The Brawler nearly spat out his Irish coffee Sunday morning (yeah, getting to this a bit late) when he read this headline in the MJS:
Health plan is market driven
Assembly GOP looks to consumer choice, tax-free accounts
The Brawler read on: a lot of talk about the AssGOP's love of free markets, a little about HSAs, something about how the Assembly GOP's approach contrasts with that of the Senate Dems.
And then -- after the jump -- he reached the 8th paragraph. Journalists are supposed to communicate information and premises of a story quickly to their busy readers. In other words, you don't wait until the 8th paragraph if you have an important point to make because you will have lost many of your readers by then.
So what did this 8th paragraph say? This:
Proponents of health savings accounts acknowledge that they will do little to make health insurance more affordable for low-wage workers and people with pre-existing medical conditions.
Dude, if the AssGOP's latest tax shelter plan does little to make health insurance affordable to "low wage workers" (and JS, please define the wage level of a "low-wage worker" high up as no one self-identifies as a "low-wage worker") or people with pre-existing medical conditions, it's not a plan.
Moreover, if transparency in pricing is crucial to "consumer choice" and there is no transparency in pricing -- and the AssGOP is not proposing legislation to effect transparency in prcing -- then the AssGOP does not have a plan.
Kitty Rhoades, with a sense of historical inevitability that would make a hawker of the Daily Worker proud, may say hospitals will make prices public when enough consumers demand it. But that don't make it so.
The Senate Dems have a health plan. It's called Healthy Wisconsin -- and the Journal Sentinel has had no problem tarring it as "radical" or suggesting it's a dramatic break with the state's legislative history.
The RPW, on the other hand, has some proposals that don't amount to bandaids. The purposoe the the Assembly GOP's sloganeering -- marketconsumerchoice -- isn't to fix gaps or weaknesses in health insurance. It's to give the appearance of addressing the problems of health insurance. And, of course, to attack the Dems.
There's plenty in the JS story that exposes the weaknesses of VukmirCare -- how it won't help a lot of people, how the GOP's rhetoric is overblown, how there is no transparency in prices and some problems with HSAs. One wishes the reporters and editors were more upfront -- i.e., not waiting until the 8th paragraph and deeper in the jump -- in sharing this information with, and shaping the real story for, their readers.
By playing "fair and balanced' and pretending that the Assembly Republicans have a plan, the JS is providing a service to someone. Just not its readers.
(Update: Some passages rewritten from original post for greater narrative power and sweep)