Researchers analyze media’s cancer reporting
Filed under: Health journalism, Hot Health Headline
University of Pennsylvania researchers reviewed 436 cancer-related newspaper and magazine stories (about 1/5 of the total) published between 2005 and 2007 and found that media tend to overhype aggressive treatments and avoid failures, errors, end of life care and death. Here’s the abstract in Archives of Internal Medicine.
In the press release, the study’s highlights are summarized thus:
- Although 32 percent of the articles focused on survival, only 8 percent covered death and dying; this despite the fact that half of all cancer patients will die of their illness.
- While most stories discussed aggressive cancer treatments, almost none (2 percent) discussed end-of-life, palliative or hospice care.
- 13 percent reported that aggressive cancer treatments can fail, and just 30 percent reported that aggressive treatments can result in adverse effects.
The authors note that the media under-reports palliative and hospice care, as well as outcomes data and other issues surrounding death and dying.
The study notes that unrealistic optimism is presented in most stories about cancer treatment, when in reality half of all cancer patients do not survive, according to statistics from the American Cancer Society.
“The nation’s leading media institutions have set a low bar for routine coverage of the nation’s long-running war on cancer. Hype is the norm,” wrote medical author Merrill Goozner, MS, in a commentary accompanying the article. “The relationship between journalism and medical researchers has been called a complicit collaboration in which both benefit from sensationalized stories. Recent media cutbacks and the evolution of a hyper speed news cycle only made things worse.”
“The tendency of the news to report on aggressive cancer treatments and survival, but not on alternatives, is … noteworthy given that unrealistic information may mislead the public about the trade-offs between attempts at heroic cures and hospice care,” the authors of the study wrote.
High cost of foodborne illness broken down by state
The Make Our Food Safe coalition’s latest study provides a state-by-state breakdown of the cost of foodborne illness, both in absolute and per-capita terms. The report estimates that foodborne illnesses cost about $152 billion each year in America, with the cost being spread fairly evenly across the country.
Hawaii ($553) and Mississippi ($543) suffer the highest cost per capita, while Nevada ($450) and Utah ($448) bear the lightest per-capita load.
The report is the work of former FDA economist Robert L. Scharff, now a professor at Ohio State (bio). You can read the entire 27-page report in PDF form, scan the one-page summary or play with the accompanying interactive map and draw your own conclusions. You can also listen to an MP3 of the related media telebriefing.
Health care summit streaming live
President Barack Obama is hosting a bipartisan meeting to discuss health care reform. The meeting, from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. is being streamed live.
- Obama’s proposal
- Republican ideas included in Obama’s proposal
- Solutions to health care from the GOP
- Bipartisan meeting
Analysis reveals who hired health care lobbyists
Filed under: Government, Health care reform, Public records
The Center for Public Integrity has put together an interesting analysis and graph of what interests were lobbying on health care reform in Congress in 2009.
Information to create the chart is drawn from an analysis of Senate lobbying disclosure forms. The analysis found that “more than 1,750 companies and organizations hired about 4,525 lobbyists — eight for each member of Congress — to influence health reform bills in 2009.”
Trade, advocacy and professional organizations led the lobbying push, with hospitals, insurance companies and manufacturers behind them.
Some interesting tidbits:
- AARP deployed 56 in-house lobbyists and two from outside firms
- The U.S. Chamber of Commerce had 47 lobbyists, all but eight from outside firms
- The American Medical Association had 33, 11 from outside firms.
- Some unexpected organizations, including Americans for the Arts and the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions, also had lobbyists trying to influence health care legislation.
Reporters chronicle the death of a sugary drink tax
With a classic tale of powerful established interests, millions and millions of dollars and savvy lobbying, Chicago Tribune reporters Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger draw our attention to the news vacuum that has formed where debate over a sugary drink tax used to be. From its optimistic beginnings to its eventual slow strangulation, Hamburger and Geiger track the rise and fall of the push to tax sugary drinks in order to discourage poor dietary choices and help fund health care reform.
The reporters do a wonderful job of chronicling every lobbying pressure point pushed by the industry, from faux grassroots to industry alliances to muli-million-dollar advertising campaigns. Here’s a small sample of their overview:
The White House has dismissed the idea, however, even after President Barack Obama had expressed interest last summer. A key congressional committee, though initially seeming receptive, ended up refusing to consider it. Several minority advocacy groups, including some committed to fighting obesity, lined up against the tax after years of receiving financial support from the industry.
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Meanwhile, beverage lobbyists attacked several nutrition scientists, accusing them of bias and distorting available evidence. The beverage industry also financed research that reached conclusions favorable to its position.
(Hat tip to Audrea Huff of the Orlando Sentinel’s Fitness Center blog)
Academics: Media added to reform confusion
Filed under: Health care reform, Health data, Hot Health Headline, Member news
Health News Florida’s Carol Gentry talked to journalism professors at three major Florida universities about the effect of media coverage on public perception of health care reform. The trio suggested that the media muddied the issue by focusing coverage on the political horse-race aspects while neglecting to invest the time necessary to fully explain the proposed legislation’s finer details.
In a column for AHCJ, Trudy Lieberman, the organization’s immediate past president has discussed some of the same shortcomings of health reform coverage. The academics say this is nothing new – many of the same issues surfaced during Clinton’s health reform push in the early ’90s, but say today’s fragmented media environment and 24-hour news cycle have certainly exacerbated matters.
[Kim Walsh-Childers, University of Florida journalism professor] said many Americans get their information from talk radio or blogs, “which are far less likely to provide balanced, complete information than are traditional news outlets, especially newspapers.”
“Even those who read newspapers may be getting far more information about the political strategies (of) the various stakeholders … than they are about what those proposals actually would mean for the average family,” Walsh-Childers continued.
Walsh-Childers praised NPR and The New York Times for their more thoughtful reform coverage, and said layoffs of experienced health reporters had likely weakened coverage at many outlets.
Gentry also cited surveys conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation which found that peoples’ opinions of reform changed when they were better informed of the bills’ actual components.
Surveyors found that while a majority said they were opposed to the legislation, support grew markedly when survey participants found out the major parts of the plan.
Three-fourths became more favorable when they heard about tax credits for small businesses and two-thirds liked what they heard about health exchanges, constraints on health insurers and plugging the Medicare prescription-drug “doughnut hole.”
Related
More columns by Lieberman about coverage of health reform:
- Putting a human face on McCain, Obama health plans
- Look for opportunities to localize the debate on national health reform
- If candidates won’t focus on aging issues, journalists better
- Candidates’ health reform language needs closer scrutiny, definition
- Journalists must do better to inform, educate public
Health reform and the Supreme Court
Filed under: Government, Health care reform, Health data
Sarasota Health News‘ David Gulliver and Health News Florida’s Mary Jo Melone considered exactly how last Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling on campaign contributions by corporations would impact the health care lobby and the health reform debate. Their most interesting angle? That health care companies have already spent such gigantic sums of money on lobbying (more than $2.2 billion in 2008 and 2009) that the ruling won’t have the same impact on health as it will on other industries. In other words, the medical industry has already had the volume on the lobbying amp cranked to 10 for some time now, and it’s just not possible to ratchet it up any higher.
Gulliver and Melone on exactly what has changed in theory:
Until now, companies could not spend their own money directly on political advertising. They had to create political action committees, or a shadowy type of nonprofit known as a 527 organization. Then those groups could raise money from donors to pay for advertisements. For PACs, those donations are limited under federal law to $5000 per person per year.
In practice, the impact is less clear. Even under the previous system, those with money found ways to use it with impunity. It’ll be a more straightforward process now but, especially in health care, may not lead to huge changes in the money being spent. According to one school of thought, the biggest change will be in the use of explicit anti-candidate advertising threats as a metaphorical club during negotiations.
NOTE: It’s important to remember that, in a companion decision, the court upheld the transparency requirements that accompany these political donations. If you’re interested in tracking the changes in donations post-decision, head over to OpenSecrets.org, where they have a post explaining exactly how to use their tools to do so.
As for immediate impact, the reporters quote several experts who seem to think that unrestrained spending won’t transform the health care reform debate, partly because it’s already been so thoroughly transformed by other factors.
(Brad Ashwell of Florida Public Interest Research Group) said the legislative health-reform package pending in Congress is already “pretty moderate,” and it’s not likely to get more consumer-friendly now that business interests “can go straight to their treasuries.”
Even before the Supreme Court ruling, chances of helping Florida’s 3.8 million uninsured were looking increasingly sketchy, with a special-election loss that cost Democrats a crucial seat in the U.S. Senate this week. The only quick route to passage was for the House to accept the version of the legislative package that barely passed in the Senate on Christmas Eve, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced Thursday she doesn’t have the votes to pull it off.
How health reform lost popular support
Filed under: Government, Health care reform, Health policy
Kaiser Health News staff writers, including Jordan Rau, Mary Agnes Carey, Julie Appleby and Phil Galewitz, teamed up to figure out why Americans are so disenchanted with health care reform. After talking to an analyst who admitted that politicians “can do everything right and still fail in health reform,” the reporters set out to figure out what, if anything, went wrong.
The reporters divided the administration’s missteps (and, to a lesser degree, those of lawmakers) into four categories: helping individuals understand how reform tangibly benefited them, threatening Medicare, proposing a number of confusing tax increases, and the lengthy and frustrated deal-making process that preceded the reform bills now under consideration.
Myth surrounds reform’s ‘Safeway Amendment’
Filed under: Government, Health care reform, Health policy
Throughout the health care reform process, politicians have held up Safeway’s health incentive program as a model for future government health plans. The supermarket chain’s program requires employees who fail basic health screenings for blood pressure, weight, and cholesterol to pay higher health insurance premiums. 
Safeway maintains that this policy encourages its employees to make healthy lifestyle changes to in turn lower their health care costs. The Washington Post’s David Hilzenrath looked into the grocer’s impact on proposed health reform plans. Hilzenrath reports on how misconceptions about Safeway’s wellness program could impact public health policy in the U.S. Senate’s proposed Safeway Amendment.
Under a regulation advanced during George W. Bush’s administration, incentives conditioned on meeting wellness targets are limited to 20 percent of the premium – including employer and employee contributions to the premium. The Safeway Amendment would allow employers to increase the stakes to 30 percent, and it would give federal officials license to raise the limit to 50 percent. It would also allow insurers to use the same approach – initially in 10 states and potentially in others.
Employers and insurers would be required to make exceptions for people with extenuating medical circumstances.
Supporters of the amendment maintain that it will encourage private-sector employees to monitor and improve their health. Dissenting organizations, including the American Heart Association and the American Cancer Society, suggest that the legislation will unhinge a central tenet of health reform: That an individual’s health status will no longer impact premiums.
Safeway credits its internal health plan for keeping the company’s health care costs nearly steady between 2005 and 2009. An external survey of 1,700 employers revealed that companies’ health care costs increased by 30 percent in the same time period, on average.
Hilzenrath reports that “a review of Safeway documents and interviews with company officials show that the company did not keep health-care costs flat for four years. Those costs did drop in 2006 – by 12.5 percent. That was when the company overhauled its benefits, according to Safeway Senior Vice President Ken Shachmut.”
Reform bills would benefit Indian Health Service
Filed under: Government, Health care reform, Health policy
Mark Trahant, writing for InvestigateWest, points out that, because it’s in both the House and Senate versions of the bill and thus safe in conference committee, the reauthorization and extension of the Indian Health Care Improvement Act will pass as long as the larger reform package does.
The Parker Indian Health Services Hospital in Parker, Ariz. Photo by churl via Flickr.Originally enacted in 1976, the IHCIA has, in various iterations, been the primary vehicle for the delivery of health care to the country’s American Indians and Alaska Natives.
The latest version of the bill would adjust the Indian Health Service budget to account for medical inflation and population growth, increase efforts to recruit and retain health care professionals, introduce coverage for long-term care, improve youth suicide prevention programs and encourage innovation that will help provide easier access to health facilities.
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Health Journalism 2010, AHCJ's annual conference, features a world-class program with story ideas, sources, stronger reporting skills, chances to meet newsmakers and network with other journalists.
- Health and education: Covering these intersecting beats
- Reporting on the business of health care
- Health reporting resources for journalists on state and local government beats
- Shortened Lives: How location, lifestyle affect health
- Covering a complex story for the long haul
- Aging in the 21st Century: Presentations and tip sheets
- AHCJ calls for better information from Joint Commission Web site
