Picard, this doesn't speak directly to your second sentence, but I think it addresses your first.

I remember reading a survey about ten years ago. They asked folks how satisfied they were with their health care arrangements. Roughly 75% said that they were adequately covered. Then they asked the same folks how what percentage of Americans had adequate health care coverage. The reply? The average American believed that only 25% had adequate coverage.

The moral of that is that the actual problem was (back then) only one third as bad as people believed! I think that says a lot about how accurate the media reports of the health care crisis are.

Nels