March 6, 2006

Dan Rather
60 Minutes
524 West 57th Street
New York, New York 10019

Dear Dan: CBS News and 60 Minutes took on a complex and serious set of issues in your March 5 segment on hospital charges and the uninsured. You worked hard for a balanced story, but there are three points about which your viewers deserved a fuller story than you delivered.

First, the tone of the piece suggested that the real and disturbing cases you highlighted are typical of what happens to people without insurance at all hospitals. That simply is not the case. The nation’s hospitals spent nearly $27 billion in 2004 on care for which they were never paid. Thousands of hospitals have policies and people that help the uninsured effectively and with enormous compassion. That was missing from your report.

Second, it would have been fairer if you had given your viewers a more complete portrait of who K.B. Forbes is. Labeling him a community activist, you did point out his relationship with conservative politicians. Wouldn’t the documented fact that the health insurance industry has financed some of his “activism” be relevant for the public to know? That was missing from your report.

Finally, a few more words about the real “widespread” problem at the core of the report’s topic would have been appropriate. That’s the 46 million Americans with no health insurance and the fact that our nation is largely ignoring the problem, leaving hospitals to be their family doctors, to care for them and then find a way to pay for it, while government and the wealthy insurance industry look the other way. That was the most important point of all and it was missing from your report. Hospitals will continue to work to find financial assistance options for the

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Page 2
Dan Rather
Page Two
March 6, 2006

uninsured. It must be acknowledged that hospitals currently do more than any other element of society to care for the uninsured. You did a disservice by not calling for a national solution to providing health coverage for all Americans.

Sincerely,

Dick Davidson
President

Courtesy Copy:
Michael Rosenbaum

Adobe PDF Version of this letter available by clicking here