Today’s San Diego Union-Tribune carries a rebuke to the “Sicko” maker for extolling Britain’s National Health Service by Liz Mair, a writer and political consultant who “serves the needs of center-right political organizations, political leaders and candidates.”
Ms. Mair seems to have a thing for Mr. Moore. Her web site recently savaged him for attacking CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta phonetically by pronouncing his name “‘Dr. Saaanjay Guuuupta,’"laying incredible emphasis and vitriol on his foreign name. Without doubt, it was an oblique comment on the reporter-cum-doctor's ethnicity. What a crazy and unacceptable way to discredit a foe.”
A former resident of London, Ms. Mair wants us to know that “no matter how great socialized medicine may sound, the best that it achieves is dishing up very poor care for all, as opposed to good care for all, or even most.”
The main point of Ms. Mair’s indictment is health care for all at times involves longer waiting for services, which is presumably a horror not visited on U.S. patients since so many of the riff-raff have no coverage and are not clogging up the waiting rooms. They go to hospital emergency units.
While Ms. Mair keeps harpooning Michael Moore, elsewhere she has advice for Republican Presidential candidates. Attacking Mitt Romney for attempting universal coverage in Massachusetts, she suggests to the others: “Since excess regulation contributes greatly to skyrocketing costs--which in turn makes it tough to buy insurance if you're among the working poor--rather than proposing more regulation, Republicans might consider pursuing deregulation of the insurance market.”
While Ms. Mair keeps harpooning Michael Moore, she is busy trying to dismantle the pitiful controls that do exist on HMOs and private insurers. It makes one wonder if she consults for clients other than politicians. Or is she just idealistically wrong-headed?
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Frankly I'm getting a little fed up with these people constantly dragging out the straw man of Britain's NHS when they want to criticize 'socialized medicine' (as if paying private insurance companies to subsidize poor people and private drug companies wasn't socialism enough).
As someone who lived with 'socialized medicine' in Canada for 30 years (and would take it in a heartbeat over the dysfunctional nightmare I now deal with in the United States) I can tell you with some authority that 'the government' doesn't 'run' health care in Canada. The government PAYS for it.
In most other respects the system is much the same as here. Doctors are private businessmen who run their own practises (and unlike here, where I must pick from my insurance compay's 'in network' list, I could actually choose my own doctor). And, more importantly, no one is ever denied treatment for lack of funds or 'pre-existing conditions' or any other weasel insurance-speak, nor does anyone go bankrupt because of hospital costs.
Before making widespread criticisms, these asshats need to educate themselves on how things actually work in other countries. There's a lot of different systems. And they ALL produce better outcomes than ours, and at lower cost.
Just how stupid are we?
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