visits, and live-saving procedures primarily due to their lack of ability to afford such necessities.
As reported by the Washington Post (2009), the cost of these Americans being uninsured is
pushed on to the insured through a “hidden tax” amounting to 37 percent of their premium costs.
Healthcare experts and politicians alike agree something must be done to lower the uninsured
rate. A second, but just as important, problem is the high cost of our health system. In 2013, the
cost of employer-sponsored family health insurance was $16,351 and $5,884 for single coverage
(KFF, 2013). Compared to other countries, the U.S. spends nearly 17 percent of its GDP on
healthcare as of 2011, but utilized far less health resources like doctor’s visits compared to other
nations (OECD, 2013). So, drawn from these statistics, the political question is how to fix it.
Much of the debate has focused on how much federal involvement in necessary to fix a troubled
system. Recent debates and legislation aimed at fixing our healthcare system, which includes the
passage of the ACA, have spurred such questions on federal involvement. How these questions
of federal involvement reach the public sphere is through the media. In the next section, I will
look into the scholarly literature to see the theories produced by scholars into how the public
chooses and reacts to the various types of media.
Literature Review
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 was historic for many reasons,
not only for what it seemingly accomplished, but also for the way it intensified an already
polarized nation. It was also notable for the way the media portrayed the debate for and against
health reform. Not only did many news stations take sides in the debate, but they also helped
frame the way the public views the Act and its subsequent implementation. Much of the previous
research on the media’s political effects is useful in understanding how the mass media affected
the way the public viewed the Affordable Care Act. The existing literature provides a foundation
The Eastern Illinois University Political Science Review, Vol. 3, Iss. 2 [2014], Art. 4