Scott Brown & the Health Care Reform Bill: One Nurse’s Opinion

Scott Brown will be sworn as MA Senator in February 11, 2010.

When Scott Brown was elected Massachusetts senator late January, supporters of the Health Care Reform bill were not happy. Many Massachusetts residents who voted for Martha Coakley, the Democratic contender and expected winner, were shocked. Independent voters of Massachusetts, a liberal state, went for Brown. The Democrats were (and still are) one seat short from moving the bill through the Senate. Brown is in complete opposition of the bill, saying on Sunday that the entire bill should be scrapped.

Most residents of Boston voted in favor of Coakley (68.7% favored Coakley, while 30.3% favored Brown). One Bostonian was pleased at the special election turnout. Marsha Brown, a resident of West Roxbury, voted for President Obama in 2008 (Obama won the majority of votes in Boston: 79%), but disagreed with the health care plan he has since created. This was one of the deciding factors in her decision to vote for Brown last month.

“Currently, my family is covered by two health care plans [Brigham & Women and City of Boston] and I would have to pay $9,000 extra for my health care [with the new health care plan],” said Brown, a mother of two and a nurse at Brigham & Women Hospital in Boston. “And I won’t have the  freedom that I have now. My plan allows me to go anywhere in the country to get care. And being a nurse, I need the freedom of health care.”

Brown has a first hand look at health care today in Massachusetts, and is not enthusiastic about the manner in which Obama’s plan would change it.

“I don’t want the government to decide what kind of treatment you would get or the workup that I’d need. I don’t want a cookie cutter approach,” she explained.

Scott Brown was quoted Sunday saying that it is time to “to go back to the drawing board and do it in a transparent, bipartisan manner.” As stated in his State of the Union address, Obama still hopes for health care reform to pass “soon.” The future remains unclear.

On a funnier note, the name Scott Brown is close to Marsha Brown’s heart: “My brother’s name is Scott Brown! Maybe it’s just some kind of transference!” she said, laughing.

Blog Review: “Talking Points Memo”

For the first class assignment, I chose to review a blog which I have never heard of before: Talking Points Memo (TPM). I discovered this blog after Googling “top news blogs”. From this search, I learned that TPM was ranked #7 on The Guardian’s list of “The world’s 50 most powerful blogs”.

Talking Points Memo is a political online-based news site, equipt with editors, reporter-bloggers, etc. Their small staff is listed on the main page. It is a liberal blog, and has the tagline “Commentary on political events from a politically left perspective, by Joshua Micah Marshall.”  Therefore, the main audience would be online users who are left-wing and very interested in politics. I like this blog because it is neat, has a good amount of pictures (without which it might be text heavy and lose readers), and is well organized. I must admit that at first glance, the blog may be confusing. The editor’s blog posts are featured in the left hand column, while the regular news stories are posted in the middle and right hand columns. Any new visitor (who is impatient) to TPM might not make this distinction.

Layout designers at TPM seem to want to use their space for as much news content as possible, since the title is abbreviated to TPM and most headlines are on the smaller side.

Unsurprisingly, the topic dominating the news posts on TPM are about the Health Care Reform bill. From what I see, TPM uses its own reporter-bloggers to get the information for stories. In the article Waiting Game: The Dems Play For Time, other TPM articles are linked. It is clear that there was reporting done by TPM reporters specifically for this story because of the quotes from the aide.  The article Joe Biden Tells Democrats To ‘Keep The Faith’ And Says 60 Seats Wasn’t Really A ‘Blessing’ is made up almost entirely of quotes, making this less like a blog post and more like a recap of a speech. Both articles have perfect spelling and grammar. TPM does not link to other journalists’ work, except in the TPM Approved Sites section.

On a side note, TPM includes advertisements on the front page, along with on the pages of articles. Walmart and H&R Block are among the advertisers. They can be a tad distracting, however, the advertisments are kept on the sides (almost framing the page) for the most part, which I appreciated.