60 Minutes on Sunday ran an eye-raising exposé of the health law’s many shortcomings — or as correspondent Lesley Stahl called the segment, “What Obamacare Doesn’t Do.”
Unfortunately, when it came to telling a complete story about the Affordable Care Act, there was a lot that 60 Minutes itself didn’t do.
That’s too bad, because the incredibly popular and venerable news magazine is a force for steering national conversation. And 60 Minutes acknowledged that the ACA has accomplished some good, like help 10 million uninsured Americans get access to care.
Here were six of my biggest sticking points with 60 Minutes — and an argument for how they could’ve presented them instead.
Too many issues, not enough time made for muddled storytelling.
Rather than dwell on positives like the nation’s historically low uninsured rate, 60 Minutes made the decision to focus on one author who thinks that Obamacare is an “outrage”: Steven Brill, a lawyer who’s written a book called “America’s Bitter Pill,” which traces the creation of the Affordable Care Act.
That’s a fair decision, because Brill does have useful insights to offer. His well-written book attacks the perverse incentives in the U.S. health care system, and tries to figure out why prices are so darn high. And like experts who eagerly anticipated Sunday’s episode, I believe it’s always useful to shine a spotlight on health care’s inherent problems.
But the story that 60 Minutes chose to tell was misleading. The program didn’t offer context for Brill’s arguments, or touch on the ways that the Affordable Care Act is working. Just like Brill’s other interviews and articles, it again confused the important nuance of hospital charges versus hospital costs.
And Stahl jammed in so many other hot-button issues — from hospital executive compensation to how drug prices are negotiated and even why some American patients have to pay full “charges” — that her 13-minute segment was ultimately all over the place.
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