I know better than to expect anything short of liberal bias on
60 Minutes. And I really know better that to expect
anything short of unabashed bias when a segment of the long-running
CBS show is being touted by the left-wing advocacy group Families
USA. Normally, I would have just ignored it.
Unfortunately, this time I couldn’t. On Wednesday I received the
following email from the group that thinks all things good in
health care come from the government:
On Sunday, April 1, 60 Minutes will run a
hard-hitting segment about the prescription drug lobby….Part of
the program is based on data from the Families USA
report, No Bargain: Medicare Drug Plans Deliver High
Prices. This report shows the huge differences between prices
secured by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) — which does
bargain for cheaper drug prices — and the much higher prices
charged by all the private drug plans in Medicare Part
D.
When that report was first released back in January, it didn’t take
long to find out how misleading it was. Shortly thereafter, the
think-tank I work for, the National Center for Public Policy
Research, issued a
press release pointing out how Families USA was
cooking the data:
As an example of the flawed nature of the Families USA
report, [David] Hogberg notes that the Medicare drug price data
used in the report to compare Medicare drug costs to the VA’s drug
costs come from only two counties — Montgomery County, Maryland
and Hamilton County, Ohio. Based on median household income, both
counties are above the national average. Montgomery County, for
instance, is the fourth-richest county in the nation. Since
wealthier areas, on average, tend to pay higher prices, Families
USA’s use of these counties as the source of their sample data all
but guarantees that the Medicare drug prices data in their study
will be exaggeratedly high….
“I trust that sensible members of Congress and the media will
dismiss this study for the nonsense that it is,” Hogberg said.
Apparently,
60 Minutes isn’t all that sensible. Not only
did the show’s researchers apparently miss our press release, but
they seemed to have no interest in the warnings that I sent them on
Thursday and Friday. I first called them on Thursday, leaving a
message on the show’s answering machine. A little later I sent an
email to
60 Minutes that explained the problems with the
Families USA report and concluded, “I want to emphasize that if you
use the report in your segment, in the interest of journalistic
objectivity you should have someone on the segment disputing its
findings.” On Friday I followed up with a fax, another phone call,
and another email.
It might have been more productive to beat my head against a
brick wall. The 60 Minutes report last night referred to
Families USA as a “non-partisan health care watchdog group.” The
liberal media increasingly uses the term “non-partisan” to obscure
the fact that a group has a left-wing agenda and mislead viewers
into believing that it is an objective organization.
Reporter Steve Kroft then stated, “Families USA reported in a
January study that Medicare patients are being charged nearly 60
percent more for the top twenty drugs than veterans pay under a
program run by the Veterans Administration.” Yet Montgomery County,
one of the two counties used in the study, had a median household
income more than 80 percent greater than the median income for all
of the U.S. Did Kroft note that? Of course not! He simply sucked up
to Ron Pollack of Families USA by lobbing him a softball: “And this
[the lower VA price] is because the VA negotiates with the drug
companies on price?” “That’s correct,” replied Pollack.
But the VA only negotiates the price of a drug after
the drug company has agreed to the VA’s price control. If a drug
company does not agree to sell its drug to the VA for 24% less than
the average commercial price, then the VA does not include the drug
on its formulary and, thus, VA patients do not have access to it.
Once the drug company has agreed to an initial price control, then
the VA tries to negotiate the price down further.
Finally, 60 Minutes misled viewers on the cost of the
Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit. Kroft noted, correctly, that in
2003 the Administration withheld from Congress an estimate that
over ten years the Drug Benefit would cost upwards of $500 billion.
What Kroft failed to inform viewers is that the Drug Benefit has so
far cost less than projections, and that part of the
savings has come from competition.
There is good reason not to expect quality reporting from
CBS. However, if we don’t demand higher standards from the
mainstream media, then its flacking for left-wing groups like
Families USA will continue. In that spirit, I encourage you to send
an email to 60 Minutes (60M@cbsnews.com) and request fair and
balanced reporting. In the meantime, 60 Minutes ought to
send Families USA a bill — for advertising.
David Hogberg is a senior analyst at the National Center for
Public Policy Research. He also hosts his own website, Health
Hog.
