{"id":510,"date":"2005-03-08T16:35:00","date_gmt":"2005-03-08T21:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vmalt\/?p=510"},"modified":"2005-12-09T10:25:10","modified_gmt":"2005-12-09T15:25:10","slug":"power-of-the-press","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/power-of-the-press","title":{"rendered":"Power of the Press"},"content":{"rendered":"

A few posts down<\/a>, I ran the From the Editor<\/span> page of my magazine’s new ish. In it, there’s a quote from the director of the Congressional Budget Office<\/a>, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, whom I praise for trying to raise the alarm about the false numbers in the Medicare prescription benefit bill:<\/p>\n

“Two equally plausible scenarios for the future of healthcare costs yield Medicare and Medicaid being either 11 % of GDP–half the size of the current federal government–or over 20% of GDP–larger than the current federal government. So there’s an enormous certainty out there but the trends in the long term, I think, are the central issue. There’s no question about that.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I gave the page to my associate editor, and told her, “Here’s my vituperative rant for the month. Sometimes I get so vituperative that I make typos.”<\/p>\n

She proofread my page, found no typos, and said, “I don’t think it’s a certainty.”<\/p>\n

“Hmm?”<\/p>\n

“That part about how there’s an enormous certainty. I don’t think he meant to say that.”<\/p>\n

“Maybe he was being ironic,” I said. She frowned.<\/p>\n

Still, best to double-check, since the quote did<\/em> come from a transcript, and not a prepared statement. So I called the CBO’s communications department. I got bumped over to someone’s voice mail, and figured that I’d have to let it go as is.<\/p>\n

Y’know the funny thing? The CBO got back to me within an hour, asked to see the exact passage in an e-mail, and called back within minutes to let me know that Mr. Holtz-Eakin’s words had been mis-transcribed and that he meant “uncertainty”.<\/p>\n

I’m just amazed at how quickly they responded to my request, especially given that my magazine doesn’t exactly have a household name. So, additional kudos to the CBO! Keep watchdoggin’!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few posts down, I ran the From the Editor page of my magazine’s new ish. In it, there’s a quote from the director of the Congressional Budget Office, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, whom I praise for trying to raise the alarm about the false numbers in the Medicare prescription benefit bill: “Two equally plausible scenarios for … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Power of the Press”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pharmaceuticals"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-8e","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":512,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/medicare-frauds","url_meta":{"origin":510,"position":0},"title":"Medicare Frauds","author":"Gil","date":"March 8, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"What's $320 billion among friends?(Editorial from the March issue of my magazine) Last March and April in this space I wrote about the scandal(s) behind the passage of the Medicare prescription drug bill. At the time, I was irate over the fact that the White House hid $134 billion in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Pharmaceuticals"","block_context":{"text":"Pharmaceuticals","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business\/pharmaceuticals"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":15501,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/episode-501-william-deresiewicz","url_meta":{"origin":510,"position":1},"title":"Episode 501 – William Deresiewicz","author":"Gil","date":"August 23, 2022","format":"audio","excerpt":"Virtual Memories Show 501: William Deresiewicz \"I like to say that our age is characterized by two kinds of phenomena: things that can't get worse, but keep getting worse, and things that can't happen, but happen.\" Author & critic William Deresiewicz joins the show to celebrate his new book, THE\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Art"","block_context":{"text":"Art","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/art"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/deresiewiczcomp.jpg?fit=1104%2C800&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/deresiewiczcomp.jpg?fit=1104%2C800&resize=350%2C200 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/deresiewiczcomp.jpg?fit=1104%2C800&resize=525%2C300 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/deresiewiczcomp.jpg?fit=1104%2C800&resize=700%2C400 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-content\/uploads\/deresiewiczcomp.jpg?fit=1104%2C800&resize=1050%2C600 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":1408,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/college-whoops","url_meta":{"origin":510,"position":2},"title":"College whoops","author":"Gil","date":"March 25, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I've learned a ton from reading Charley Rosen's basketball columns, particularly his single-game analyses. He's got a mailbag up this week, and it includes a vituperative response to the \"NCAA or NBA\" question: Although I do not always agree with your opinions, I respect them because you seem to know\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "basketball"","block_context":{"text":"basketball","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/sports\/basketball"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":143,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/steal-big-steal-bigger","url_meta":{"origin":510,"position":3},"title":"Steal Big, Steal Bigger?","author":"Gil","date":"February 19, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"(Here's the From the Editor page of my magazine this month) A recent New York Times article, \"Fraud Kicks in Months Ahead of Medicare Drug Discount Card,\" discussed the practice of con artists going door-to-door selling 'Medicare-approved' drug discount cards, despite the fact that the drug discount program has yet\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Pharmaceuticals"","block_context":{"text":"Pharmaceuticals","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business\/pharmaceuticals"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":334,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/phase-0","url_meta":{"origin":510,"position":4},"title":"Phase 0","author":"Gil","date":"August 4, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Neat article in today's NYTimes about changes in preclinical drug testing. That subject matter may not interest you too much, but it's part of my day job, and I have a vested interest in seeing the pharma\/biopharma industry come up with better methods of drug discovery & development.The best part\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Pharmaceuticals"","block_context":{"text":"Pharmaceuticals","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/big-business\/pharmaceuticals"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":827,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/brand-x","url_meta":{"origin":510,"position":5},"title":"Brand X","author":"Gil","date":"February 3, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"There's a neat cover article on BusinessWeek this week about how GDP methodology misses the impact of R&D and other knowledge-based expenditures. The writers contend that outdated methods of measuring the economy have made government stats pretty useless. More to the point, they argue that factoring in this \"dark matter\"\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}