CNN's Yellin failed to identify CPR chairman as ex-CEO of scandal-plagued hospital firm
SUMMARY: CNN's Jessica Yellin identified Conservatives for Patients' Rights chairman Richard Scott as someone who "runs urgent-care clinics" and the leader of "a media campaign to limit government's role in the health-care system." But Yellin did not note that Scott resigned as chairman of the nation's largest for-profit health-care company in 1997 amid a federal investigation into the company's Medicare billing, physician recruiting, and home-care practices.
During a report on health-care legislation interest groups on the March 5 edition of CNN's The Situation Room, national political correspondent Jessica Yellin identified Conservatives for Patients' Rights (CPR) chairman Richard Scott as someone who "runs urgent-care clinics" and as the leader of "a media campaign to limit government's role in the health-care system," but did not note his prior position as CEO of a scandal-plagued hospital firm. As Media Matters for America has repeatedly documented, a July 26, 1997, Los Angeles Times article reported that Scott resigned "as chairman of Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp. amid a massive federal investigation into the Medicare billing, physician recruiting and home-care practices of the nation's largest for-profit health care company." According to a December 18, 2002, Justice Department press release describing a tentative settlement with HCA to resolve civil litigation, "When added to the prior civil and criminal settlements reached in 2000, this settlement would bring the government's total recoveries from HCA to approximately $1.7 billion."
Media Matters has previously noted that The Washington Post and Fox News correspondent Molly Henneberg have reported on Scott's role with CPR without noting his prior role with HCA, while Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer interviewed Scott without doing so.
From the March 5 edition of CNN's The Situation Room:
YELLIN: President Obama says that he's learned from the mistakes of the Clinton years. He's not going to present a health care reform plan to Congress, but instead will collaborate with members to craft legislation together. So it's no surprise that outside groups are now drawing battle plans to shape that outcome.
[begin video clip]
YELLIN: President Obama knows a fight is coming.
OBAMA: We won't always see eye to eye. We may disagree, and disagree strongly, about particular measures.
YELLIN: Outside groups are gearing up to influence those measures, prepared to spend more than $55 million influencing just what reform will look like. On the right, a media campaign to limit government's role in the health-care system. The group's chairman runs urgent-care clinics.
SCOTT: The free market works. It's always worked. The things that don't work is more government involvement.
YELLIN: He's committed $5 million of his own money and hopes to raise another $15 million for ads like this.
SCOTT [ad clip]: Let's remind the politicians Americans know what works. Choice: that means choosing your own doctor.
YELLIN: On the left, a number of coalitions have formed in anticipation of health-care industry resistance.
ETHAN ROME (Health Care for America Now): And the insurance industry, the drug companies, are lining up to oppose reform. And our job is to win reform and to make sure that it doesn't get watered down.
YELLIN: His group wants to expand coverage to the uninsured and widen patient protections. It plans to spend $35 million on ads similar to this one, run against John McCain during the campaign.
ADVERTISEMENT: Under John McCain's health-care plan, 20 million people could lose their insurance at work. I could be one of them.
YELLIN: In all of this, the devil is in the details.
I hate to say it, but this battle is most likely lost already. The Corporations riding on the Healthcare Gravy Train are lining up to do the same thing to Obama's healthcare reform that they did to Hillary's. Boss Hog Limbaugh is fine tuning his propaganda points as we speak, and the Republitoads are blitzing the talk shows with their horror stories about "socialized medicine".
In the end, their expensive PR campaign only provides cover...they only have to bribe a couple of Democratic Senators to finish it off.... I'm sure the money is already in their Swiss Bank Accounts.
You are absolutely correct, Nerz. There is too much money at stake for the greedy bastards in the health care industry. They want things to remain exactly as they are. What kills me is that if there are problems (horror stories) from other programs this is the opportunity to go to school on those and design a program to alleviate the problems that other countries may have experienced. At any rate, I fear that we are seeing the beginning of a full blitz by the health care industry to scare the public...and if they are successful then, once again, nothing will change. Sad...
Hopefully, this time it will be different. Unemployment just hit 8.1 %. Foreclosures and the percentage of American's close to the abyss is increasing as well.
Maybe I'm just being naive, but I hope that since so many of us are in dire circumstances, right wing economic nonsense is a luxury that few of us can afford.
I'd like to believe that, but as has been evidenced here so often there are people out there who would rather shoot themselves in the foot than support a plan that their party masters dictate for them. And the fact that these lobbyists are still buying them off left and right just goes to show you what a miserable failure McCain's lobbist reform really is.
Or people following their principles and moral beliefs.
Your principles were sold out long ago. Conservatives used to hold materialism and consumerism in the highest contempt, now it's your highest aim.
Nobody wants your conservative ideology that attaches a price to every aspect of their life.
How is it moral to pay an entire wing of your health insurance company to find ways around providing the services that the company is supposedly in business to provide? How is it moral to only be as healthy as you can afford? If accumulating money is your greatest moral value, then sure, profit over people advocates are acting morally. Otherwise, your just standing, again, in the path of progress. But we will drag you kicking and screaming, again, into the future.
So, tell me POV, for those that cannot afford health insurance, we should just brush them aside to die? Our strength as a nation rests on how well we take of those less fortunate. If your sole aim is to gather the most toys/$$, then you are a very sad individual and a disgrace to the human race.
What's that got to do with the lunatic-fringe likes of you or any other gop, little fella? Stay on topic.
I hope you're right, WK. I think public support is going to be a very important factoe in the success or failure of fixing our health care system. At this point, the people who stand to lose money are getting their self-serving message out, and have been for years.I've met too many people who don't have adequate coverage (or who have none at all) who have already been fooled into being terrified of a "European style socialist health care system".
The anti-Clinton sales job was so good that just by identifying the plan as the Clinton plan it was the worst of 4 plans in a study while the best was the same plan without being called the Clinton plan. This was a poll.
Col. and worrierking, i believe you are both right. as painful as this siituation is. it may prove to be good
its like a phoenix immolating itself and then rising new from its ashes.
It will be different this time. Hillary's approach was flawed, she didn't make a moral argument for her efforts, the country was still in the grips of corporate authoritarian tropes about government and Republicans ruled the day.
Not so anymore. We will have a public competitor in healthcare. We have a very persuasive president, who's not afraid to come to us for help, we have a Democratic majority in government and the prevailing view of most people has moved decidedly toward activist government. Add to this all the highly motivated, organized and disciplined grassroots campaigners working on this and we will, on healthcare, crush the the radical, profit over people, right-wing minority.
So stay positive about this, folks. We are in the overwhelming majority and we control the debate on this issue. Stay involved, keep pushing and we will be agents of change.
I think you are quite right, although time will be the true deciding factor. In 1993, we were still emotionally high from our Cold War victory, the triumph of the free-market.
Now of course I support the free market with regulation, but anything government-funded looked evil back then. And we also had a president who didn't win a majority of the popular vote (43%. Gotta hand it to Ross Perot, very successful independent candidate).
I think that all Obama needs to do is explain that if you like your current health plan, keep it. But like public schools, this will provide health care to those who can't afford it, funded through taxes. Just like the presence of public schools, you're not required to go to them if you can afford private schools (well hey, education isn't compulsory in this country). This optional public health plan will not be compulsory either.
"I hate to say it, but this battle is most likely lost already."
Sorry, Nerzog, but you are wrong on this. We will win.
So to be fair, each time Clinton is introduced as a former President, the reporter should also note that he was impeached??
We do not need to ever say a President who was not convicted at impeachment was impeached. However what we do need to say is that President Clinto left office with the ecomomy in good shape and a budget surpluse paying on the principle of the National Debt. This had not been done since Ike was President. Bush imeadiately stopped this and started running a defficit again. The right critisizes the left as tax and send when the right is either barrow and spend or spend and spend. At least the Left pays for there spending without having to increase the debt when that is what is responsable.
and when everything illegal W. perpitrated gets exposed, what will you call him then? president who should have been impeached?
Sure, as long as they note that you clowns failed to convict him and the alleged offense had nothing to do with his job as President.
What the hell. Knock yourselves out and remind everyone why we're in this fix in the first place and just whose criminal-cluelessness, corruption and incompetence put us here.
No need for Dems to spend money on advertising to inform the public if you're gonna dig your own grave free of charge, little fella.
That's very thoughtful of you. It's also great entertainment.
One way to stop the professional organizations out there from winning all the time is to get a solid continious flooding of every member of congres by his or her constituaints. Then if we get enough of this we ban professional lobiest and any gifts.
Do we see a pattern here. Mr. Scott apparently agrees to appear ONLY if they do not discuss his past criminal/legal problems. The fact that he was apprently able to get such an agreement is even more troubling. On the other hand, if none of the above happened, then these news agencies are either incompetent or idiots.