed after her lung cancer, long in remission, returned..

the insurance company refused to pay.

What the Oregon Health Plan did agree to cover, however, were drugs for a physician-assisted death. Those drugs would cost about $50.

Hmmmm, let's do the math. Yep, a one time prescription of $50 sure is cheaper than $4000 a month for who knows how many months to keep a 64 year old woman alive. So the Oregon "Death Panel" graciously offered suicide pills. Or doctor assisted murder.

Why shouldn't the American people interpret this situation as the reality of government death panels? And what is the anti-health care rhetoric that has been debunked? Is it that the death panels were not really in any Congressional bill? Well, no. What has been debunked in the notion that the term "death panels" appears in the language of any of the proposed bills. The provision that gave rise to the death panels label actually was part of the legislation, and the Senate made it known they eliminated such provision after Palin's label spread across the country. On August 14 the L.A. Times reported on the fact that this provision did in fact exist in the bill:

Senate committee scraps healthcare provision that gave rise to 'death panel' claims

In their L.A. Times piece, Christi Parsons and Andrew Zajac also try to persuade the reader that death panel claims are "widely discredited." But then there is this admission:

Recently, former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin speculated that Obama and other Democrats wanted to set up "death panels" to decide who gets medical services and who does not.

In reality, the provision was designed to allow Medicare to pay doctors who counsel patients about planning for end-of-life decisions. The consultations would be voluntary and would provide information about living wills, healthcare proxies, pain medication and hospice.

Did you catch that? "Doctors who counsel patients about planning for end-of-life decisions" will get payed to do this. President Obama recently asserted paying doctors to perform a specific task counted as incentive to do more of it when he said My plan might stop doctors from cutting off your foot. So why pay doctors to counsel patients on planning for end-of-life decisions if paying them to cut off your foot is such a bad idea? If a doctor is willing to needlessly cut off your foot why wouldn't they needlessly encourage you to consider doctor assisted suicide?

The Washington Post's Charles Lane noticed this problem as well. In his August 8th piece Undue Influence Lane says:

Section 1233, however, addresses compassionate goals in disconcerting proximity to fiscal ones. Supporters protest that they're just trying to facilitate choice -- even if patients opt for expensive life-prolonging care. I think they protest too much: If it's all about obviating suffering, emotional or physical, what's it doing in a measure to "bend the curve" on health-care costs?

Though not mandatory, as some on the right have claimed, the consultations envisioned in Section 1233 aren't quite "purely voluntary," as Rep. Sander M. Levin (D-Mich.) asserts. To me, "purely voluntary" means "not unless the patient requests one." Section 1233, however, lets doctors initiate the chat and gives them an incentive -- money -- to do so. Indeed, that's an incentive to insist.

Patients may refuse without penalty, but many will bow to white-coated authority. Once they're in the meeting, the bill does permit "formulation" of a plug-pulling order right then and there. So when Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) denies that Section 1233 would "place senior citizens in situations where they feel pressured to sign end-of-life directives that they would not otherwise sign," I don't think he's being realistic.

Opponents of this so-called reform use warnings, many time emotionally charged warnings. But why do so many in the main stream news media act as if these opponents never used reason and logic? "The opponents" of health care reform are not some monolithic organization as Rovner's story and selected sound bites suggest. As Barbara Wagner's story shows us such a thing is already happening. But her's is not the only example.

On August 18th the Wall Street Journal published The Death Book for Veterans by Jim Towey. You tell me if this sounds like death panels:

If President Obama wants to better understand why America's discomfort with end-of-life discussions threatens to derail his health-care reform, he might begin with his own Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). He will quickly discover how government bureaucrats are greasing the slippery slope that can start with cost containment but quickly become a systematic denial of care.

Last year, bureaucrats at the VA's National Center for Ethics in Health Care advocated a 52-page end-of-life planning document, "Your Life, Your Choices." It was first published in 1997 and later promoted as the VA's preferred living will throughout its vast network of hospitals and nursing homes. After the Bush White House took a look at how this document was treating complex health and moral issues, the VA suspended its use. Unfortunately, under President Obama, the VA has now resuscitated "Your Life, Your Choices."

Who is the primary author of this workbook? Dr. Robert Pearlman, chief of ethics evaluation for the center, a man who in 1996 advocated for physician-assisted suicide in Vacco v. Quill before the U.S. Supreme Court and is known for his support of health-care rationing.

"Your Life, Your Choices" presents end-of-life choices in a way aimed at steering users toward predetermined conclusions, much like a political "push poll." For example, a worksheet on page 21 lists various scenarios and asks users to then decide whether their own life would be "not worth living."

The idea of death panels applies both to a bureaucratic panel deciding who does and does not get the resources needed for adequate health care to continue living and it applies to government coercion into "helping" people choose to end their lives.

Getting back to Rovner's NPR story, "Fear is crowding out the truth, and the truth ought to count for something" says Jonathan Oberlander. The truth is that despite inflammatory rhetoric by many, opponents to the current health care reform initiative have good reason to worry about it. That's why Rovner and so many others in the main stream news media treat the Democrat narrative as the truth. Therefore any disagreement with the left wing narrative equals some nefarious and manufactured excuse to prevent change. Had Rovner been interested in impartial journalism she would recognize the fact that the vast majority of Americans all agree something needs to change regarding the current health care system. But government intrusion is often considered just as bad as the current health care situation. We don't want another instance of "the cure is worse than the disease."

The rationing of health care in a government run system is inevitable. Just this week we learned the government, under the administration of President Barack Obama, will cut Social Security payments.Why would they do that if there is plenty of money in the Social Security system? And what is the biggest problem in public education? It's a lack of funding, of course. Resources in both S.S. and in public education have to be rationed. Why wouldn't rationing occur in a government run health care system? But saying this out loud is just a scare tactic, right? Even NPR has uncovered another example of this rationing problem. Remember that government mandated health insurance scheme in Massachusetts?: Mass. Health Care Reform Reveals Doctor Shortage.

Democrats are pros at using scare tactics. Scaring senior citizens has only recently become distasteful, because the fear leads seniors to oppose a Democrat agenda. But when Democrats scare seniors into thinking Republicans might take away their medicare or their Social Security, as was frequently done in past national elections, well let's just say we don't see many news stories about distasteful scare tactics in those instances. And what about the biggest scare mongering charade on the political scene, global warming? How can anyone support the scare tactics used to justify the green movement but pontificate about the supposedly "cheap tactic" of legitimate warnings to Americans about government taking over health care?

The main stream news media is in the tank for Democrats. The Democrat narrative is treated as the truth. Critics of the Democrat narrative are accused of racism, being uncaring, cruel, un-American, and more - and I'm talking journalists publicly making or supporting such accusations. What we are NOT told by the news media about the health care bills in Congress can hurt us. It is clear so many in the media support this health care initiative - accompanied by the assertion there are no concerns with the legislation. There are legitimate concerns, and they won't be given a chance in a left-leaning news media.

Please write your Senators and Representatives and tell them to vote against the current health care legislation. If they vote for it, you'll know not to vote for them during the next election cycle.