http://www.cnsnews.com/public/content/article.aspx?RsrcID=49625


 Quote:
President Barack Obama told the American Medical Association yesterday that he believes single-payer health care systems have worked "pretty well" in some countries, but no major U.S. newspaper available in the Nexis database reported the president's comment in their news stories about the speech.

However, three of the nation’s most prestigious newspapers—the Washington Post, the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times—did publish quotes from the president’s speech that artfully took language from both immediately before and after the president’s statement that single-payer systems work.

"I’ll be honest," Obama said in his speech to the AMA, "there are countries where a single-payer system works pretty well."

A search of the the terms "Obama," "single-payer," and "pretty well" in the "Major Newspapers" file of Nexis turned up no hits as of 3:00 PM on Tuesday, June 16.

The full context of the president’s comment about the efficacy of single-payer health-care plans is available in the official transcript of the speech posted on the White House website.

One paragraph of the White House transcript reads as follows:

“Let me also say that—let me also address a illegitimate concern that’s being put forward by those who are claiming a public option is somehow a Trojan Horse for a single-payer system. I’ll be honest; there are countries where a single-payer system works pretty well. But I believe—and I’ve taken some flak from members of my own party for this belief—that it’s important for our efforts to build on our traditions here in the United States. So when you hear the naysayers claim that I’m trying to bring about government-run health care, know this: They’re not telling the truth.”

The president’s statement that “I’ll be honest; there are countries where a single-payer system works pretty well” did appear in transcripts of the speech available on Nexis database, but not in articles in major newspapers. For example, it was transcribed in a CNN newscast that carried the president's speech live, and also on MSNBC's "The Ed Show" which used that portion of the president's speech as a soundbite.

But in the stories about the speech in the Washington Post, New York Times and Los Angeles Times, words from both before and after the president’s statement about a single-payer system working pretty well appeared, while the statement itself did not. (These stories were also searchable and available on the Nexis "Major Newspapers" database.)

The Post reported on Obama’s speech to the AMA in a page 2 story. The story quoted the passage in the speech that included Obama’s claim that single-payer systems have worked well in some countries, but excised the sentence where he said it, using ellipses to mark its removal.

The relevant paragraph of the Post story reads as follows:

“In his speech, Obama said, ‘Let me also address an illegitimate concern that’s being put forward by those who are claiming that a public option is somehow a Trojan horse for a single-payer system. … When you hear the naysayers claim that I’m trying to bring about government-run health care, know this: They’re not telling the truth.”

The New York Times reported on Obama’s speech to the AMA in a front page story. The story quoted broken phrases taken from before and after Obama’s claim that single-payer health care systems have worked well. But the story did not report what Obama said about single-payer systems working.

The relevant paragraph of the Times story reads as follows:

“‘The public option is not your enemy,’ Mr. Obama said. ‘It is your friend, I believe.’ Saying it would ‘keep insurance companies honest,’ the president dismissed as ‘illegitimate’ the claims of critics that a public insurance option amounts to ‘Trojan horse for a single-payer system’ run by the government.”

The Los Angeles Times reported on Obama’s speech to the AMA in a page 14 story.

The Times quoted from the same passage in the speech in which Obama expressed his view that single-payer health care systems have worked in some countries, but expunged the sentence in which he actually said it.

The relevant paragraph of the Times’s story reads as follows:

“‘Let me also address an illegitimate concern that’s being put forward by those who are claiming that a public option is somehow a Trojan horse for a single-payer system,’ Obama said. ‘But I believe, and I’ve taken some flak from members of my own party for this belief, that it’s important for our reform efforts to build on our traditions here in the United States.”

Here the Los Angeles Times broke up Obama’s actual quotation immediately before he said “I’ll be honest; there are countries where a single-payer system works pretty well” and resumed the quotation immediately after he had said these words.

Apparently, the editors of the Washington Post, New York Times and Los Angeles Times did not think their readers would be interested in knowing that President Obama believes “there are countries where a single-payer system works pretty well.”