CNN, Sunday Morning Shows Completely Ignore Up To 15 Million Americans Being Thrown Off Medicaid

In a pattern that’s been repeated many times since 2021, millions being driven further into poverty simply doesn’t register in our “national debate.”

Editor’s note: Some Medicaid experts, while agreeing the story is vastly under-covered and the situation is grim, don’t want the reader to get the impression the cuts were a fait accompli on an individual basis. The risk is this could promote doomerism and I don’t want to do this! So I wanted to update this post to note that the 15 million is an estimate and, on an individual basis, one is not necessarily condemned to losing Medicaid. If you have any questions or worries that you or your loved ones may be at risk of losing benefits, please go to Localhelp.healthcare.gov. Nevertheless, as a broad political issue, the situation is not looking good.

Do millions of people losing their health insurance matter to our national corporate TV media? Not really, it seems.

Like the millions losing eviction protections, unemployment insurance, and a host of other poverty-reducing, life-saving government aid over the past couple of years, Medicaid coverage being gutted just happened with hardly any notice. Another anti-poor measure quietly passed Congress, was given bipartisan approval, and was executed with little-to-no political debate, outrage, or notice by popular TV news.

On April 1, up to 15 million Americans were slated to begin losing their Medicaid coverage over the next year because, as The New York Times, notes:

Millions could lose access to their current coverage — either because they don’t qualify for Medicaid anymore, or even if they do continue to qualify, because the administrative hurdles to renew their coverage are so high. In particular, people with disabilities, people who are not native English speakers and people who changed addresses during the pandemic may struggle to wade through the red tape 

The unseen, unsexy, and banal expansion of poverty “post-Covid” continues on without any fanfare or popular debate. 

None of the agenda-setting Sunday Morning shows—NBC’s Meet the Press, CBS’s Face the Nation, and ABC’s This Week—mentioned the expiration of Medicaid coverage for the poorest, most vulnerable Americans in recent weeks. CNN hasn’t aired a report on it. MSNBC did just one 2-minute segment on the subject: Anchor Jose Diaz-Balart hosted a roundtable with Congresswoman Judy Chu, Congresswoman Nanette D. Barragán, and Congressman Steven Horsford discussing the matter and what their constituents could do to prevent being thrown off Medicaid. But none of MSNBC’s prime time celebrities mentioned it. NBC News hasn’t done a segment on it (though it did dedicate considerable resources a few weeks ago to a ride-along “investigation” copaganda piece on Medicare and Medicaid fraud). 

Because the gutting of pandemic-era welfare programs is bipartisan in nature—and President Biden is making no case to protect them—the topic is thus not a partisan conflict. And for a media that takes its cues from partisan conflict, the loneliest place to be for any vulnerable community is on the business end of Austerity Washington Consensus. That which impacts the poor is already of little interest to corporate media, so the combination of these two factors means 15 million people potentially being thrown off their healthcare barely makes a blip on our national media radar.

CBS Evening News did a 19-second mention on it. ABC News aired a 1-minute, 33-second segment on it this morning on Good Morning America. Print media did straight reports but, like these segments, the framing was entirely in PSA format: how the individual reader or viewer could avoid becoming a victim of these cuts, and how to best navigate the deliberately opaque system of benefits. In none of the reports was there any sense that this was a political debate, with a potential political solution. It simply happened—like a tornado or earthquake, an act of god we must prepare for but, ultimately, can’t do anything to prevent. 

No outrage. No public debate. No mention that another pandemic-related anti-poverty measure is being thrown out on the altar of “bringing down inflation.” It just happens, and basically no one notices, and even less people in our influential, agenda-setting media care.