In the American media tradition of hyping everything, even the New York Times and NPR almost never fail to call the health care reform “overhaul,” as if the reform will affect every aspect of the U.S. health care system. Melissa Block in one NPR interview used the term “total overhaul” twice to describe the reform. Even the informed Julie Rovner usually uses the word “overhaul.” 

The reality is that the vast bulk of the U.S. health care system will be unaffected by the reform. Health care delivery will be mostly untouched (and then only mildly and positively). Doctors, nurses, surgeons, pharmacists, receptionists, etc., will all perform their work exactly as before. Patients will generally see no change. (The more reflective among them may wonder what in the world all this hullabaloo was about.) Most of the insurance industry will be unaffected. If your coverage is through your employer or Medicare, you’ll probably see no change whatever in your health care.

The one corner of the industry that really will be affected is the individual insurance market. So those who buy their own insurance or are uninsured will notice the change. These groups comprise about a quarter of the population. 

Reporters are wont to imply the reform will rework “one-sixth” of the economy. Well, let’s see. The bill costs $940 billion over ten years. That’s $94 billion per year. Total health care spending in 2009 was $2.5 trillion (17.6 percent of GDP). So the bill will account for about 3.8 percent ($94 billion ÷ $2.5 trillion) or one-25^th of total annual health care spending. And it will account for a little over half of one percent ($94 billion ÷ $14.6 trillion) or one two-hundredth of annual GDP. So should we call it a government takeover of one two-hundredth of the economy? And this is abstracting from economic growth, which will, of course, make the proportion smaller and smaller as the years go by.

The media evidently has an interest (and I’m somewhat surprised to have to include the relatively staid news organizations, the New York Times, the NewsHour, and NPR, in this) in making things seem more momentous than they are. The problem is that this has scared people needlessly and endangered passage of a badly needed, sensible reform. It’s played into the hands of right-wing manipulators, and helped foster the spectacle of people in streets, with placards of Obama with a Hitler moustache, protesting a conservative insurance market reform that most people won’t notice and most would actually like if they knew the details of it. The farcical nature of this is a bit beyond words.