So one of the perks of having a blog is that you see how people found you and I was very curious why a couple of people found my blog after searching for Karen Ryan. I’d never heard of her, having missed today’s NY Times story about how the Bush administration had paid actors to imitate reporters to make fake news clips about Medicare. So why did the phrase "from Washington I’m Karen Ryan reporting" show up in THCB?

Well you may remember a few weeks back I got all hot and bothered about a poorly researched report on the subject of whether the huge increase in health spending was good for us or not. The report was put together by a coalition of health industry groups and was very thinly veiled propaganda–even though it did have legitimate points to make. With the report was distributed a video clip. By now you’ve guessed the rest; the last line of the voice over was "from Washington I’m Karen Ryan reporting", which went into TCHB and thence into Google.

So absolute proof that the Bush administration’s efforts to defend the Medicare bill is nothing but PR. Silly really, as there are some good things in the bill (like coverage for the very poorest seniors) that they could at least make a half-assed attempt to promote properly.