Amy Menefee
Business And Media Website
ALEXANDRIA, VA - Journalists, politicians and pundits repeatedly claim approximately
"47 million Americans" lack health insurance. And they are wrong
each time, according to a new report from the Business & Media Institute.
The entire debate about health insurance has relied on the number as proof
that the U.S. health care system is failing. News stories, including those
by ABC's medical expert Tim Johnson and CBS "Evening News" correspondent
Katie Couric, have hyped the number of uninsured Americans, often claiming
it has reached 43-47 million. The claim has even gone as high as " nearly
50 million Americans without health insurance," according to Michael
Moore's film "SiCKO." The new analysis, released today by BMI, details
how those numbers are off by millions, yet the media rely on them to make
a case for socialized medicine.
For example, according to the U.S. Census Bureau:
· Of the more than 46.5 million people living in the United States
without health insurance, nearly 9.5 million are not citizens.
· 17 million of the uninsured population could reasonably afford health
insurance because they make more than $50,000 a year - substantially more
than the median U.S. household income of $46,326.
· The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 45 percent of those
uninsured get insurance in less than four months.
· A more realistic number for the chronically uninsured is between
8.2 million and 13.9 million, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
"The media continue to grossly mislead and misinform the American people
about health insurance in this country," said Dan Gainor, director of
the Media Research Center's Business & Media Institute. "They have
over-hyped the so-called 'crisis' when the facts clearly show that the number
of uninsured Americans is far smaller than journalists pretend. At the same
time, the media have been cheerleading for socialized medicine and embracing
Moore's one-sided attack against our health care system," he continued.
"The American people rejected Hillary-care and aren't interested in more
Big Government socialism, which has failed miserably across the globe,"
Gainor concluded.
Wednesday, Rush Limbaugh read from "Fire and Ice," a "great,
great story" by the MRC's Business & Media Institute, to evidence
the media's fickle bias on climate change over the last 100 years - from instilling
fear about an ice age to a global cooling crisis in the 1970's to today's
hysteria over global warming.
"It is a story in BusinessandMedia.org … written by R. Warren Anderson,
a research analyst, and Dan Gainor, he's a Boone Pickens Free Market Fellow.
These guys are think tank people. And they've done an analysis of the last
100 years of journalism on global warming … this puts the blame for all
of this hysteria on global warming exactly where it belongs, and that is the
media!" - Rush Limbaugh, July 18, 2007
The audio from Rush's show is available at: http://www.businessandmedia.org/webclips/2007/Limbaugh7-18-2007.mp3
The full transcript is online at http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_071807/content/01125110.guest.html
Dan Gainor is available to discuss "Fire and Ice" and the latest
bias in the media's pro-global warming crusade.
