n immense policy success is slipping under the radar.

Paul Krugman proposes an interesting theory in today’s column about why the success of Obamacare is a story that is mostly being ignored by the media, and therefore kept from the American public. In fact, he suspects the mainstream news media does not even know how successful the Affordable Care Act is proving to be. Not that there is any excuse for that ignorance. How do they manage to stay so ignorant? Krugman thinks it may be because many of the people who work in media-especially the pundit class-are well enough off that they don’t need Obamacare, and these media elites seldom cover poor people or even talk to them much.

So, no excuses really. Why has the media been able to get away with getting the health reform story so wrong?

“Think relentless negativity without accountability,” Krugman writes:

The Affordable Care Act has faced nonstop attacks from partisans and right-wing media, with mainstream news also tending to harp on the act’s troubles. Many of the attacks have involved predictions of disaster, none of which have come true. But absence of disaster doesn’t make a compelling headline, and the people who […]