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ARTICLE 1 Obama predicts a ‘historic’ weekend as vote on health reforms nears Konrad Yakabuski

WASHINGTON — From Saturday's Globe and Mail Published on Friday, Mar. 19, 2010 8:59PM EDT Last updated on Saturday, Mar. 20, 2010 4:22PM EDT

Should things go his way in the House on Sunday, the U.S. President will be in a position to immediately sign the bulk of his package into law

In the profit-hungry American health-care system, there are fewer and fewer doctors like Luis Padilla every day. Yet the need grows ever greater for physicians, like him, who are willing to take on the most unprofitable patients of all – the uninsured and underinsured. More than 90 per cent of patients at the Unity Health Care Center in Washington’s hard-knock Columbia Heights neighbourhood where Dr. Padilla works are black or Latino. Lately, though, a new clientele has been showing up, underscoring the accelerating crisis in U.S. health care. “Here’s my canary in the waiting room: more Caucasian people,” Dr. Padilla explains. “Historically, this has been a clinic serving people of colour. But I’m seeing more white Americans. They had insurance because they were working. But they lost their jobs.” By the time they get in to see Dr. Padilla, they’ve typically gone weeks or months without medication. “Their diabetes has become uncontrollable, their hypertension elevated,” he laments. “We cover some of the costs for preventive care but we can’t [pay] if someone needs a mammogram or someone is diagnosed with cancer. Where do they get their treatment? There is no place to get that.” Despite being the costliest in the world – at 17.3 per cent of gross domestic product in 2009 – the U.S. health-care system will leave 50 million Americans uninsured by the end of 2010, according to the latest figures from the Congressional Budget Office. Without changes, there will be at least 60 million uninsured by 2019, predicts Karen Davis, president of the Commonwealth Fund, a New York-based foundation that conducts comparative-health-system research. “It’s deteriorating pretty rapidly, with more than one million people being added to the uninsured ranks every year,” she notes. Then there are the underinsured, people whose policies come with deductible and co-payment levels so high, and limits on annual reimbursements so low, as to push thousands of Americans deep into debt or bankruptcy every year. There were 25 million underinsured Americans in 2007. By next year, Ms. Davis projects, there will be 35 million. This is the national blight, decades in the making, that Barack Obama is within reach of correcting as the House of Representatives prepares for a momentous final vote tomorrow afternoon on the President’s $940-billion plan to remake the contradiction-laden U.S. health-care system. If the measure passes, Mr. Obama could sign the bulk of his reforms into law within hours. Getting to this point has been a wrenching year-long struggle for the President. His lips have come close to the cup more than once before in the past 12 months, only to have it snatched away by the cruel vicissitudes of politics and his own miscalculations. But a newly confident Mr. Obama was not entertaining defeat yesterday, telling a palpably psyched crowd of supporters at a Virginia rally that “we are going to do something historic this weekend.” No one in Washington, on either side of this debate, disagreed. Mr. Obama once again invoked Natoma Canfield, an Ohio woman who paid $6,000 in premiums and $4,000 in co-payments and other costs last year. She got back only $900 in reimbursements from her insurer. Then it notified her of a 40-per-cent premium increase. She had to choose between paying her insurance or her mortgage. She chose the latter, only to be diagnosed a few weeks ago with leukemia. “If you’re an American under the age of 65, there’s roughly a 50-50 chance that you will find yourself without coverage at some point in the next decade,” the White House warned this week. In his climatic final push of recent days, Mr. Obama has continually warned Americans that, without his reform, Ms. Canfield’s fate could be theirs as well. “There but for the grace of God go any one of us,” has become his most chilling line of the week. Mr. Obama’s proposed fix for the system is surely suboptimal. It will leave the business of providing health insurance to Americans under 65 to a handful of for- and non-profit insurers whose administrative  costs are easily double or triple those of single-payer systems such as Canada’s. But given the political exigencies of a centre-right nation, the daunting complexity of the current system and the relentless resistance of deep-pocketed special interests , Mr. Obama’s plan is remarkably comprehensive, bold and coherent. Its implementation would lead to a net reduction of 32 million uninsured Americans, leaving 95 per cent of legal U.S. residents with adequate coverage by 2019. By then, some 24 million low- and middle-income Americans without employer-sponsored insurance would be given annual subsidies averaging $6,000 to purchase their own policies on newly created state insurance exchanges. Those subsidies will not start until 2014. But other popular measures will kick in as soon as next year. They include prohibiting insurers from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions and allowing young people to stay on their parents’ policies until age 26 instead of 19. The nearly $1-trillion plan is actually supposed to cut the deficit by $138-billion over the next decade, according to the CBO, in part because Americans earning more than $200,000 will soon pay higher payroll taxes and new levies on investment income. Indeed, the financial circle is squared because six years of subsidies are paid for with a decade’s worth of taxes. About half of the overall tab is to be paid for by promises to “bend the cost curve” at Medicare, the voraciously expensive public health plan for seniors. Federal reimbursement rates to privately administered Medicare Advantage plans will be cut by more than $202-billion, likely leading insurers to stop covering extras. Hospitals have agreed to accept $155-billion less for treating Medicare patients. But with fewer uninsured Americans showing at Emergency, they expect to more than make up for the shortfall. Some fiscally conservative Democrats doubt Mr. Obama’s financial projections will ever come to pass, since controlling health-care costs is always easier on paper than in practice. Should Mr. Obama fail to sway enough of them by 2 p.m. tomorrow, the House vote could be delayed once more. But if he comes up with the 216 “ayes” he needs and the vote passes, Mr. Obama can rightly declare to have become the first President to put the United States on a path to universal health-care coverage since Teddy Roosevelt first proposed the idea more than a century ago. Victory would also recast the narrative for a so-far underwhelming presidency. The House is set to vote on a health-care bill the Senate adopted in December and a series of amendments to it. If the package passes, Mr. Obama could sign the Senate bill tomorrow afternoon, making about 80 per cent of his health-care reforms the law of the land. The amendments to the Senate bill would still have to be approved by the upper chamber to make the full complement of Mr. Obama’s proposals operative. Republicans are promising to stymie the process, though Mr. Obama needs only 51 Senate votes to pass the package under a process known as reconciliation. But even if the amendments get stalled in the upper chamber, it won’t stop the administration from implementing the original Senate bill. “It’s a major step forward,” he opines, and one that’s been a long time coming. “We have 50 million uninsured and we’re still ranked below several industrialized countries on every major indicator from life expectancy to infant mortality. You name it, we’re not number one.” [|Article] [|Comments] [|(93)]

//**Summary:**// //“Obama predicts a ‘historic’ weekend as vote on health reform nears”, was published on March 19////th////, 2010, by The Toronto Globe and Mail.// //In this article, writer Konrad Yakabuski depicts certain ‘downfalls’ in the current health system and uses bias descriptions to promote President Barak Obama’s healthcare reform.// //He describes the people against the reform as ‘profit-hungry’ and the current system as a “nation blight’, both of these words put a negative feel on their subjects.// //He portrays a clear bias in favour of the healthcare reform.//

ARTICLE 2 **President**

March 07, 2010 **Obama Pushes for Health Care While Americans Worry About Jobs**

(AP PHOTO) WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama's furious, final push to get a health care bill passed threatens to shove aside the message he promised would top his list this year: creating jobs.

Even as the White House juggles several enormous issues at once, the public takes its cues about the president's chief concern from how he spends his time, energy and capital. As Obama himself put it on Wednesday, from now until Congress takes a final vote on a health care overhaul, "I will do everything in my power to make the case for reform." That kind of now-or-never campaign means America can expect a debate consumed by health care, again, for weeks. The White House is trying mightily to focus it on real people and the human cost of inaction. But there will be no escaping the same slog that turned off so many people in 2009 -- congressional process, arm-twisting and doomsday rhetoric. So what unfolds over the next few weeks will affect millions of Americans and alter the course of Obama's presidency. He has a shrinking window in which to find enough votes within his party to pass health care legislation so he can free himself to spend more bully pulpit time on the single issue that has stoked the public ire since he became president -- disappearing jobs. Polling shows the economy remains a bigger personal worry to people than the cost, access and coverage problems endemic to the health care system. There is a huge economic element to health care as people struggle to pay premiums or keep their insurance. Yet to many, the astounding loss of jobs is a singular issue that demands constant, bold attention. It is just this competition -- the economy versus health care -- that helped define Obama's grueling first year in office and prompted howls within his own party for a recalibrated jobs-first agenda. Obama responded with a State of the Union speech on Jan. 27 that was remarkably focused on the economy, dwarfing all other issues. "Creating jobs has to be our number one priority in 2010," Obama emphasized the next day at a stop in Tampa, Florida. Yet it was always the reality that Obama would consolidate his attention on health care again, at least for one last blitz. Beyond all the policy implications, Obama has spent a year on it and never intended to let that effort go to waste. The White House's political calculation is that the next few weeks are their last chance to push through an overhaul of health coverage. But aides also know it cannot drag on, as every day focused on process overshadows their message. There is no expectation within the West Wing that voters' moods will change until they see their lives improving. Senior Obama adviser David Axelrod said the plan is to keep plugging away on an agenda to shore up the economy for the long haul. "We're going to still be out there on jobs," Axelrod said, dismissing any worry that the economy-first message will be obscured. "We're going to be focused on health care for the next few weeks, but we're still going to be doing jobs." To get votes, Obama is lobbying lawmakers, many of whom are teetering in this election year. He's calling on his 2008 campaign supporters to push Congress for a vote. He's staging health care events in Philadelphia and St. Louis this coming week. "They are looking at the election in November, and they need to have one big victory that they can claim," said Michael Lind, policy director of the economic growth program at the New America Foundation, a Washington think tank. "This is not the victory they would have chosen, because even if it does help the economy, it won't help most people for years to come. The problem is, there just doesn't seem to be the ability to do anything significant about jobs this year." The House and Senate have passed versions of a $35 billion bill that offers a tax break to companies that hire workers and extends federal highway programs, but even supporters doubt it will create many jobs. By comparison, the economic stimulus bill enacted last year -- and not nearly spent out yet -- was an $862 billion measure. Lawmakers plan more steps this year. But there is less political will to keep spending on big jolts to the economy. Obama has always argued that overhauling health care is not just about health, but also an economic imperative for families who will suffer "if we let this opportunity pass for another year or another decade or another generation" -- a message he conveyed Saturday in his weekly radio and Internet address. Part of Obama's final argument to Democratic lawmakers is that getting health care done will give them momentum on other issues. It's possible that the opposite is true, and a defeat now could undermine him on other fronts. Maryland's Democratic Gov. Martin O'Malley said Obama understands that the rising costs of health care are hurting U.S. economic interests long term. Still, he urged Obama to finish up this priority and pivot back to a heavier jobs message. "If we wrap this up, if we get this passed, it will become clear that health care was always about jobs," he said.

** [|ARTICLE] ** **COMMENTS (333)**

//**Summary:**// //Fox News, generally Republican news, issued “Obama Pushes for Health Care While Americans Worry About Jobs” on March 7th, 2010.// //This news story applies a pessimistic view towards Obama and his plan by describing them with bias words that have negative connotations.// //He illustrates Obama’s healthcare plan as a ’slog’ and his speeches as ‘bully pulpit’, which evoke negativity towards the campaign and President Obama.// //The article portrays an unmistakable bias against the healthcare reform.//


 * __My Interpritation of the Bias in these Articles__**

These two articles show opposite biases concerning the “Obama Healthcare Act”. These articles show bias through certain sentences and connotation. The first article entitled, “Obama predicts a ’historic’ weekend as vote on health reforms nears”, shows a bias promoting the act. An example pulled from this article is the word ‘correcting’. They use the word to describe what Obama is doing with the national blight, meaning the current healthcare situation. The definition of correcting is ‘to remove error or fault from; to improve’. The second article, “Obama Pushes for Health Care While Americans Worry About Jobs”, opposes the proposed healthcare act. This article contains a bias use of words and interesting sentence fragments. The article describes the healthcare campaign time as a ‘slog’ and ‘arm-twisting and doomsday rhetoric’, these words are perceptibly pessimistic and would make the reader have a negative feeling towards the campaign.