Reporters forgot 161 GOP amendments to Affordable Healthcare Act

Reporters need a revival
Wounded Times
Kathie Costos
November 25, 2013

Reporters forgot 161 GOP amendments to Affordable Healthcare Act and a whole lot of other stuff

One of the worst jobs I had was an eyeopener. I hated it because, among many other reasons, it was a management job and I really sucked at it. I hated hiring and firing, the office politics, irrational bosses and demanding coworkers. I really hated getting a phone call in the middle of the night, dragging my butt out of bed to drive in the snow to the office at 3:00 am because one of my staff screwed up on a report that had to be done. I worked as circulation manager for a newspaper. The report was so that the paper would be printed for all the subscribers and deliveries. Without it, no one would know who was supposed to get what and where to go.


I took the job because I thought I'd get my foot in the door as a writer and maybe make the right connections but there was never enough time in the over 50 hours a week I had to work to talk about anything other than the paper getting out.

Newspapers don't make their money off the price of a paper. They make it off the advertising and subscribers matter a lot more than than how many papers are printed. They want to keep their subscribers more than anything else. What they usually put at the above of the fold were the bad news stories. The slogan "if it bleeds, it leads" was taken very seriously. At least back then they were real stories about crimes, scandals and suffering. The good stuff was pretty much buried unless it was about a sports team winning something. As long as they had something good in the paper and it was delivered on time, then it was all good. As for the papers in the stores, people would see it folded and the headlines to grab their attention and buy it.

Buying it is what I've taken issue with lately. Why is everyone just buying what the press has been selling? Newspapers are dying off because of the internet, or so they want us to think but the truth is, if they were doing their jobs, then they would just adapt to have a news site as well as a printed paper. They are dying off because people are finding what they want to read all over the net and it isn't coming from the big presses. The reason is because they have lost touch with reality. The reality we all live with.

I don't post on much that does not have to do with veterans, well, hardly ever. Sometimes there is just a fantastic story I come across and want to share so it usually goes up on the Facebook page but sometimes I just can't help it and you'll read it here with a disclaimer "off topic" and I hope readers will forgive it but most of the time, the hits on it are pretty good so I am glad I shared it.

People know what they will find here but they also notice that most of the news reports come from small presses because frankly they are doing the best reporting on our veterans and what is really going on. The major presses don't do much at all.

Huffington Post did exceptional work during Suicide Awareness Month and usually have several articles a week I put links up to but the New York Times and Washington Post used to be putting out great work regularly. Lately, not much has come out of them or any of the other major presses. They are all working on destructive journalism and jumping all over the same stories but what gets me is what they are reporting is not what we're talking about.

This crap with the Affordable Care Act and congress grandstanding after pointing fingers is just ridiculous because no reporter has actually asked them why they didn't try to fix what was wrong instead of just trying to kill it if they gave a crap about what we were dealing with everyday over something as basic as our health.

The facts are simple. Republicans have gotten away with the fact none of them voted for AHA but they have also gotten away with no one asking then about the fact they had plenty of chances to change the bill and actually did before they voted against it.

Slate still has up some of the reporting they had done at the time and this is from July 16, 2009
This Is What "Bipartisanship" Looks Like

"Of the 788 amendments filed, 67 came from Democrats and 721 from Republicans. (That disparity drew jeers that Republicans were trying to slow things down. Another explanation may be that they offered so many so they could later claim—as they are now, in fact, claiming—that most of their suggestions went unheeded.) Only 197 amendments were passed in the end—36 from Democrats and 161 from Republicans. And of those 161 GOP amendments, Senate Republicans classify 29 as substantive and 132 as technical."

Any reporter could have found that and stopped them from being able to claim they had nothing to do with the mess we ended up with. They didn't fix anything in the three years they had tried to kill it instead.

Did reporters ever once actually think about what this bill meant? That finally some people were actually trying to do something good for the majority of the American people on a basic necessity like being able to afford to see a doctor?

All the crap they've been feeding us on what has gone wrong never seems to get around to what got fixed or at least made more fair.

This actually ties into the purpose of Wounded Times because this bill actually helps the 19 million veterans not getting VA healthcare. Most of them are seniors now but some of them are still working with disabilities they will not file claims for like PTSD. This bill helps the mental healthcare they need as well as other physical connected to their service but for whatever reason they will not file claims for or are still tied up.

You can actually look up the things this does for us or you can keep trying to figure out why reporters don't want you reminded of what this is all about, who did what and when because they are just too busy on feeding the divide and destroying instead of doing something worthwhile for a change.