Providing healthcare for the uninsured: How the media frames conflicting ideologies in achieving the same goal

Current coverage of the Affordable Care Act (AC A) is just one opportunity to analyze the use of media in framing health care policy. An examination of the history of media and their influence surrounding the implementation of the AC A in 2013 and a veto for additional funding of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) in 2007 provide critical insight into the utilization of framing practices by available media sources. Acknowledging the influence of the media, included in this research is a content analysis of news coverage from CNN, Fox News Network and MSNBC. The initial search was for coverage three months before and after the veto of the SCHIP expansion in December of 2007 and implementation of the AC A in October of 2013. These transcripts were then coded for relevance by eliminating those not specifically related to providing health care for the uninsured. The remaining texts were then analyzed for emergent themes associated with this particular framework. Clearly, this is only a piece of coverage of the SCHIP and ACA, but even fragments provide insight into the overall construction in framing a message (Krippendorff, 2013) to be utilized as a tool in navigating the current debate on health care policy.