MEDIA INFLATE UNINSURED STATISTICS, PROMOTE NATIONALIZED HEALTH CARE

ALEXANDRIA, VA Journalists, politicians and pundits repeatedly claim approximately 47 million Americans lack health insurance. And they are wrong each time, according to a new report from the Business & Media Institute. The entire debate about health insurance has relied on the number as proof that the U.S. health care system is failing. News stories, including those by ABCs medical expert Tim Johnson and CBS Evening News correspondent Katie Couric, have hyped the number of uninsured Americans, often claiming it has reached 43-47 million. The claim has even gone as high as nearly 50 million Americans without health insurance, according to Michael Moores film SiCKO. The new analysis, released today by BMI, details how those numbers are off by millions, yet the media rely on them to make a case for socialized medicine.

For example, according to the U.S. Census Bureau:

• Of the more than 46.5 million people living in the United States without health insurance, nearly 9.5 million are not citizens.

• 17 million of the uninsured population could reasonably afford health insurance because they make more than $50,000 a year substantially more than the median U.S. household income of $46,326.

• The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 45 percent of those uninsured get insurance in less than four months.

• A more realistic number for the chronically uninsured is between 8.2 million and 13.9 million, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

The media continue to grossly mislead and misinform the American people about health insurance in this country, said Dan Gainor, director of the Media Research Centers Business & Media Institute. They have over-hyped the so-called crisis when the facts clearly show that the number of uninsured Americans is far smaller than journalists pretend. At the same time, the media have been cheerleading for socialized medicine and embracing Moores one-sided attack against our health care system, he continued. The American people rejected Hillary-care and arent interested in more Big Government socialism, which has failed miserably across the globe, Gainor concluded.

Visit www.BusinessAndMedia.org to access the full report.