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Sunday, August 23, 2009

Misinformation at its worst

In The Kansas City Star today, there was yet another example of gross misinformation, in this instance, on the part of a reader--no surprise--and it points out the mistaken ideas people have about real life, situations and hard statistics.

Here's most of the letter to the editor:

Government can't be trusted

"What is it The Star does not get when it keeps publishing liberal editorials pushing for national health care, claiming that such a system will drive down costs and provide affordable care for all?"

"Do you realize that everywhere this has already been attempted it has been a disaster? (i.e., Europe and Canada)."

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is where I have to stop. (Fortunately, he didn't go on much longer, anyway).

What the heck??

That is such a blatantly mistaken statement, it's beyond belief.

Virtually the entire free world has health care for all its citizens--except the United States--and Canada's and Europe's health care systems, in specific, are two of the most successful, working health care systems of all these.

It seems this writer must purely be basing his thoroughly untrue and incorrect statement on some fictional opinion he holds.

Reality absolutely shows, unequivocally, how both Europe's and Canada's health care systems (pick a country) work so very efficiently for both the patients and practitioners in the industry. The doctors and health care givers are paid reasonable wages and the costs are far lower for the institutions and respective countries, in spite of everyone getting the care they need.

The US statistics, by comparison, show we spend more than any other nation on the planet for our health care, for starters. Followed by the facts that we also rate 37th, internationally, in terms of morality rate and, finally, that we have at least 46 million of us who have no health care insurance at all, no one can claim we have a good, working system.

Far from it. Our health care system is broken. Badly broken. And needs repair.

Let's start there, with the fact that it needs fixing and then use only good information, to take us forward.

Link to facts and data on other countries' health care plans by T.R. Reid, from the Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/21/AR2009082101778.html

2 comments:

Radioman KC said...

My respected friend...

"Do you realize that everywhere this has already been attempted it has been a disaster? (i.e., Europe and Canada)."

That's the blatent, mistaken statement. They're happy with their single payer system, and other that health care cant prevent us from dying eventually, they're happy with their health care. As our we. We just can't afford ours in a society that's shrinking after all our good jobs have been exported to people who don't need all that health care.

Hyperbole just isn't helpful... this is about a whole lot of money. Shill for the capitalists if you ARE one, but if you're just a working stiff who pays more and more for health care and is getting only the same or less in annual wages, then you're on the wrong side of the issue.

That means the propagandists have seduced you. I expected MUCH more out of you, mo rage!

Much more.

Where do you get your information? Faux News, right leaning blogs, KMBZ, PBS, MSNBC, where? I'm sure that answer will explain your reasoning.

That attitude makes me feel like I felt in 1968... let em burn their draft cards, some of us will do the heavy lifting even if they won't. That's true today.

Mo Rage said...

Radioman,

those weren't my words, man.

that whole "do you realized that everywhere this has already been attempted it has been a disaster?" thing was that guy's words. Certainly not mine. I don't think our systems works--far from it--and both my statements and my documentation--see the links--point out I think we need fixes, first, and that the rest of the world's solutions seem to work very well, while ours don't.

Be cool. I believe we're on the same side.

MR