Horse-Race Health Care Coverage

We often think of horse-race style coverage as it applies to Presidential elections. During the "heat of the battle," the media often get caught up in a style of coverage that focuses on who is ahead. First Obama is ahead in the polls, then McCain gains some ground. McCain's supporters run an attack ad, then Obama runs a counter-attack ad, then McCain makes a counter-counter speech, then Obama... you get the idea. This kind of coverage continually focuses on the back and forth conflict between candidates, and important issues are sometimes lost in the shuffle.

It seems to me that this same style of coverage is now filtering into other topics, specifically the current health care debate. The New York Times released an article today with the headline "Democrats Raise Alarms Over Costs of Health Bills." The entire article is about Democrats who are saying that the current bills in Congress don't go far enough to address out-of-control health care costs. The article is well written and well reported, but taken in context with other stories, it casts light on a particular aspect of the health care coverage.

It seems that every story coming out of major news sources casts the health care debate as a conflict between democrats and republicans. It is always "Republicans say health care is too expensive," or "Democrats say Republican's don't know what they are talking about." These are over the top, but they aren't completely out of character for the kinds of stories that have been appearing. I haven't seen nearly enough articles explaining what the public option is and how it would affect our health care choices. However, I have seen plenty of articles explaining who loves it and who hates it, and who will vote for it and who won't.

I think part of this may be due to the length of the health care debate. The debate has been going on for a while, and it is beginning to seem like an election. If it had been a quick but heated debate, or if only one health care bill had been produces, I think it would have been easier for the media to cover it thoroughly and focus mostly on the issues. However, I think that especially with a prolonged debate like we are seeing, editors and reporters need to be careful that they are focusing on the substance of the debate, and not the conflict and melodrama of it.