Alma mater Princeton University Employer The Washington Post Education Princeton University | Role Reporter Name T.R. Reid Ex-spouse Margaret M. McMahon | |
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Full Name Thomas Roy Reid III Occupation Journalist
Documentary film correspondent Known for NPR Morning Edition frequent guest Notable work • The Healing of America
• The Chip Movies Frontline: Sick Around the World People also search for Jon Palfreman, Missy Frederick, Raney Aronson-Rath, Richard Parr Books The Healing of America, Confucius Lives Next Door, The United States of Europe: T, The Chip, Congressional odyssey | ||
Q&A: T.R. Reid
T. R. Reid (born Thomas Roy Reid III in 1944) is an American reporter, documentary film correspondent, and author. He has also been a frequent guest on National Public Radio (NPR)'s Morning Edition. Reid currently lives in Denver, Colorado.
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Career
Reid, a Classics major at Princeton University, served as a naval officer, taught, and held various positions before working for The Washington Post. At the Post, he covered Congress and four Presidential election campaigns, and was chief of the Post's London and Tokyo bureaus. He has also taught at Princeton and the University of Michigan. His experiences in Japan led him to write Confucius Lives Next Door: What Living in the East Teaches Us About Living in the West, which argued that Confucian values of family devotion, education, and long-term relations, which still permeate East Asian societies, contributed to their social stability. He is now the Post's Rocky Mountain Bureau Chief. A 2007 Kaiser Family Foundation media fellow in health, he is a member of the board of the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless and the University of Colorado Medical School.
Reid won an Alicia Patterson Journalism Fellowship in 1982 writing about the U.S. semiconductor industry.
In the fall of 1963, Reid and three other Princeton sophomores—Arthur F. Davidsen, Steven D. Reich, and Frederick W. Talcott (plus Columbia University sophomore Charles A. Lieppe and Michigan State University sophomore Steven E. Cook)—perpetrated one of the most famous hoaxes in Princeton's history. Together, they created the fictitious high school student Joseph David Oznot, who applied for, and gained admission to Princeton. This led to Reid's appearance as a challenger on the television show To Tell the Truth on September 14, 1964.
Frontline documentaries on health care
His 2008 documentary for the U.S. television series Frontline, Sick Around the World, looked at the comprehensive health care systems of five developed economies from around the world. The first two countries visited were the United Kingdom and Japan, where he had previously lived, worked, and also received medical care. They were followed by Germany, Taiwan, and Switzerland.
Frontline asked Reid to follow up with a companion documentary, Sick Around America, which aired March 31, 2009, on PBS. However, Reid parted company with PBS before the film was finished when his conclusion, quoted by Russell Mokhiber in CounterPunch that "You can't allow a profit to be made on the basic package of health insurance," was omitted from the program. Instead, Reid argued that the film came off as supporting mandated private-insurance coverage. Reid was quoted as saying "...mandating for-profit insurance is not the lesson from other countries in the world. I said I'm not going to be in a film that contradicts my previous film and my book." PBS responded to these criticisms, stating that "Frontline takes a strongly different view of the characterization of its editorial disagreement with T. R. Reid as presented by Reid and Russell Mokhiber." It argued that Reid had misrepresented the role of a key respondent in the film, the extent of Reid's role in making the film, and the balance PBS had sought to present. Reid used his right of reply to challenge PBS's characterization of their and his own positions.
His investigations into health care resulted in his New York Times bestselling book The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper and Fairer Health Care. In 2015, Reid became Chairman of the Colorado Foundation for Universal Health Care. In that role, he served as a lead spokesman in the campaign for Amendment 69, an initiative on the Colorado ballot in November, 2016, that would create a state-based health plan—"ColoradoCare"—to cover all Colorado residents. "When Colorado passes ColoradoCare," he said, "we will demonstrate that universal coverage can work. And then Colorado will lead our great nation to a destination we should have achieved long ago; high-quality health care, at reasonable cost, for every American."
Reid also served on the board of Princeton University, the Health Research and Education Trust, and the Japan-America Society of Colorado. He is vice-chairman of the board of the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless.
T. R. Reid's latest book, A Fine Mess: A Global Quest for a Simpler, Fairer, and More Efficient Tax System, was published on April 15, 2017.