During the healthcare debate, I kept having this recurring, heretical thought: Hey, I’ve had pretty good medical care, good access to doctors, good results, prompt treatments, etc.


 Still, most Americans seem to think that we have a horrendous healthcare system in the United States. Am I alone in getting decent medical attention? Dennis Prager notes today:


 If you believe that Americans have lousy health care, it is probably not because you have experienced inferior heath care. It is probably because you were told America has lousy health care.


 Prager cites headlines from just last week:


Reuters: “U.S. scores dead last again in healthcare study”


Los Angeles Times: “U.S. is No. 1 in a key area of healthcare. Guess which one …”


NPR: “US Spends The Most On Health Care, Yet Gets Least”


The Week: “US health care system: Worst in the world?”


Prager chalks much of this “news” to agenda-driven reporting that relies on agenda-driven experts to tell us just how bad things are. For example, one oft-quoted expert is Karen Davis of the bland-sounding Commonwealth Fund. The news stories relying on Ms. Davis, however, don’t tell you much about the Commonwealth Fund. But it has an agenda, as Prager points out in the column:


Here’s how the Commonwealth Fund’s 2009 Report from the president begins: “The Commonwealth Fund marshaled its resources this year to produce timely and rigorous work that helped lay the groundwork for the historic Affordable Care Act, signed by President Obama in March 2010.”


As for Davis, she served as deputy assistant secretary for health policy in the Department of Health and Human Services in the Jimmy Carter administration all four years of the Carter presidency. And in 1993, in speaking to new members of Congress, she advocated a single-payer approach to health care.


I could not find any mainstream news report about this story that identified the politics of Karen Davis or the Commonwealth Fund. If they had, the headlines would have looked something like this:


“Liberal think tank, headed by single-payer advocate, ObamaCare activist, and former Carter official, says America has worst health care”