Saturday, April 7, 2007

Reagan: "Socialized medicine hazardous to health"

Does anybody actually read this boob? In this hit-piece, originally titled "National Health Care Can Kill," he scatters clumsy lies and cracked logic to try and scare us all into continuing to bankrupt ourselves and our country with our monumentally stupid health-care system. In parts left out of the substantially longer original, Reagan tells us that everything's better for Americans, who get the jazziest new drugs sooner because national systems take time to do their own testing and negotiate prices. We don't do that negotiating -- sorry, we are prevented by law from doing it -- leaving most of us unable to afford them anyway. I didn't check the stats on personal bankruptcies related to health costs, care to take a guess?

Need facts? Check out Fig 1.2 on this page from UK Cancer Research, one example of many sources I found with a quickie Google search. The highest incidence of breast cancer per capita? US. The lowest in the developed world? Japan, which also has the lowest mortality rate and the most extensive government health-care system.

The press is supposed to help make us smarter voters, that's its constitutional function. Crap like this gives the whole profession a black eye. You can print lies and distortion and call it opinion, but if you don't call them out, as a journalist you're either falling down on the job or actively participating in the fraud.

1 comment:

leftturnclyde said...

oh god , the socialized medicine rant from the right and yeah steve you are right we have all these wonderfull drugs that most folks cant afford , shucks my wife went through the breast cancer thing last year ,we HAVE health insurance and it still cost us 10 grand out of pocket. our elected officials recieve free heathcare with our tax dollars ... how many folks would be covered with just one days worth of the funds being used to conduct this unwinnable morass in Iraq, and still we hear this BULLSHIT from idiots like Reagan.
wait Reagan , maybe that last name explains it all...
anyway on an courier note how come we didnt get an opposing veiwpoint on this or is this something the editor stands behind?